On the morning of the third day following the death of his greatest friend, one of the disciples woke up and anxious fear gripped his thoughts.
I had a dream last night that Jesus died.
I had the same one the night before.
Each morning I wake up with this awful feeling that the dream I had been dreaming wasn’t a dream at all. And all of the sudden it hits me that my teacher… my friend… is dead.
He’s gone.
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
…
We’re all huddled together in the largest room of a neighbor’s house down the road. Hopefully they won’t find us here.
We don’t know what to do.
Our leaders, the chief priests and the rest of the council believed that he was a threat. We can only imagine they believe the same about us.
“Those are the revolutionaries,” they might say. “Those are the ones who followed the one they called ‘Messiah.'”
We don’t have a chance really.
If we step outside the house and are seen, we are as good as prisoners. Or worse. Since they have somehow convinced Pilate that our teacher was a threat to Rome, we may even be crucified.
But they are wrong. His revolution was not one of oppression and violence and coercion. He taught us to pray for our enemies and to love them. To show mercy over judgment.
…
Those bastards have killed our friend, our teacher!
How could they?!!!
What are we going to do without him?
Where are we going to go?!
We’ve left everything.
Everything.
Those of us who fished for a living dropped our nets three years ago as if it was the last time.
Levi’s tax job is surely taken and he’d be hated now if he attempted to go back.
The fighters and zealots among us have lost the will to fight, and he wouldn’t want them to fight that way anyway. “We fight a different way,” he’d tell us. “Not with swords or shields, but with faith and love and hope and mercy and forgiveness.”
…
Oh God, why did you let him die?
He was our last hope.
He did nearly everything differently than we assumed a Messiah would do, but somehow in his eyes we saw something…something different…a different way about him…something we weren’t used to…something better….something good.
…
All of our hopes and dreams…just gone.
They’re gone…they’re gone…they’re GONE!!!!!!!
Oh Jesus, why did you leave us?
If you knew this could happen, why did you…why did you?
Jesus?
…
Some of us are crying and weeping.
We weep because we don’t know what to do.
We weep because the one we trusted is gone. He’s just gone. He’s just gone!
Oh God, where have you taken him?
….
The room is quiet again.
We sit here in silence.
Our heads look to the floor.
…
Wait, what’s that sound at the door?
Philip just answered it.
Mary?
Something seems different about her. Like she’s seen a ghost or…
WHAT? No, no it can’t be.
“Where did you see him?”
John just got up and is moving quickly toward the door.
Could it really be?
“John wait! I’m coming too!”
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