I don’t understand neuroscience. I get pieces of information here and there, try to hold onto the new vocabulary of words thrown at me and piece them together into something cohesive. Something about neural pathways running through our brain like highways that become more and more ingrained and rigid the more they are used. I think of dirt roads with deep ridges from all the tires that have driven over the exact same path.
Perhaps this has something to do with how I come to expect the same things to happen, or how I begin to respond to events in the same way, as if I’ve entered into a time loop and am repeating the same sequence over and over. I love Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, but if that actually were my life, it would quickly become horrific. But it is true that I catch myself predicting the future often; I predict what people will say and do and assume I can read their thoughts. I predict that my week will go a certain way or that if I get my hopes up again, I will just be disappointed. Isn’t it amazing how much faith I have in myself to know so much about the world? Do I truly think I can read minds and predict the future?! Either I’m suffering from delusions of grandeur that tell me I am godlike, or those wagon wheels in my brain have gone over the same trail one too many times. Perhaps it is time for my brain to forge some new paths.
When I read the story of Jesus’ friends and disciples after his death, I recognize some things. Grief and shock from watching someone you love die. The way the quality of time shifts and slows slightly, so that everything looks different and you never know quite where you are. But there are other things I can only attempt to understand through empathy - the trauma of witnessing a violent murder. The fear that you might be next. The added destabilization of losing your purpose in life, as if gravity just disappeared suddenly.
So when Mary Magdalene, Peter, and that silly unnamed disciple (who knows that we all know who he really is) discover Jesus’ empty grave and his grave clothes lying in a pile, their fear and urgency makes sense. Their brains do what brains do best - travel the well-worn route to the most logical answer: this is just another terrible thing in a long line of terrible things that have happened already.
The empty grave becomes an empty page for each person to put their own meaning on.
What I find surprising is the conclusion that the unnamed disciple comes to. The author (probably the same fella?) writes that “he saw and believed.” This is a bit vague, but if we consider the context of the whole Gospel and the arc of the story, it seems to imply this: rather than assuming the worst, he somehow began to expect that something new and unbelievably hopeful had happened. At least that’s what many of the commentators think. Perhaps they are just putting their own expectations onto this disciple, but wouldn’t it be cool if it were true? It would feel kind of like the end of Groundhog Day, that special moment where Bill Murray wakes up and realizes that it is a brand new day and anything could happen. Instead of a closed loop, there would be a wide open field. And in this field, there are no paths, no worn grooves, only possibility.