This is a hard time to be a Christian. I’m not referring at this moment to living in 2018, but rather to living in these first days and weeks after Easter. It’s hard to make sense of these post-Easter appearances of Jesus we’ve been hearing about, and if it’s hard for us who believe we know the whole story, imagine what it must have been like for those who lived through those moments first hand. Jesus was crucified, he died a brutal death on a cross. Not all of his disciples witnessed it, but some of them did, and they would have told the others. Jesus died. Their friend Joseph, with some help, laid Jesus’ body in a tomb. But two days later, on the morning after the sabbath, when the women went to properly anoint the body they discovered it was gone. That was only the beginning. People began seeing Jesus, except time and again, they didn’t initially recognize, or believe, that’s who it was. It reminds me of an experience I had with Zack almost seventeen years ago.
