Luke 24
They [Mary Magdalene, Joanna, James'
mother Mary, and other women] found the sepulchre empty and
encountered “two men in shining garments” who said, “Why seek
ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember
how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying 'The Son of
Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified,
and the third day rise again.”
And the women “remembered [Jesus']
words”!!!! Oh yes!! That's right!! He did!! and so they went,
bringing the news of their experience with the angels to the eleven
apostles, most certainly reminding them, as they had been reminded, of what Jesus had said about being crucified and rising again on the third day.
Which experiences and things the apostles apparently did not only not
remember, but also pooh-poohed the women's words as “idle tales”
and did not believe them...
though Peter did, to his credit, go and
look for himself, and wonder, afterwards, at the empty tomb that he
found.
I think we may have found here, in the
early church, an example of an extreme lack of the skill of counseling together, an inability of one group of people to consider the
information from another, likely due to their sex in this case, but
which in other cases may be due to different things that make the one
group fail to listen or believe the words of another, simply because
they are “other” and their ideas, perspectives and experiences are very different than our
current patterns of thinking.
So...next, that same day, we have the
“road to Emmaus” story, where two are traveling and encounter the
resurrected Jesus, and do not realize who he is, and tell him their
understanding of what happened over the last three days and of the
odd, and not quite believed, tale the women had told. And what does Jesus say?
“O fools, and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have spoken.”
And then, later, he sits down with those two, and the eleven, and once again, unfolds the details in the scriptures that he had told them before and that they had not remembered, and which failure to remember abetted their discounting of what the women had been reminded of and believed.
One message I suspect that may have had running though their minds: "I should have listened to them. It would have been less awkward for me now, if I had. And I certainly would have saved myself many hours of grief."
I really hope that no heavenly
messenger or other divine being ever again has good cause to say to
me, “O fool, and slow of heart to believe...” due to my out of
hand rejection of the beliefs and experiences of others who have
joined me in councils and conferences and circles of conversation, or whose experiences and words preceded mine by many years; rejecting because they are, in my mind, “other”, people whose
experiences or perspectives or energy levels or understanding or
cultural background, or ethnicity, or sex or age or anything else make me
subconsciously discount their stories or the news they bring.
I'm certain that I have deserved it
sometimes. It is an easy habit to fall into and a difficult one to
recognize in oneself and then totally eradicate instead of laughing
and excusing one's behavior, or becoming defensive or irritated or
dismissive when it is pointed out.
So, once again, I am in awe of the
careful, patient, thoughtful, listeners I know.
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