That’s what we think in really hard and lonely moments.

If Jesus would appear and sit with us and fix things, we’d be happy.

We wouldn’t be lonely.
We wouldn’t be scared.
We wouldn’t be sick, maybe, or our loved one wouldn’t die.
We’d know the right things to do.
We’d know he isn’t mad at us.

It’s not as simple as that, for most of us. Including the disciples we read about today.

On the evening of the day he rose from the dead, Jesus appeared in the room where the disciples were meeting.

Early that day, Mary Magdalene and some other women had gone to the tomb where they knew Jesus was buried. The plan was to finish preparing the body for death.

Luke tells us about the whole group and their interaction with the angels, John tells us about the interaction Mary had with Jesus.

Eventually, several women report back to a group of disciples that Jesus was alive. And Mary reports that she talked with him.

In John’s account, Peter and John visit the tomb and see it empty, though they don’t have conversations with Jesus.

Later that afternoon, two disciples, though likely not any of the remaining eleven, left the group to walk back to the village where they lived.

A man joined them, and talked with them for a couple hours about their reports of the death and reported resurrection. Jesus, the man, explained to them, from Moses and the prophets, why the Messiah would die.

It would have been cool. It was the first time he was able to shift from, “This will happen” to “This happened”. They didn’t recognize him, though, until he sat at a table, blessed the daily bread, broke it, and handed it to them.

And then he disappeared. They ran back to Jerusalem, back to the locked room where disciples met, and told their story, like the women had earlier in the day.

And then Jesus did what we say we want. He appeared in the locked room to all of them, including the two that had been on the walk with him, and said, “Peace.”

It wasn’t very peaceful.

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Reflecting on Luke 24:36-48. More tomorrow.