Ray Rooney
Digital media editor
He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you … And they remembered
(Luke 24:6, 8).
[T]he chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, ‘Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise”’ (Matthew 27:62-63).
March 2016 – Isn’t it strange that the followers of Jesus seemed completely blindsided by the resurrection while His detractors made preparations for it?
Predicting your death in the near future is interesting. Insisting that you will rise from the dead following a specific amount of time after your death – well, that is something else. If I had a friend who was known for stirring things up and that friend mentioned in conversation one day that continually stirring the pot would soon lead to his death, I might lose track of that prediction in the midst of all the excitement generated by the stirring. But if he added that three days after being killed, he would beat back death itself and rise again, I think I would remember that.
Followers forget in disappointment
So how is it possible that the gospels don’t record a single instance of an apostle, disciple, or friend of Jesus saying or doing anything that indicated some level of familiarity or expectation with the resurrection? The women who came to the tomb that Sunday morning certainly weren’t prepared for it. They were bringing spices to anoint the body of Christ to mask the imminent smell of decaying flesh.
When the women ran to tell the apostles the good news, they weren’t greeted with expectant nods and smiles. No, a couple of them ran to the tomb to make sure the women weren’t lying. And still they couldn’t make heads or tails of what happened. One of them (Thomas) even decided that his friends were either delusional or just plain lying to him when they told him Jesus had appeared to them.
How is it humanly possible that they forgot what Jesus repeatedly told them concerning His resurrection? Especially when He did it in so many different ways. He told them directly, and He used spiritual imagery to get the message across. Remember the cryptic lines about Jonah and the whale’s belly (Matthew 12:40)? And what about “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19)? How did all His friends forget but His enemies remember?
Enemies prepare in fear
I believe the answer is simple. His friends were overwhelmed by His display of “weakness” (death on a cross) while His enemies were overwhelmed by the portent of His strength. After all, many of them had been present when He raised Lazarus from the dead. His friends were mortified at the thought of the Son of God succumbing to the hand of man. His enemies were panicked by the thought of a post-death confrontation with Him. Do you see the difference?
Luke sums it up best when he records the sad line spoken by one of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus as he unknowingly spoke to the risen Jesus: “We had hoped that he was the one. …” (Luke 24:21). So one group’s response to the death of Jesus was to lament that maybe they had misunderstood Him while the other group’s response was to fearfully make arrangements because they clearly understood Him!
We forget when we are disappointed. We remember when we are afraid. It is a matter of priority and perspective. What drives us?
There is a tremendously important lesson to be learned concerning the different reactions to the death of Jesus and His resurrection. Embracing disappointment and feeding it with sorrow is blinding.
The Emmaus disciples walked down the road with the resurrected Jesus and didn’t recognize Him! In John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene wept outside the empty tomb because the body was gone. She turned and Jesus was standing right in front of her. No recognition. John says she thought He was the gardener. It wasn’t until He called her by name that her eyes were cleared and she recognized Him.
The detractors of Christ, on the other hand, were driven by the fear that is born of unbelief. They could not forget His promise to rise from the dead if they tried. So powerful was their fear that it led them to seek help and permission from the only man they may have hated more than they hated Christ: Pilate. It is quite telling that none of them ran to Pilate to seek his permission to stone to death a woman caught in the act of adultery. (Jews were not allowed to carry out capital punishment while under Roman occupation.) But they came groveling to him to ask for a guard to be put at the tomb of Christ. That is precisely the kind of thing unbelief and fear regularly cause.
Two choices today
To this day, the resurrection of Jesus Christ continues to have the same effect on people. Those who are drowning in disappointment in life continue to walk toward death with spices to mask the unmistakable smell of failure. Yet those who revel adamantly in the supposed superiority of their unbelief continue their campaign to keep the truth silenced, shut up behind closed doors and armed guards.
The other option is, of course, to resist disappointment with an attitude of faith and combat the fear of unbelief by resisting evil and conquering sin through repentance, choosing the Word of God over impossible circumstances. It may sound simple enough, but it is not. Disappointment can be all-encompassing, and fear is crippling.
We would all like to think we would have been the lone apostle reminding our brethren about Jesus’ promise to rise again after three days. But reality just looks at us shaking its head. We would also like to believe if it were our lot to wear that other shoe, we would have been the lone voice of dissent against the raging voices of unbelief and fear. Again, reality shakes its head.
What we can do, however, is choose a more precise and suitable course when the next crisis confronts us unexpectedly. We can prepare for it now. We can glean from the Word of God daily, pray faithfully, and walk truthfully so that when we are confronted by bitter disappointment, we will not forget. As a matter of fact, every time we observe Holy Communion that is precisely what we do: “Do this in remembrance of Me.”
Remember. Remember His passion. Remember His death. Remember His resurrection. Let hope bear faith, and faith will sustain us until we stand in His presence. 
Ray Rooney is editor of AFA’s blog, The Stand (afa.net/the-stand).
See AFA Journal review here. Available at afastore.net or 877-927-4917.
