Luke 24:8-12 8And they remembered his words. 9And returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. 10And it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them. They told these things to the apostles, 11but these words appeared in their site as nonsense, and they did not believe them.
Luke continues to recount the different responses to Jesus and what happened to him. The women at the empty tomb remembered Jesus’ words, which began to make sense to them when they saw the evidence of the empty tomb. Their confusion turned to recognition. This group of women became the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. Where were the twelve apostles? Judas had already left the group. We do not learn about his fate in Luke’s writing until Acts 1:18. The focus of this story is what the other eleven were doing and their reaction to the women.
The group of disciples, including the remaining eleven apostles, were gathered together at some unstated place in Jerusalem, possibly the upper room where the Passover was celebrated the previous week. The number of disciples is unclear. One hundred twenty are mentioned in Acts 1:15, but there is no way to know if all theses had gathered as early as Easter Sunday morning. More likely at that later date near Pentecost, the initial group re-assembled and others joined after Jesus ascended to heaven. Jesus had made these early disciples a cohesive group. Something was working in their thinking. They had all the pieces of the puzzle but just needed to put them together.
Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them
Luke finally names the women at the tomb in verse 10. He may have done this intentionally to show them as part of the group of disciples. They serve as examples of the type of response people ought to have to the good news. Mary was a popular name at that time, as the many different Mary’s mentioned in the New Testament indicate. Two are mentioned in this passage as witnesses of the empty tomb. The first Mary was from Magdala, a small village on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. When Jesus passed through that area, he healed Mary of demon possession (8:2). With her life transformed, she became a faithful disciple of Jesus from that point onward. According to 8:3, Joanna was the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager. We have little information about her story. She evidently had left his situation and had followed Jesus. The third named woman was Mary the mother of James. Luke seems to be following Mark or their common tradition at this point. Mark 6:3 mentions two James’s: James the half-brother of Jesus and James the brother of John and son of Zebedee. If this is the first, then the Mary could be the mother of Jesus and the James could be the one who wrote the New Testament book with that name.
The apostles were the focused recipients of the report because they were the leaders of the group. A surprise to the reader is that the disciples did not believe the report of this group of women. The Old Testament only requires a minimum of two witnesses, and there were three well-known women plus others who were not named who verified the story. Something was deeply wrong in the disciples’ faith. They were like many of us when faced with overwhelming circumstances. The past few days had been traumatic, and the thinking of these followers were clouded. Why were they slow to believe? There could have been several reasons. They could have been slow to believe to avoid disappointment. Perhaps they were in some form of shock and not thinking clearly. Maybe they needed evidence, like Thomas showed in John 20:24-29. The journey to believing is not easy. Many people are like these disciples. They want proof to believe something so extraordinary. God brings various proofs to such people if they will keep the eyes of their hearts and minds open to it.
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