After Mary Magdelene encounters the risen Christ he gives her an assignment: Go find the disciples, tell them the story of what she has seen, and deliver to them this message---Jesus will soon be “ascending” to the Father.

Verse 19 opens behind the closed, locked doors of the upper room in which the disciples are huddled. It is the evening of that same day. Mary’s report had evidently done little to bolster the spirits of Jesus’ followers. Their locked-in, hunkered-down, closed-up posture reveals that “fear of the Jews” controls their thoughts and actions. The disciples anticipate that the religious authorities, having gotten ride of the troublesome Jesus, will come hunting them next. Nothing would satisfy but the complete eradication of this Galilean threat.

After giving us a picture o…