There's a huge hole in the timeline of the day Jesus was resurrected...
The Second Sunday of
Easter
Readings
Acts 5:27-32
When they had brought them, they had
them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them,
saying, ‘We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet
here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are
determined to bring this man’s blood on us.’ But Peter and the
apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human
authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had
killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as
Leader and Saviour, so that he might give repentance to Israel and
forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is
the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.’
John 20:19-23
Jesus Appears to the Disciples
When it was evening on that day, the
first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples
had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among
them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed
them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they
saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the
Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he
breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you
forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the
sins of any, they are retained.’
*******
To
see what I mean about the hole in the timeline we need to look at what John records as having taken place. He begins this passage by saying that it was evening on that, the
first day of the week. So it's Sunday evening. The
timeline so far, according to John, is that at daybreak that
morning Mary
Magdalene has arrived
at
the tomb of
Jesus and
found it empty. She's then gone rushing back into the city to the safehouse, probably
the same place as the Upper Room, where the disciples are holed up in
fear for their lives, to tell the disciples that the body has gone.
Immediately Simon Peter and the so-called 'other disciple', who most
of us take to be John, the author, run to the tomb. When
they get there and see that the tomb is empty, John records them as
saying, (in
20:8-9), that they saw
and believed, for as yet they didn't understand the scripture that he
must rise from the dead. In other words they saw for themselves that
the tomb was empty and they believed, not that Jesus had risen, but
simply they believed that Mary was telling them the truth; the body
was gone. So they returned to Jerusalem. Mary,
however, stays
there weeping
and thus perfectly places herself to be the first person to whom
Jesus shows himself. At
the end of the reading for Easter day it says that Mary Magdalene
went back to the disciples to proclaim to them, 'I have seen the
Lord'.
Now,
by my guess, if sunrise around this time of year is going to be
somewhere between 6 and 7am, that's going to be when Mary finds the
tomb empty. The tomb is not going to be far outside the city
walls and she's running. So maybe half an hour to get Simon Peter and
John out to see the tomb for themselves. Let's give it an hour to be
on the safe side given that they were all running but
we don't know where in Jerusalem she'd had to go to. That
suggests that probably by 8am the two apostles have been out and seen
for themselves that the tomb is empty. Therefore
by 9am Mary has met the risen Jesus and then hurried back into the
city. That means that by midday at the latest she has told them all
what she has seen. That's the end of verse 18, the end of the
reading for Easter Sunday.
Now,
if it was you and one of your number came in to say Jesus has risen
from the dead, what would you do? You
see there is a massive hole in the day here, pointed out by author
Scott Hoezee. By my back-of-an-envelope calculations verse 18 has us
no later than lunchtime. But today's reading, starting at the very
next verse, begins, 'When it was evening on that day...'
John
tells us that they were locked in for fear of the Jewish leadership.
If
you're not sure what this means it's because usually, when there is a
political troublemaker, one first removes
the leader, then you take out all the key followers. So
John seems to be suggesting that they had locked themselves away and
were in hiding for fear that this is what would happen to them. Yet
when Mary Magdalene had first arrived there in the early morning,
Simon Peter and John had gone running to see for themselves, so they
overcame their fear of the Jews pretty swiftly then. And by
lunchtime Mary had told them the good news, yet by the evening what
are they doing?
They're still sitting inside with the doors locked.
And
here is where there is a gaping hole in the timeline. What would you
have done if someone had told you that the Lord is risen? Would you
still have been locked away or would you have gone to see for
yourself? Yet
here they are, locked in their self-imposed safehouse.
I have this mental image of Jesus sat by the tomb looking at his
watch and tapping his feet wondering why no one has come looking.
So
why didn't they? Why did no one else come and see?
The
answer to that could be quite interesting. The
first possibility is that they simply didn't believe Mary. After
all they lived in a culture in which women could not be called to
give legal testimony in a court of law because their testimony was
deemed not to
be trustworthy enough. Mary
had a track record of presenting as if possessed by seven demons,
either because she had been or maybe because she had suffered what we
would think of as a mental illness. Or maybe both. Either
way, it's not impossible to imagine a scenario in which the disciples
listen to someone that they count as what we could once have called a
'hysterical
woman'
and simply dismiss her testimony as the ravings of someone whose
grief had put her
back to the state of mind she
had been in when Jesus had healed and delivered her. Given
the male ego, it's not too difficult to imagine this as a
possibility.
