Forget it. I was done. I don’t even really know why I followed him in the first place. Sometimes you get swept up in other people’s excitement…other people’s hope. I knew from the beginning that hope was misplaced. You can’t expect one man…even if he looks and sounds like a great prophet…even if you see what seems to be impossible…you can’t expect a man to overthrow the Roman Empire. I knew better. It’s always been hopeless. I just forgot that for a while.
They killed him. Not a surprise. The only real surprise was that they didn’t kill him earlier. You can’t fight the system. The system always wins. All that happened was that we put ourselves and our families at great risk…in great danger. The empire destroyed the prophet first, but chances were good they were coming for us. They were not ones to leave loose ends.
Of course I was locked in a house. We all were. Jesus was dead…crucified. We had no leader, no support from the crowds, no power or money or status. The only hope we had was the locked door. Perhaps the soldiers wouldn’t be interested enough to break the door in. Perhaps they would say they tried and move on. If we hid long enough, perhaps, perhaps, they would forget and we could go back to the way we were.
The other disciples were gathered together. I wasn’t with them. I figured the more scattered we were, the safer we were. Seemed to me that gathered together just made us easier to pick off. I’m not sure why I bothered, though…I was pretty sure it was hopeless wherever we were.
The banging at the door sent me into despair. This is it, I thought. But it was the other disciples. Not only were they banging at the door…they were hollering. They had lost their minds and were going to take me down with them. I didn’t want to let them in, but I didn’t want them screaming at my door either….so I flipped the lock.
We saw the Master…they are yelling. They are jumping around like kids. “We saw the Master….he’s alive!” Bunk. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice….not happening. “We saw the Master! We saw the Master!!!”
Of course I didn’t believe them. I went through that once. I knew better than to get excited again. I told them what I thought…Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, stick my hand in his side, I won’t believe it. It can’t happen.
I held them off for another week. They came by, reminding me of what they had seen. I ran them off…but they came back. They kept coming back, putting me and my family in more and more danger. Finally, I went to the room where they gathered. I was putting an end to this once and for all. It had been a week and we might get out of this alive, but if they continued this “I’ve seen the master nonsense” we wouldn’t. I locked the door behind me and turned to give them a piece of my mind. This messiah thing was NOT happening.
To say I was surprised was an understatement. Jesus came through the locked doors. I knew they were locked…I did it myself. But there he was. He walked straight into the middle of the group and said, “Peace be to you.”
Then he looked straight at me and invited me to touch his hands, his feet, his side. Can a mortally wounded body give hope? All I can say is that I’ve experienced resurrection.
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