She went and told his companions who were mourning and weeping.
When they heard that he was alive
and had been seen by her, they did not believe.
Jesus has sent witnesses into a world caught up in mourning and weeping, exhausted at the apparent hopelessness of their plight. Yet the world seemed to prefer sadness to the joy of the Gospel. Sadness seemed more realistic because it was more familiar. Joy seemed far more fleeting or even illusory. Christianity seemed to the world to be a glorious mirage in the desert. Having trusted their eyes about one too many mirages already the people of the world preferred the desert to one more disappointment.
After this he appeared in another form
to two of them walking along on their way to the country.
They returned and told the others;
but they did not believe them either.
The Lord continued to send witnesses, giving more and more people an experience of the joy of the resurrection. They could testify that the joy of the Gospel was no mere mirage or illusion but was something that they themselves had tasted and which others could also taste and see. Yet the credentials of the Gospel witnesses were other than those of politicians, media, celebrities, or scientists. They were not in any particular sense highly qualified. In fact, God delighted to lift up the lowly, and the "despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are" (see First Corinthians 1:28). The witnesses could not defer to repeatable empirical experiments to make their case. They had a certain sort of wisdom, but it was a wisdom that sounded ridiculous on a superficial reading. After all, who had ever heard of death being undone? One seemingly irrefutable fact of objective experience is that dead people stay dead. But what the Lord's witnesses proclaimed was that, for one person in particular, this apparent rule had not held.
But later, as the Eleven were at table, he appeared to them
and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart
because they had not believed those
who saw him after he had been raised.
Although the witnesses of the Lord were often rejected their role was still important. If they were not always believed it was still true that the context of their relationships with others should have made them believable. They emerged from the same darkness, no more credulous than any of the others, and testified that the darkness was not the whole story. They insisted that their was more, that the apparent mirage was actually solid, and that this was something that the others could know for themselves.
Even when witnesses of the Lord are initially rejected it may be the case that they are preparing the ground. The fact that the the Eleven were slow to believe the testimony of witnesses must have made them attenuate the way they themselves would give testimony to others. It must have resulted in a deeper sympathy with nonbelievers that helps them to proclaim the Gospel in a more persuasive way.
He said to them, “Go into the whole world
and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”
The testimony of the risen Lord may seem to spread slowly in the world. The work of his witnesses may seem to accomplish little. But there is likely something hidden behind the scenes that is taking place as seeds are sown and the ground is made ready. The testimony of witnesses may yet lead them to encounter the risen Lord himself, giving the irrefutable proof to that testimony. The Holy Spirit might intervene at any moment and confirm the words of witnesses with signs, wonders, and deep conviction of heart. The fact that witnesses do not work alone, but rather together with Jesus and his Spirit, ought to give us confidence and to make us bold as Peter and John were bold.
Peter and John, however, said to them in reply,
“Whether it is right in the sight of God
for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges.
It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.”
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