You could perhaps picture Mary becoming steadily more infuriated with
them.
But
then, what if they had believed her? After all Simon and John
believed her testimony earlier on, so maybe they believed every word
she said to them. Early
evidence suggests Mary was very influential.
Why then did they still stay put and not go searching for Jesus?
Could
it be that, not only were they afraid of the Jewish leadership, but
maybe they were also afraid of Jesus too? Think
about it for a moment. One of them had betrayed him, although
admittedly he was never coming back so they could disown him. But
Peter had denied he'd ever known Jesus and the other disciples had
scattered as soon as it became clear what was going to happen. The
beloved disciple, we think John, was the only one of the twelve who
had stayed the course.
Remember
that when Jesus had first met Simon and 'borrowed' his fishing boat
to give him a platform on which to preach, after being on the
receiving end of a miraculous middle-of-the-day haul of fish, Simon
had said to Jesus, 'Get away from me for I am a sinful man.' Simon
already thought very little of himself, which may have been behind
all the bluff and bluster. Now,
with the events of the previous three days he had fully reinforced
his self-image as a sinful man who had turned tail and run away.
Remember also that the general impression at that time was that the
Messiah, the Christ, when he came, would be a political leader who
would deliver the Jews from Roman oppression, yet the disciples had
hardly shown themselves as decent soldiers; quite the opposite in
fact, despite Jesus' words to them to put away their swords.
So I imagine them as being a desolate bunch who are holed up feeling
miserable and confused, unsure of what they should have done and sure
that what they did do was the wrong thing, and now Mary tells them
that Jesus is risen from the dead. Given all of that knowledge, now
what do you think you'd have done? If it's true then Jesus is the most powerful man in the world and you
deserted him. Would you go looking for him?
Or would you hope to
God that he wouldn't come looking for you?
So is it possible that actually they haven't gone looking for Jesus
because they're scared of what he would do if he ever saw them again? Is their fear of the perfection of Jesus inhibiting them from seeking
him out and being of use to the kingdom?
But
then note the very first thing that Jesus says to them after he's
become tired of waiting and gone to see them. His first words to the
disciples are, 'Peace be with you.' Can
you imagine the collective sigh of
relief that
such a greeting would have elicited from them? Can
you imagine the anxiety flowing away as they realise that he knows
them, he knows what happened, and that everything is still
OK between them? Granted
that in the next chapter he's going to make Peter face up to the
reality about himself if he's going to be reinstated. But
nevertheless, his first words to them are ones of reassurance.
So how is it for us?
You
see I think that, for many of us, in order to be effective in our
lives and as Christians, the words we most need to hear is Jesus
saying, 'Peace be with you'. Not
only is any kind of peace sadly missing from the lives of many of us,
there is also that simple need to recognise that the whole point of
the Easter story, the whole death and resurrection of Christ was all
about reconciliation.
It
all boils down to God the Son being able to say to all those who put
their faith in him those four simple words, 'Peace be with you.' But
those words convey a universe of reassurance. They
say to us that no matter how badly we have let God down, let
ourselves down, let our families or our friends down, Christ comes to
us and says, 'Peace be with you.' But,
and it's a big but, it doesn't stop there. This
is about a lot more than some psychological healing of memories.
This is about far more than some new age touchy-feely, 'There there,
everything's going to be OK.'
Yes it is going to be OK. Yes it is
OK. But that is only the beginning of the story.
Look at what happens next. Jesus breathes the breath of the Spirit
of God on to them. Don't get caught up in the differences between
this and the Day of Pentecost right now. That's another story for
another day. Instead simply take note that following the decisive
statement of peace between them and him, between them and God, he
commissions them and gives them the Holy Spirit of God in order to be
able to fulfill that commitment. So much does this change them that before long, as recorded in the Acts passage above, they are willingly
standing up before the very people from whom they ran away, and
declaring that they obey God not human authority, and boldly speaking
out the Gospel of forgiveness of sins through Christ.
Now I get a bellyful of 'memes' on the internet which
say all sorts of lovely things that stroke our egos and are meant to
make us feel better about ourselves. But this, to me, means more
than any of it. Jesus says, 'Whatever has gone before, and however
much you will screw it up in the future, “Peace be with you”.
Now go and tell the world that there's peace between us.'