Scripture's startling use of multiple witnesses at the Resurrection
Through witness eyes we experience, but barely imagine, the complexity of God's plans—we dismiss the testimonies at our own peril
After the Resurrection, Jesus is still fully God and man, but now the symbiosis of Jesus’ role as creator and king, brother and redeemer, morphs. And he’s not done—still with the Ascension ahead of him and the second coming’s total restoration of creation. Who can grasp all that this means?
Feast of Saint John, Apostle and evangelist
1 Jn 1:5—2:2
Mt 2:13-18
The scriptures often contain multiple witnesses to holy matters where testimonies are jumbled together, like in real life, because God reveals himself differently to each person. The divine plan operates this way. Events don’t happen in just one, two, or three dimensions. They occur in every dimension, woven together over time—through time—for all time.
We can experience God’s plan, but we barely imagine the complexity. John, the Apostle, and Mary Magdalene, provide a joined witness of Jesus’ resurrection. John was there at the tomb and later met the risen Jesus in the room where the apostles hid. Mary met Jesus at the tomb. Both experienced Jesus’ risen transformation, the shock of Jesus really alive—in very different ways.
Jesus is dead to them, a corpse in the arms of his mother.
Or, he rose from the dead and changed everything.
In Friday’s gospel reading this week, from John, chapter 20, the jolting variation in Jesus’ appearances to Mary Magdalene, the Apostles (absent Thomas), and then to Thomas defies simplistic investigative techniques. There are stunning implications in Jesus’ timing and language. He is resurrected, transformed from inhabiting an immortal body, and stands among those he loves in a beatified personage.
Let’s not forget Jesus’ encounter with two disciples on the road to Emmaus which follows the Tomb appeance. Jesus’ showed up with several “Hi there!” moments. He plays out the events like he always has, though, using earthy, ordinary people, standard burial traditions, and long walks, in everyday locales. John is also the one who documents the Emmaus witness.
The “beloved” author unravels the dramatic events of Jesus’ resurrection after decades of note taking. Contributing to his task are the many revelatory moments he had after the Resurrection which includes the Ascension, Pentecost, and the growth of the early Church. He had a lot of time to think about this gospel.
John didn’t write about the Resurrection in a vacuum. Every apostle and many of the disciples impacted his perspectives. Most poignant was Mary Magdalene’s experience. Chapter 20 reveals John cosmic shift in explaining Jesus’ next step of the incarnation outside the empty tomb, and Mary is the one the Lord chose.
John remembers Jesus at the Transfiguration in a glorified body, not just a flash but a mystical reference. As he wrote, John factored in the Ascension and peppered his texts with prophecies on the second coming’s total restoration of creation.
Who could grasp all that this means? John tries his best, of course. The patchwork of his gospel is brilliant.
The repartee between the risen Lord and the disciples begins not where we’d expect. Jesus startles a sobbing Mary Magdalene and frames his changed place in history to her—not to an apostle but to a distraught person mistakenly desperate about Jesus’ missing corpse.
This is good news for us, believers couched in the world’s airwaves and communication mediums. We’re all Mary Magdalene’s, repentent sinners with reality issues. God can rattle us awake and take us into another realm.
Mary Magdalene’s encounter with Jesus outside the empty tomb takes place on her third visit. She went first with others to wrap Jesus’ body after rubbing spices into his body, and then again in the dark morning days later to discover that “someone had taken” Jesus.
Mary’s interpretation of Jesus’ missing body likely inspired the Jewish news spin, the first misinformation campaign as the Christian era begins. Her angst is essential to God’s weaving of events. She wasn’t the only person who imagined thievery, and the devious used her fears as a straw man (woman) for fake news. Her jarring awakening to the risen Jesus predicts every Christian’s realization that Jesus is truly God. Logic must move from relying only upon the world we see to God’s enlightenment about the spiritual realm also in our midst. That’s no easy task. Only God orchestrates such things.
Mary sees angels, too, and they speak to her. The facts available to her change as the heavenly realm pierces the veil of daily human experience.
Peter and John had run to the tomb only to find burial linens neatly folded, but no Jesus. John & Peter now fully believe Mary’s report. John adds a separate witness detail right there in his memory of the empty tomb. He and Peter did not connect the missing Jesus to a prophecy of rising from the dead. John reports his ignorance of this in verse 9, “For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
This is another critical touchstone. The scripture he referred to in his writing of the gospel is from Psalm 110:1, an ancient testament script, as verified in Acts 2:29-36:
My brothers, one can confidently tell you about the patriarch David, who died and was buried, and his tomb is in our midst today. But since he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah . . . Therefore let the whole house of Israel know for sure that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
John admits his ignorance that another worldly veil is pierced with scripture’s prophetic framing of Jesus’ rising.
John, using Mary’s witness, and placing himself not only in the scene but in the awakening, shakes the trees of who this Jesus truly is. The “beloved” apostle had decades to ponder the words he documented from Mary’s report. “Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Jesus is back, alive, but not to stay. The woven picture of Jesus’ resurrection, connected in every possible historical direction, continues to build. Yet, each of us must catch up. Our awakening will be similar to the shock and awe of Mary, Thomas, and the Emmaus disciples. Jesus risen is a staggering thing.
Rely upon the testimony of John about the witnesses. Consider seriously the prophecies of the Psalms, and immerse ourselves into the teaching of Paul and Luke. Study the gospel as if it were a credible Star Wars saga, a linguistically accurate Hobbit tale, starring a faithful, loving, powerful Marvel hero. It’s something we are trained to do already by an unwitting entertainment industry.
Join the 21st Century believers, two milleniums of excited and knowledgeable folks who have also seen the pierced veils.
Or, accept the misinformation campaigns about Jesus as the more logical and credible reports. Rely upon human experiences from people that died instead of the enlightened John whom we acknowledge as a saint. Discard divine intervention and spiritual evidence from prophets of doom who console no one and made no one happy.
Eventually, we’re going to be awakened, though. Better now than later when the light and power of God’s presence in the next realm may not be something we are prepared for. For the hardened skeptic, God’s blazing judgment in the afterlife could be interpreted as a monstrous invasion into our personal space. Our refusal to allow God’s existence doesn’t bode well because we leave ourselves subject to a realm ruled by a devil. Mistaking God as the devil is worse that Mary’s error at the tomb.
Pray God can cajole you out of your brain-washed stupor.
To dismiss scripture and 2,000 years of believers will turn God’s brightness into the fire we refused to believe as a potential outcome. As the flames engulf us, a mistaken interpretation on our part, we would be like a fraught Mary Magdalene weeping over a stolen corpse instead of awakened by the risen Lord.