Unlike the Gospel Passion accounts, which seem to have followed a fixed general template, the Gospel accounts of the resurrection show a good deal of diversity. In view of this diversity, I would like to offer my own proposal of the resurrection of Jesus—how I would have designed Jesus’s resurrection and meeting his disciples again. My scenario is simple: First, Jesus returns in a great display of sound and light, high enough in the heavens that all people, especially those in Palestine see him and immediately recognize he is Lord. Second, he immediately punishes all his enemies. Third, he tells the disciples who abandoned him during the passion that they flunked and will have to take the course again. Last, he promotes to high positions the few people who remained faithful to him.
But God did not do it my way. This is how He did it. First, a few of his disciples found an empty tomb but came away confused. Jesus appeared to individuals and to groups, but some in those groups saw him, whereas others did not. On another occasion, he joined a couple of people walking away from Jerusalem, deeply disappointed at how things turned out, and they walked together for several miles conversing. They stopped for dinner, and it was only after they had been eating a while that they recognized him. And then, in an instant, he was gone. A woman who was faithful, Mary of Magdala, met him near the burial cave. She thought he worked for Building and Grounds until he pronounced her name that she recognized who he was. On another occasion, when the disciples were cowering in fear in a locked room, Jesus appeared to them out of nowhere, and even ate something to assure them he was not a ghost. When some of them were in a fishing boat, they spied a man on the shore who directed them to a spot where fish was abundant. Peter got so excited he jumped overboard, and when all reached shore, the “fish-spotter” had prepared a breakfast. Nobody dared to ask him who he was. A favorite meeting place of his was the meal. It was dinner on the way to Emmaus and breakfast in Galilee. Jesus was the host, seeing that everyone had enough and enjoying the company, even though many of his guests were “disreputable.”
In my version of resurrection there was no uncertainty and confusion. But my version draws a high wall between the risen Jesus and the Jesus who seeks to be with us today and we who struggle to see him. But in the Gospel version of the risen life, there is no huge difference. We meet Jesus as host and find him but cannot hold on to him; we see him in strange places and don’t see him where we expect.
So, the question is: Why are the resurrection accounts so lacking in drama and pizzazz? Because, I think, Jesus wants us to respond to him. He wants us to address him, calling him “you,” and hearing ourselves addressed as “you.” We are not spectators. We have been invited in, to take up our responsibility despite our possible lack of loyalty in the past. Jesus is not going to force us to take the course again because we failed it the first time. In fact, he asks us to spread his message and love us and entrusts us with great responsibility. Give thanks that there is no drama, only an encounter!