Every single one of them did it. When they heard the news, they didn’t believe it. Don’t blame them. We are no different. To be honest, it helps. It helps a lot, for if the report was swallowed hook, line, and sinker as the fishermen they were, it’d be pretty evident this story was falsified with some ulterior purpose in mind, like fashioned to make themselves into some kind of holy heroes. Not how it happened. They didn’t believe it, plain and simple.

Ponder the Incredulous

Hey, weren’t these the guys who’d heard him say it would happen? Still, you couldn’t expect this. Jesus, brutally tortured until dead on a cross, expired for three days, and just like that, there he is in the same room, alive and well. Even the reports about the women at the tomb say they were scared out of their wits. The men thought they were delirious. Now their minds were being blown as well. Yeah, it’s hard to wrap your head around. Had to be a zombie of some sort. Nope, don’t blame them. We’re with them.

Jesus is back, alive, well, resurrected from the dead as the saying goes. What would be anyone’s thought? Walking dead, for sure. That’s all they could think of, reverting back to some kind of pagan superstition. Jesus understands. He is real but from a new kind of reality. His work is cut out for him.

First, he speaks words familiar to them. “Peace be with you.” Shalom. On one hand, it’s like saying, “Hey, Guys. I’m here. Everything’s cool.” But they also know his kingdom as one of peace. Peace, not as absence of conflict, but peace that calms the soul-storms, clarifies with a new sense or vision, unites in purpose to God and each other, empowers with strength of presence and being. He offers this peace to them.

He appeared to them, and now he’s talking just like he used to. They are still petrified. This won’t be an easy sell. Jesus gets right down to it. “Why do you doubt who I am?” Minds need proof, an experiential, empirical understanding of existence, design, and method. Jesus rolls up his sleeves and kicks off his sandals. “Look…Touch.” See my hands and feet. Touch me. I am not a ghost. I’m a physical body. I’m real as life.

Speculative Conclusions

So, that’s a good one. But will it last? Jesus was not there and then there. Real bodies don’t do that. Are we being drawn into something that’s beyond weird?

This isn’t weird. Ghosts may look like what they were when alive, but ghosts don’t have physical functions. The disciples were still doubting, though something like hope was stirring, too, as they also felt joy and wonder. Jesus asks them for something to eat and scarfs down some broiled fish. Why not? It’s been three days since that last supper, so to speak. There is something so natural and alive in him. They watch and recall what they know him to be.

Yet, in the role they know him best, for the role by which they first followed him, Jesus speaks as their Rabbi, their Teacher. This is the Jesus they know, the Jesus who called them by saying, “Come and see.” For three years he had instructed them, expanding the ancient writings and commandments God had given their ancestors. He shows them again in the words of the prophets how the Messiah would suffer, die, and rise again on the third day. This they could remember and use to piece together the events of the last few days. By re-minding them, Jesus opened their minds to this new reality, this privilege they had in a glimpse of not mere life after death, not a resuscitation back to what was, but a translation into one having a closer presence in the love of God. Eternal life is the catch-all term for it.

Want a better explanation? Go for it, but good luck with that. Herein is the journey of faith, that place of tension between doubt and belief. What happens when we die is a huge question. Yet, efforts to approximate it to what is already known is refusal to enter into the mystery of it, a grounding of logical proofs that negate wonder.

Peace in the Drift

That Jesus lived and died on a cross is a verifiable fact. Resurrection is the pivotal place of doubt and belief. Yet, doubt is where faith begins. Again, everyone who first heard that Jesus was alive responded first with doubt. Can’t blame them, right? They went from too-good-to-be-true, to can’t-believe-it-is-true, to this wonder that it might be true. Courageous souls float in wonder, the position between doubt and belief. It’s not denial as opposed to blind acceptance. It’s feeling the pull of not understanding the hows of doubt for an exchange of acceptance in the whys of belief.

Trust then is the operative part of faith, the not-knowing but somehow accepting. Jesus blessed the disciples in his greeting of Shalom, peace in lives that can carry this tension of wonder and bring a witness of how far God will go to bring restoration. That someone would die for a good cause is believable, but how someone could come back from death for the cause of transforming love is the stretch.

It may beg the question though, where is the stronger faith? In the one totally convinced, or in the one who can’t explain away but somehow accepts? “You are witnesses,” Jesus said. Turn to me, accept me and my life offering for you. Be restored and reconciled to God in love.

And wonder with peace.



Luke 24:36b-48

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