The timeline of those weeks after the resurrection is all over the place, especially when you put together the various pieces of the story told by the various gospel writers. After the garden, we see Jesus walking to Emmaus, then suddenly back in Jerusalem, walking into locked rooms and eating fish suppers. Then he disappears for a week or so before showing up in the same room again. The next time we see him is in Galilee, when he randomly shows up on a beach. He had told them to make the 60-mile trek north and that he would meet them there, but he doesn’t show…and he doesn’t show…so they go back to their “before”: fishing. Then, suddenly he’s there, telling them where to fish—and building a fire to cook their catch. At some point, they meet on a mountaintop in Galilee and receive the Great Commission, before they head back south again—they are in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem for Jesus’ final words and ascension, when he tells them to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit. But what was happening on those in-between days? We know he appeared to 500 gathered believers at some point (not recorded in the gospels, but Paul describes it in his letter to the Corinthians) and to James and Peter (also from the epistles). But there is so much time unaccounted for. So many moments that he disappears one place and appears another, or goes long stretches without being seen at all. What was he up to in those times? If he can appear in locked rooms and disappear from a table in Emmaus, what else can this resurrected body do? It opens up a whole imagination, doesn’t it? If walls aren’t a barrier, what is? Where/who else might he have visited between those first two Sundays while the disciples didn’t see him? If spatial limitations no longer applied, what else is possible post-resurrection? Wonder a bit with God this morning about the possibilities here. How might the resurrection break through barriers in your own life and community, too? What might not be impossible after all?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2023-05-16 14:19:25 UTC