# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S55
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. 1902. 55

Mary Magdalene goes and tells the disciples: "I have seen the Lord, and he has said this to me." She was therefore the first person who beheld and recognized the risen Lord with her own eyes, Mark 16:9.

g. But directly afterward Jesus revealed himself also to the other women, who had already started on the way home. He comes to meet them and says: "All hail!" And they held him by the feet and fell down before him. Jesus lets himself be touched by them, for with them this served to make them sure that he lives and that they were not seeing a spirit. The joy of their hearts was mingled with fear and terror, therefore the Lord must say to them: "Be not afraid! Go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me." This, then, is the second revelation and appearance of the risen Savior.

The evangelist Luke sums up the going of the women (of Mary Magdalene and of the others) to the tomb and tells it without always specially stressing what Mary Magdalene and what the other women saw, and what was said to them. Hence it comes about that in his summary he mentions at once the two men in shining garments, whom Magdalene saw, and that he joins into one speech the direction of the one angel whom the other women saw with the words which the two angels spoke especially to Mary. In Luke too we read that the women brought word to the disciples, and so we understand how it is meant when Mark says: "Neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid." It means that on the way from the tomb to the disciples, on their hurried journey, they said not so much as a syllable to any stranger, to anyone of whom they did not know for certain that he belonged to the company of disciples; but they told the Eleven, and the others, as many of them as they could lay hold of. But unanimously we read in the Gospels that to those who heard them speak their words seemed like idle tales, and they did not believe them. They would gladly have believed it, but they did not dare to believe it; the joy was, as it were, too great, so that their soul, plagued by the grief of Good Friday and by fear of the Jews, did not yet dare to admit the joy as well.

h. The third appearance of the risen Lord was experienced by the two disciples who walked to Emmaus, Cleopas and the other, whether it was Luke himself or whoever else it may have been. They asked the Lord, who on the way had so opened the Scripture to them that their hearts burned within them, to stay with them, because it had become evening and the day had declined; they then recognized him by his breaking of the bread, whether Jesus had a special manner, known to them, of breaking bread, or whether on the occasion of the breaking of bread they