The accounts of what happened after Jesus’ death are certainly disparate. There is no accounting that is the same.
Matthew relates that Mary and the other Mary go to the tomb site on Monday morning. There is an earthquake, an angel appears, and the tomb keepers faint dead away. The angel rolls the stone away, tells them that Jesus has risen from the dead, and that they should go back to Galilee to inform the disciples. As they leave to go they encounter Jesus, who also tells them to go back to Galilee to inform the Disciples he has risen. They rush off to do that. The disciples remain in disbelief but then go to a mountain, as directed, to see Jesus. He tells them there to “go forth and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; and teach them to observe all the commandments I have given you.” “I will always be with you, to the very close of the age.” What happens to Jesus then remains unsaid…
Mark says that Mary Magdalene was with Jesus on Monday morning. She then goes to tell the disciples, but they don’t believe she has seen or been with Jesus. He is then said to have appeared to two men walking in the country. He then appears to the eleven disciples as they are sitting at a meal. He upbraids them for their disbelief:
“Go ye into the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”
“And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they caste out devils; they shall speak with new tongues.”
“They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not harm them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.”
Then he goes up into heaven and sits at the right hand of God.
Luke says that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and other women go to the tomb on Monday morning. Two men in shining garments tell them Jesus is risen and gone. They go back to Galilee to tell the eleven disciples, who don’t believe that Jesus is risen. The accounting then jumps to two men who are traveling in the country and are joined by another traveler. They convince this traveler to spend the night with them at the next village. As he breaks bread with them, they recognize him as Jesus. Then he promptly vanishes. The two men go back to tell the disciples. Suddenly Jesus appears to those disciples, shares a meal with them, and tells them to preach repentance and remission of sins to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. He tells them to wait there until they receive power from on high to do these things. Then he blesses them and goes to Heaven.
John says that Mary goes to the tomb on Monday morning, sees the stone rolled away, runs away to find Simon Peter with the other disciple that Jesus loved. They run to the tomb and find Jesus not there. Mary stays there weeping, then sees two angels who ask why she is weeping. As Mary turns to go she encounters a man who she thinks is the gardener, even after he has spoken to her. She then recognizes him as Jesus. He doesn’t want to her to worship him, and tells her to go back to the disciples. That same day Jesus appears to the disciples as they sit in a room with the doors shut. He breathes on them and sends them out as Apostles. He appears eight days later to Thomas to show him his hands and his side. He later appears at the Sea of Tiberias and tells his disciples to drop their nets on the other side. He then shares a meal with them on the shore. He tells them to feed his sheep. The disciple that Jesus loved lays all over him during the meal and asks who is going to betray him. Peter becomes angry and Jesus tells Peter to mind his own business. John says nothing about whether Jesus goes to heaven or not.
The Book of Acts says that there had been many verified Jesus sightings in the 40 days since his death. It says that as Jesus ascended into heaven two men in white tell the disciples that he is coming back the same way he went up. The disciples go to an upper room to hide and pray, along with the women, Mary, the mother of Jesus and his brothers. Peter preaches to them and tells them that Judas, who bought a farm with the proceeds from his betrayal, has met an untimely and traumatic death, becoming disemboweled. He tells them to select another disciple to take Judas’ place, and they do that. When the day of the Pentecost comes, they are all in one place. Suddenly a giant wind fills the house, tongues of fire appear, and the disciples all go out to preach the gospel in the tongues of those people of other nations who are assembled in Jerusalem.
Well, well, well. What does one make of this mess. There sure is a lot here that doesn’t make any sense. The Jesus sightings are magical and mythical. Jesus suddenly appears to them, in rooms with closed doors and just as suddenly disappears with nary a door being opened or shut. On each occasion it appears that Jesus is placed in the presence of the disciples to instruct them to become his Apostles. The myth-makers find it necessary to place Jesus there to make the Apostle’s mission valid. In the other sightings, Jesus is usually not recognized, and also suddenly appears and disappears magically. If he doesn’t disappear, he immediately sends whoever it is away so that they cannot spend any time with him. That doesn’t compute. If you suddenly find your Lord who you loved, who was dead, to have come alive, it would make sense to spend some time with the guy, and not immediately run away. The myth-makers find it necessary to make Jesus appear somewhere to somebody so that they can say that he arose from the dead. There is no other rational explanation for these mythological sightings. The stage has to be set for the Pentecost, the Epiphany.
We believe it is clear that the disciples had an Epiphany. It had been fifty days since their charismatic leader had been tortured and persecuted as a criminal, hung on a cross, naked, and in the last minute of his life had cried that God had forsaken him. They were in a state of confusion, mortified, disbelieving, and cowering in hiding in an upper room with the doors shut. Suddenly they convinced themselves that these Jesus sightings were real, that their leader had briefly but truly come back to life, and that it was their mission to spread his teachings to the rest of the world. So they set out to do that, and the Christian church was born. The earthquake, hurricane wind, explosive fire, and sudden ability to speak foreign languages are nice poetic and/or mythological additional touches.
The choice of the Pentecost as the beginning of the Christian church is a cute touch. That date was a Jewish feast, a Thanksgiving for the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and was also in the Jewish faith associated with the date the Laws for the Jewish people were given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. It was in that sense one of the beginnings of the Jewish faith. The Christian chroniclers elected to adopt it as the day Jesus became the Christ, the Disciples became Apostles, and the day the Christian church was born.
My, what a tangled web we weave. Judas meets such a graphically traumatic and untimely death we wonder if one of the disciples didn’t help him meet that visceral death. Jesus has a lover who hangs all over him, making the other disciples angry. He is an egomaniac, who preaches that anyone who doesn’t believe his particular little creed is going straight to Hell. He is such an egomaniac he gives some really stupid advice: “Believe in me and snakes or poison won’t hurt you.” Wow. That’s really stupid. He pops in and out of thin air by magic whenever it is necessary to leave a message. The disciples cower in fear in an upper room with the doors closed. Suddenly they feel galvanized to go out to preach their leader’s message to the rest of the world, and they all meet their early death because of those beliefs and teachings. Those who write the histories make magical things happen and appropriate a Jewish Holiday to justify the inception of the Christian church.
Not all Epiphanies are good. This one began the Christian church, which, in spite of its pronounced intent to preach and practice morals, has specialized in torture, intolerance, persecutions, massacres and alienation of the sexes for the following 20 centuries.