But they forget. Aye, there's the bother, this thing of forgetting. The memory is ever the index of the heart and the will and the understanding. You can tell the one by the other. Some things are never forgot. A bit embarrassing and odd this thing of forgetting what Jesus says.
His enemies remembered, and took special pains to head off any breaking of their careful plans.[132] And even when the angels remind the women of the promised appointment, and they with great joy repeat the reminder to the disciples, it seems like "idle talk" and is not accepted. The thing couldn't be, they think.[133] Finally the evidence becomes so convincing that they start off for the trysting place, "into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them."[134]
How the Appointment Was Kept.
Let us look a bit at the wonderful keeping, so unexpected, of this sacred tryst. It's the third day now since Jesus' death. It is in the dark dusk of the early morning. A little knot of women make their way slowly along the road leading out of the city gate. Mary Magdalene is in the lead, so far ahead of the others as to be alone. They are carrying packages of perfumed ointments. They are thinking only of a dear dead body and of clinging fragrant memories.
They are troubling themselves about how to get the big stone at the tomb pushed aside. It was too much for their strength. As she drew near the tomb Mary Magdalene's love-quickened eyes notice something quite unexpected. The stone is moved aside! She naturally thinks some one has taken the body secretly away in the night.
Quickly she turns and runs back towards the city to tell Peter and John. And as quickly as they hear the startling news they are off on a smart run towards the tomb. Meanwhile the other women go on into the tomb. They are further startled to see a glorious looking person who assures them that Jesus is living, having risen up out of death. All a-quiver with fear intermingled with the first glimmering light of a great hope that they hardly dare hope, they flee hastily back to town to tell the others.
Now Peter and John, who have been eagerly running, arrive breathless, with John in the lead. Gazing reverently, intently, in through the opening John sees, not a body, but on the spot where the body had been laid, the linen wrappings lying, held up in the shape of a body by Nicodemus' abundant and heavy ointments just as when they held the body of Jesus. But clearly there is nothing in them now.
Now Peter comes up, and, just like him, goes straight in, and is at once struck by the arrangement of these cloths, just as John had been. Then they comment on the fact that the head cloths are lying where they naturally would be, a little apart from the others, the distance of the head from the body.
The evidence convinces them that Jesus' spirit had indeed returned to His body, and that He had risen up through the cloths, and gone. And they start back to town in a great maze of wonder and delight.
And now Mary Magdalene, knowing nothing of all this, comes slowly back absorbed with her thoughts that the body has been secretly removed. She stands at the open tomb weeping. Then for the first time she stoops down and looks in. She is startled to see two angels left there to explain matters.