This must have been the hardest time. After the seeming colossal failure of the Jesus Messiah. The Apostles had such high hopes, and there had been so many indications that He was the one: Miracles, and huge crowds and popularity and now…nothing. Just death and broken dreams. I imagine for Peter and the others it was also a devastating time of realizing their own inadequacy, their own failure. Now what was left for them? They had bet everything on this horse. As Peter said when doubt had first begun to set in, Where else would they go. They had given up everything for this man, for this dream. What could they do? Nothing. There was nothing to do. They had lost. It was over.
The theory that on the heels of this day this group of devastated ragamuffin discredited disappointments got together and concocted a story which they were willing to carry to their tortured martyred deaths, a story so convincing that it changed the whole world, a story no one would have been inclined to believe, a story which for decades, the most important startup decades, brought only pain and persecution and death to its followers; such a theory does not seem to follow Occam’s razor as the simplest explanation. It is this strange change of energy, the gap between Saturday and Monday that is one of the most persuasive point about Christianity to me. You want to understand Christians, to see what Easter means to us? Understand that change, that moment from despair to fully assured hope, and you will understand us.