I found on Cold Case Christianity about the problem of why one of Jesus’ women followers (Mary) did not recognize him at the empty tomb. Now, if you are a skeptic, you look at this story, and you think “that makes no sense” or maybe something worse. But if you give that same difficult passage to a cold case homicide detective, then there’s no problem for him to figure it out.

Here’s the post. He starts by explaining why this problem is important:

Skeptics sometimes question the Gospel eyewitness accounts of the Resurrection, particularly related to the early observations of the risen Christ. In John’s record of the Resurrection, Mary doesn’t immediately recognize Jesus in the garden. In fact, she initially mistakes Him for the gardener (John 20:1-16). How could that happen? Does this passage of Scripture support the claims of conspiracy theorists? Was the resurrected “Jesus” merely an imposter? Was it just someone posing as Jesus? Why wouldn’t Mary recognize the resurrected Jesus; the very man who meant so much to her? A closer examination of the Biblical texts may provide some answers.

Here is his approach:

Given my experience with eyewitnesses, the Gospel accounts contain exactly what I would expect from four eyewitness testimonies; each telling the story from a slightly different perspective and from the innate presuppositions, life experiences and abilities of each witness. I get suspicious when the stories of witnesses are exactly the same, not when they vary within acceptable expectations. When people conspired to lie about an event, they typically align their stories. This is not the case with accurate and true eyewitness accounts. They always vary to some degree. When evaluating multiple eyewitness accounts, it’s my job to assemble the cumulative narrative.

So many times when skeptics get mad at the Bible, they pounce all over it, insisting that it should all make sense to them without any effort. But maybe God expects us to put in the effort, rather than just be passive. Maybe Christianity is work. Maybe God wants to be in a relationship with people who chase after him, instead of people who want their relationship with God to be all one-way – their way. I can think of a million useful skills that would help people to work through Bible problems… knowing Greek, knowing Hebrew, studying the genres of ancient history and ancient biography, etc.

The story of the discovery of the empty tomb is in all four gospels, and after Detective Wallace looked at each passage, he found enough evidence to write this:

Given these four accounts of Mary’s encounter with Jesus in the garden, the following inferences are reasonable:

• The women came to the tomb very early, before it was light outside. They first viewed Jesus in this darkness.
• The women were not looking for a resurrected man; they were looking for a dead man. They did not think it possible someone standing behind them could be Jesus.
• They were afraid and scared, bewildered and wondering. Why? Because they had just experienced an earthquake. This is their state of mind as Jesus approaches.
• Mary is crying; sobbing more likely. This is clear from the account we have, and her sobbing clearly affected her ability to see.
• Mary was standing outside the tomb in the garden when she first viewed Jesus. In this setting, she would expect to see a gardener rather than Jesus.
• Mary turned away from Jesus. She must have turned away quickly and stayed turned from Him for most of the contact and conversation, because the Scripture tells us she turns back toward Him when He mentions her name.

So, there are actually a lot of reasons why Mary the empty tomb visitor might have had trouble recognizing Jesus. I think that’s a pretty good case. What do you think?

I think a lot of people come to the Bible with a list of bad behaviors that they don’t want to change. Then they look for any little confusing passage to claim that the Bible is not reliable history. Well, maybe God wants to give them just enough confusion to let them go their own way. But for the people who accept that relationships are give and take, with two people working at it, they won’t find this to be a problem. They’ll put in the effort to puzzle out how to get things to fit together and make sense.