THE UNRECOGNIZED RESURRECTED CHRIST

For me, one of the most powerful indications that the Bible is an accurate portrayal of historical personalities and events rather than just a series of hagiographies (i.e. idealizing or idolizing biographies of venerated persons), is the way it does not shy away from the messy details of life, even if some of them could be used by later critics to disparage the accuracy of the accounts.

Starting with the Old Testament patriarchs, it would be hard to point out one who led a flawless life, and some of their sins were quite horrible. The same could be said for all of the kings of Israel (see my post on “Murderous Leaders”). Interestingly, the rabbinical commentaries of these stories go to great lengths to excuse these faults by making up outlandish stories to explain them away. In this, they seem to not understand the principle expressed by Bible scholars that there is no hero in the Bible except God Himself.

But when we move to the New Testament we need to apply that principle to Jesus also as God Incarnate. At this point, the only problem that Christians need to face in the biblical account is not Jesus' actions during his earthly ministry, but (1) his shaky origins and (2) the fact that his followers do not appear to first recognize him when he appears in his resurrected form.

The first difficulty appears in Jesus' earthly lineage recorded in Matthew 1. The highly unusual nature of this genealogical list as compared to other such Jewish listings comes from the almost unheard-of inclusion of five women along with the men. And to make it even worse, these women were not the sort that most people would have been proud to have in their ancestry. After all, Tamar had her twins as the purposeful result of an act of incest with her own father-in-law; Rahab made her living as the town prostitute; Ruth was not even Jewish, but a hated Moabite instead; Bathsheba was an adulteress; and Mary got pregnant before she was married.

And then to compound the problem, the all-important first witnesses to the risen Christ were women. As K.L. Anderson says, “Often noted is the remarkable fact that the women were mentioned at all as the first witnesses to the empty tomb. It points to the primitive character of the tradition behind Mark's account, since an early Christian would hardly manufacture such a story. Women's legal testimony was often regarded as less credible than that of men.”

In addition, Matthew 28:11-15 even provides critics with a semi-plausible, natural explanation for the empty tomb, i.e. Jesus' followers stole the body. All these contrary indications should not be viewed as problems in accepting the truth of the NT account, but instead strong proof that the the Gospel writers were committed to telling the whole story as it really occurred, for better or worse. And that certainly applies also to the final “problem” one encounters in the accounts of the resurrected Jesus, namely, that on no less than five separate occasions it appears that Jesus' own followers saw him without recognizing him. I would like to concentrate on these episodes in the remainder of this post and share what others have said in attempts to explain this quite embarrassing fact.

Mary Magdalene at the Tomb (John 20:11-18)

This is the well-known story of the weeping Mary seeing Jesus but supposing that he is the gardener. It is only when he speaks the word “Mary” that she recognizes who he is.

One rather mundane and obvious explanation of Mary's inability to recognize Jesus right away was that her eyes were filled with tears (as stated twice, at vv. 13 and 15) and she couldn't see clearly. However, she does manage to recognize his voice when he addresses her by name. Morris responds to that suggestion by stating that “tears are not usually the reason for failing to recognize someone well known to us.” He summarizes the opinions of other scholars on the subject:

R. Brown feels that it may have been still to dark to see clearly.

Beasley-Murray says that “she assumed that at so early an hour during the feast only the gardener would be there.”

Borchert himself seriously considers Enjoilia's suggestion that “the nonrecognition theme...appears to have had both apologetic and evangelistic significance for the early Christians as a means of explaining their pattern of coming to faith.” But he summarizes the situation with the words: “The possibilities of explaining the situation are almost endless.”

Two Men on the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)

These followers of Jesus even walk all the way to Emmaus with him but only recognize him when he pronounces the blessing on their meal.

One could possibly attribute their inability to the fact that although they are obviously followers of Jesus, they were not part of His close circle of acquaintances and had only had opportunities to actually see him earlier in large assemblies of people such as, for example, the feeding(s) of the multitudes. So they might have only viewed him from a distance up to that time. However, against that scenario is the fact that after Jesus disappeared from their sight, they returned to Jerusalem and knew exactly where to find the apostles who were in hiding in fear for their lives.

Geldenhuys offers three possible reasons for their ignorance of Jesus' identity: they had never expected Jesus to return in bodily form, “Jesus' resurrection body was not so easily recognizable owing to its heavenly nature,” and “it is also possible that the Saviour by his divine power so arranged matters that he could first instruct them before they recognized Him.”

Elaborating or that last possibility, the text itself does seem to provide us with a clue that may, in fact, be used to explain some or all of the similar encounters. Verse 16 first states that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” But after the blessing on the meal, “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” (v. 31) The language here strongly suggests that God purposely veiled their eyes temporarily to the reality of Jesus' identity, much as God had veiled the understanding of others in the OT for purposes of His own. Ellis also describes this “veiling” as being “blocked or restrained by supernatural power.”

The Apostles in Jerusalem (Luke 24:36-43)

On this occasion, right after the men from Emmaus give their report to the apostles, Jesus suddenly appears among them, and they are all terrified. They think he is a ghost, and he needs to reassure them with his words, by eating a piece of fish, and inviting them to touch his body.

