Why is everything so ordinary after Jesus’ resurrection? That is, of course, except for the resurrection itself. That is the most significant happening in all planetary history.
However, it must be admitted that the daily occurrences for the next 40 days until Jesus ascended spell a rather usual routine.
If humans were writing this time period they would have had an Easter theme park already set up with circus and food stands. Naturally. That’s the way humans conclude that stupendous occurrences have to be fA?ated, hence our overspending on weddings and graduations and so forth.
But not with the divine. When God brought Jesus back from the grave, God set up shop pretty much per usual. We Christians take that for granted for we have read the Easter passages for so long and so many times that we are not impacted by the unusual of the usual. It is a shame that our reading often takes on such a ho-hum mode.
Therefore, I suggest that you read the resurrection sections as if for the first time, including the tellings related to the days prior to Jesus’ ascension. Note that Jesus is walking about the countryside, talking with friends, inviting Thomas to touch His wounds, and even having breakfast with the fellows after their night of fishing.
None of that is outlandish. It is a pastoral scene rich with nature and fellowship with friends, but it is not an extravaganza. It is pure and simple. It is lovely and comforting. But it is not showmanship of a Hollywood style, for certain.
If Jesus had trumped up a center-stage display for programming and applause, He would not have started a church. He would have started a cult.
If He had set off fireworks announcing the miracle of the resurrection, His disciples would have naturally concluded that such fare was going to be daily doings. It would have started an insane sequence of unreal expectations that never could have been corralled.
Consequently, Jesus kept to the normal, the usual, the rather routine, even when considering that He was a real live person walking about after having been murdered. In this, Jesus prepared His followers for dealing daily with this spiritually fallen sphere.
If Jesus had created a circus follow-up to His rising from the dead, His disciples would have concluded that that was their spiritual inheritance henceforth. Such would have led to a crazy club.
Instead, Jesus, in caring for His own, kept His 40 days’ appearances to the low-key. In that, He guided His disciples into a rightful thanksgiving to heaven for the resurrected Presence while at the same time instructing them that they were still citizens of a crippled world.
In other words, Jesus’ low-key style kept His followers to the real, the actual, rather than spinning them out into some neurotic religious mindset. Jesus knew that only when His own reached the perfection of heaven would they then be free from pain, confusion and disappointment. Therefore, He had to keep them on balance for all of that here, even with the fact of the resurrection staring them happily in the face.
A cult or a church? That was the choice. If Jesus had gone off on some spectacular, worked up camp, he would have formed an offbeat cult. But because He kept the balance of a risen Presence plus the spiritually fallen world environs for His own, He began the Church Age.
Thank you, Jesus.
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