Luke 24.1-12.
As I’ve pointed out more than once, Jesus himself pointed out more than once
Oh, it mighta felt like a secret plan to his dense followers, who promptly forgot all about the “and risen on the third day” part
(Yes, morning wine. Tea wasn’t invented till the 200s, and coffee till the 1400s, so people back then typically drank beer in the morning. No, I’m not kidding! But beer wasn’t an option during the Feast of Unleavened Bread—they had to get all the yeast out of the house, which means no beer, even in Passover observances today. So, wine. No, not watered-down wine; that’s a pagan Greek practice, and it’s a myth invented by American teetotalers that Judeans did it too. They drank regular kosher wine. Kids too. But ordinarily, beer… until God blessed the Chinese with tea, and the Yemenis with coffee. Okay, digression over.)
So the Eleven and the other students really weren’t expecting resurrection. They were still mourning Jesus’s death. That’s why they were gathered together: Mourning. Wearing torn clothes, pouring ash from the fireplace onto their heads, weeping, remembering Jesus, wondering what might come next.
Movies tend to depict these followers as in hiding—panicked in case the authorities were coming for them next. Which isn’t at all how the gospels describe things. Yes, they were anxious about the Judeans,
Except when they did, the corpse wasn’t there. Because it was no longer a corpse.
Luke 24.1-12. - 1 At early dawn on the first day of the week,
- women, bringing prepared spices, come to the sepulcher.
- 2 These women find the stone
- had been rolled away from the sepulcher.
- 3 On entering, the women do not find
- the body of Master Jesus.
- 4 It happens while the women are dumbfounded about this:
- Look, two men in brilliant clothing, sitting by them.
- 5 As this frightened the women,
- who fall over on their faces to the ground,
- the men tell them,
- “Why do you look for the living among the dead?
- 6 He’s not here. He’s risen!
- Remember what he tells you when you are still in the Galilee,
- 7 saying this of the Son of Man:
- He has to be delivered into the hands of sinful people,
- and crucified,
- and risen on the third day.”
- 8 And the women remember Jesus’s words,
- 9 and, returning from the sepulcher,
- the women tell all these things to the Eleven
- and all the other students.
- 10 It was Mary the Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary of James,
- and all the other women with them:
- They were saying these things to the apostles.
- 11 The events appeared to the apostles
- as if these words were a fairy tale,
- and they don’t believe it.
- 12 Simon Peter rises and runs to the sepulcher,
- and leans in to see only the linen strips,
- and leaves, wondering to himself what had happened.