GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
MARK 16:12
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12 After this, Jesus appeared in another form to two of them while they were walking in the country.
Mark builds up the resurrection appearances and proclamation: First, the empty tomb, combined with the heraldry of an angel. Then Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene. She did not have trouble recognizing him, so we can be confident that he appeared to her in the same form that she had known him to have in his lifetime. Now he appears to two disciples, two “of them” (his followers). This is surely the same thing reported by Luke as the two men walking to the nearby town of Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). Mark’s language here uses very similar words as his description of Simon of Cyrene “who was just then coming in from the country” (Mark 15:21).
The walk in the country was not a Sabbath day’s journey, since Christ rose on Sunday, not on the Sabbath day. Emmaus was about seven miles west of Jerusalem, just where the land shifts from mountainous terrain to sloping lowlands. Emmaus was the site of a battle during the Maccabbean wars (1 Maccabees 3:55-4:22). During the Byzantine era (before the Islamic conquest) there was a church there with a beautiful baptistry. This building was restored during the crusader years.
The challenging detail in Mark’s text is that Jesus appeared “in another form” to these disciples. What does “in another form,” en hetera morphe (ἐν ἑτέρᾳ μορϕῇ), mean? There seem to be a few main possibilities:
1, “Another form” might have been his glorified state, as when he was transfigured before Peter, James and John (Mark 9:2). But there is no mention of a dazzling light here, and his face and voice did not seem to be any different at the transfiguration: the apostles who witnessed that event still recognized him as Jesus (Mark 9:4-5).
2, “Another form” might mean an entirely different face, as if I might suddenly look like my brother or my friend might suddenly look like a man I’d never met. The trouble with this explanation is that there doesn’t really seem to be any reason that Jesus would do this. Would we expect that he would not have the form, that is the body that was crucified, when we see him in heaven? Would Jesus himself not bear “the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17)? Such a thing seems to my troubled mind like a lie, a deception on the part of the one who embodies Truth (John 14:6). Would taking a different body, a different form, mean that this was not in fact the incarnate Christ, the one who was crucified and risen?
3, “Another form” seems to be explained in Luke’s Gospel when he says, “Their eyes were prevented from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16). Could this be that Christ himself prevented them from understanding who he was, since his body was the spiritual body he will be seen with in eternity? But in the case of Jesus, how would this differ from the body he had in life, except that his hair might not be tousled by the wind, or he would not have dirty fingernails, or tears, or other things that some pietist might consider to be imperfections but which in fact are not.
4, Or perhaps “another form” is best taken as an inability on the part of the disciples to recognize him; that he was shrouded from them until their faith recognized him when they broke bread with him in Emmaus. Just how this might be said in Greek, and the weakness of English translations, is a flaw in human beings (myself in particular) and not a flaw in the Holy Spirit. The difference between this and the previous explanation is that here, something in the men could not recognize him yet, rather than Christ holding back their perception in some way. Wenzel attempts to describe this by saying that Jesus had the body of the spiritual world, which might well not be recognized by those who are firmly in this world. But this explanation, too, limps like the rest.
So whether our Lord now had some “rich and exquisite form” such as he had at the transfiguration, or a different body (although this seems unlikely), or whether these two men were simply kept from seeing what the women clearly saw, we are left with an unanswerable question. We must take off our caps to the Holy Spirit, and permit the Scripture to say what the Scripture says. I, for one, am content to admit that I do not have every answer. I am nothing but a very simple man, after all, not very far removed from the little boy who climbed trees and played pretend games in a little grassy back yard many years ago, his head full of faith in Jesus and daydreams full of wonder and fantasy.
Their heads were not so much full of faith as they were full of doubts and troubles and fears. But they did, in the end, recognize him. Whatever his other form was, he was perceived and his resurrection was believed.
Now: The stone was rolled away. An angel proclaimed the news. One woman, Mary, had seen him. Now two men had seen him, too. The news seems to be rolling along slowly, but soon it would snowball into a mighty gospel proclamation. Soon, the whole world would know: He is risen!
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Mark 16:12 Another form