The Apostles of the New Testament were the early leaders of the Church. In the book of Acts they are a band of brothers who together change the face of the world through the preaching of the Gospel. But throughout the Gospels, they are anything but the brave, Spirit-led leaders they would become. In fact, sometimes I think they are the comic relief.
In this passage we see that they just couldn’t get their heads around the idea of Jesus raising from dead. I guess this shouldn’t be difficult to understand. It was a rare happening. But what I don’t get is why they don’t ask Jesus for clarification. He’s the one who told them what would happen! It seems like he could have shed a little light on what he had meant.
But it is a very important discussion they had among themselves. The very essence of what Christianity is about is wrapped up in the resurrection of Christ. You see Jesus literally died, ceased to live, and then God brought him back to life. He didn’t come back to life as a vision or a dream. His body physically came back to life. If it doesn’t happen, if Jesus doesn’t physically rise from the dead, then Christianity is a farce. The funny thing is that the disciples had seen him do this before. They had seen (or at least heard of) him raising other people from the grave. It makes me wonder if the real question for them was, who will bring you back alive when you die if you’re not here to do it? And of course the answer was God the Father, whom Jesus was the very essence of.
Or was the real question, can we trust God to bring you back? You see their very lives had been changed by this man named Jesus. Their entire trajectories had changed. If he left, if he died, what would happen to them? It reminds me of an important scriptural truth. You have to often let something go in order to really have it in the fullest sense. For example, Jesus says we’ve got to give up our life in order to gain it (we read this just recently).
When Jesus died, rose again, and then ascended into Heaven, the disciples would get the greatest mission of their lives. They would spread the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus across the world. Not only that, but the very Spirit of God would come and live inside of them. And they would be changed forever. But that only happened after Golgotha, after Jesus gave up his life.
God may be calling you to give something up. We must remember that when he does that he give it back ten-fold. He wants to give you something new – his greater presence in your life. So keep listening and keep surrendering.
