We know how each of the Gospels differs from the others, in often quite major ways. Each of the evangelists tells of salvation from their own perspective and for their anticipated audience, with their own particular preconceptions and expectations. It is perhaps striking that nowhere are these differences more apparent than at the end of each gospel, where there are accounts of a brief period following Jesus’ resurrection. These accounts differ with regard to what happened, to whom, where, and over what period of time. If we were collecting evidence for a court case we’d be on very shaky ground.
Talking of collecting evidence, one of the weird things is that women are shown as the first witnesses to the Resurrection. This doesn’t seem particularly odd to us, but in the time of Jesus women had absolutely no status in respect of the law (Roman or Judaic). So they couldn’t possibly be considered witnesses in any common understanding of their role. But in the gospels they are given the status of the first to know that something unexpected had happened, that the world was never going to be the same again. Just as a woman Mary brought forth the Son of God, so women announced the coming forth of the risen Son. The women, Mary included, stand in succession to the prophets.
Despite the huge variability in how they tell the story, the one thing that all the gospels do have in common is a clear understanding that Jesus died on the cross but didn’t stay dead. But we also have to remember that people coming back to life was not considered so strange in those days – extraordinary yes, but impossible certainly not. After all, Jesus himself had brought people back to life.
This may explain why none of the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection pay much attention to the fact that he had come back to life – that in itself didn’t set him apart from Lazarus, the centurion’s daughter, or others. We don’t have any details of what he was like, except that he wasn’t constrained in time or space – he appeared and disappeared at will.
What is more surprising is the number of cases where people, people who knew him well, failed to recognize him. So there was clearly something that made him very different from the way he was before. But again the accounts don’t focus on how he was different, rather they focus on what the experience of meeting him was like for the people who had that experience.
We might think that since that experience was granted to a very few people, they would be concerned to describe it in as much detail as possible, in order to convince those who had not had the experience. As Jesus said to Thomas, “Blessed are those that have not seen and yet believe”. But it seems more as though those writing the gospels were looking at this through the eyes of those that had not seen but did believe – there was a similarity and continuity between the original “first hand” accounts of meeting Jesus and the meeting with the Risen Lord that came later for all followers of Jesus. When later Christians met Jesus in the “breaking of the bread” or in the interpretation of Scripture, they were having the same experience as those first disciples.
So, in all of this, we need to note that what made Jesus special was not that he came back to life, but the way in which he did so. He was not the same person after his death, while Lazarus presumably was (insofar as anyone could the same after such an experience). Jesus was different because he was different from anyone else, he had a special status in relation to the Father. His new life was completely different from anyone else coming back to life. As Peter summarized it:
God raised this Jesus.
Exalted at the right hand of God,
he received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father
and poured him forth, as you see and hear.
It was the fact that Jesus resurrection led to the coming of the Holy Spirit that was so crucial. And the Holy Spirit was present for ever after, as Jesus had also told his disciples previously, although they had not understood what that meant until it happened.
So the main difference that the disciples noted was that they were different, they had the power of the Holy Spirit in them. So the short period between Jesus resurrection and his disappearance from this earth (in Luke’s Gospel portrayed as only a day, although in the Acts of the Apostles there is a completely different timeline) – that period was for the disciples to change – and it was the change in them, rather than the change in Jesus, that was the focus of their attention.
It was normal and to be expected that people wouldn’t instantaneously see the risen Jesus for what he was – whether in the immediate aftermath of his resurrection or later. But through Eucharist and Scripture you could and would. So the experience of the disciples trudging back to Emmaus was the same experience as all later disciples would have. It was an experience of Jesus discovered or revealed and then living with them through the Spirit.
Our experience of the Risen Jesus, i.e. the Holy Spirit, is the same as those disciples on the day of Jesus resurrection, the same as the experience of those writing the Gospels, and the experience they wanted for anyone hearing their good news. The continuity between Peter and those others and us is not some vague allegory. We have the same experience as he and they had, the experience of a Spirit poured out, by the grace and generosity of a loving Father, a Spirit that makes our lives new and different, just as Jesus’ was.