I detect a very strong echo of this episode in the book of Acts when Peter has been taken to a secure fortress prison to be held where he will probably be executed soon. The apostles are hiding behind locked doors in a house when Peter knocks on the door and asks to be admitted. But the doorkeeper refuses to let him in and those in the house start saying that it must be Peter's (guardian?) angel instead.

As Joel Green puts it, “Disbelief and astonishment continue even in the presence of the risen Jesus (Lk 24:41). Simply put the disciples lack the cognitive categories for making sense of Jesus' passion.” They can't comprehend the reality of a body resurrected from the dead, and keep thinking that they must be seeing some sort of angel or spirit instead.

Fitzmyer notes the great similarity between these verses and the previous appearance at Emmaus: “There is again an appearance that is not comprehended; an instruction based on Scripture, which leads to proper revelation; a meal (taken by Jesus himself); and finally his departure (not by vanishing, but by ascension).” He also notes that there is an inkling of the disciples' recognition found as early as v. 41 in the word “overjoyed” with the full recognition occurring in v. 52.

The Apostles at a Mountain in Galilee (Matthew 28:16-17)

These somewhat obscure verses are little mentioned in Sunday school. They state that Jesus appeared to the Eleven, who worshiped him as soon as they saw him. But then rather contradictorily, we learn that “some doubted.” This cannot refer to “doubting Thomas” or at least not to him alone since there was obviously more that one who did not believe.

Two possible solutions are suggested by Hendricksen. In the first place, “It is very well possible that the present appearance to the eleven coincides with, or is part of, the appearance to 'the five hundred brothers' (I Cor. 15:16), the majority of whom were still alive then Paul wrote I Corinthians.” If that is true, then the “some who did not believe” may refer to a few in the crowd, not to the eleven apostles. Alternatively, if the 'some' does refer to the apostles only, Hendricksen says, “Many solutions have been offered with respect to this problem. Could it be that the most simple one is also the best, namely, that at first this mysterious person appears to them from a considerable distance? He then steps closer [v. 18], and the doubt disappeared, though this is not recorded in so many words.”

The Apostles by the Sea of Tiberias (John 21:1-14)

Seven of the apostles are fishing on the sea when Jesus appears on the shore, “but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.” That alone is not surprising since it was barely daylight (v. 4) and they were probably some distance away from one another. It is only after they have obeyed his suggestion to cast their net on the right side of the boat that the Beloved Disciple tells Peter, “It is the Lord!” But things get even more curious once they are all on shore with Jesus in that v. 12 says, “Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, 'Who are you?' because they knew it was the Lord.” Why does the text say that they were afraid to ask who he was if they already knew who he was?

One of the reasons for the disciples not recognizing Jesus immediately was probably due to the fact that they were viewing his glorified body, not his earthly one. Anderson points to the key word phaneroo (“manifested”) which acts as an inclusio for this passage at vv. 1 and 14, and he says that “Jesus had already defied the normal limitations of the human body by appearing to his disciples, though they were behind locked doors (Jn 20:19, 26).” We could also point to the fact that after the disciples at Emmaus recognized him, he immediately vanished from his sight (Luke 24:31b). And yet Jesus' body could be touched, and he could eat fish.

Thus, Leon Morris says, “Our Lord's risen body appears to have been in some sense like the natural body and in some sense different. Thus on some occasions He was recognized immediately...but on others he was not.” Perhaps we should keep in mind how Moses' face was changed after he had viewed the “back” of God. In the same manner, “Jesus' face shone 'like the sun' (Mt 17:2) at his transfiguration, itself a prefiguration of his resurrected glory.” (Anderson)

Concluding Remarks

“What should be concluded from these examples is that recognition of Jesus does not need to follow a single pattern. Coming to the point of conviction that Jesus is alive is probably as varied as the nature of the people who believe.” (Borchert)

For those of you that still have trouble with these inabilities to recognize Jesus immediately, I can only offer one faint example of the same phenomenon to offer from my own experience. My best friend from junior high through college went into the field of chemistry as I did. He was best man at my wedding when in graduate school. I moved out of state and lost track of him for several decades. However, whenever I attended the annual conference of the American Chemical Society I would always check the roster of attendees in the main conference building to see if he was also in attendance.

So when I went to the conference one year in Boston, I looked through the list and was pleased to see that he was also there in town. As I was walking away from the registration booth, I was trying to figure out how I could find out which hotel he was staying at. At that point, a stranger came toward me and cried out, “Dave!” I had no idea who he was, and so I just stood there and said rather stupidly, “Yes?” He said, “Don't you recognize me” and then he gave his name. I felt rather foolish, especially when we had dinner later on and I could see that he had hardly changed in appearance at all since the last time I had seen him. So if I could fail to recognize my former best friend even when I was expecting to see him, I personally have no trouble with the fact that some of Jesus' closest acquaintances failed to immediately recognize him, especially when none of them expected to ever see him again on earth.