Consider how three members of a Christian family may report on a morning church service to Mum who was absent through sickness. Dad: “Darling, the parking lot was full and I had to park 400 metres down the road. Then I found myself on the door handing out hymn books because the person who was rostered never arrived. I wish some people would get their act together! The minister preached on the parable of the Prodigal Son. He really taught me some­thing about how loving our heavenly Father is.”

Bob (16): “Dad was cranky by the time we got to church. Then I noticed that Tom, my best friend, wasn’t there. So I had to sit with the family — what a drag! The sermon was OK today. The minister told us that one of the main things in the parable of the Prodigal Son is that rebellion against God is not necessarily the end of the line.”

Mary (13): “The church was full and we just managed to get a seat. We sang that beaut new song from Ring of Praise, and the sermon was about pigs. I’d hate to work on a farm.”

Is it fair to say that these reports of morning church are inconsistent?

No. Remember we are dealing with three descriptions of an event, and not with three witnesses under cross-examination in a court of law.

Our four Gospels are a bit like that fam­ily’s reporting of the morning at church. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John each use different sources of information for what they write, and each one wishes to empha­sise something slightly different from the others. I suggest that if we could get our four Gospel writers in the same room at the same time and ask them specific questions about where each account seems to differ from the others, we would then discover that our chronological problems disappear.

Each writer condenses his account of the events and includes particular incidents because he has a particular angle he wants to emphasise. The fact that each Gospel writer tells the resurrection story in a slightly different way, even down to men­tioning some witnesses whom the others do not mention, is actually solid evidence for the reliability of the records.

What I mean is this: if Dad, Bob and Mary each told identical stories to Mum, she would immediately get suspicious and say “You’ve all been somewhere other than church. You obviously have got together and agreed on a story to tell me so I don’t know where you’ve been.”

Our Gospel writers are not attempting a leisurely account of the whole history of Jesus’ life, ministry and teaching. Mark’s Gospel is not like Professor Manning Clark’s six-volume History of Australia. The Gospel writers are more like barristers in a court of law, with limited space and time, trying to summon the most telling evidence for the point of view which they wish to emphasise.

Matthew seems to be telling the resur­rection story from the point of view of Mary Magdalene, the other Mary and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. Mark’s purpose seems to be to give a very dramat­ic account of the resurrection. Luke’s aim is to present the historical facts and thus to emphasise the physical nature of the resur­rection, while John probably draws on his own memory of the events, thus providing a basis for the life-giving faith which comes through believing that Jesus is the Son of God.

Remember, each of the four Gospel writers was selective in what incidents he included in his Gospel. None of them attempts to tell the whole story. All of them would echo John’s words in 20:30 that “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.” Each of the four Gospel writers carefully selects the details to include which will serve his purpose in writing, and God superintends and approves of this selection.

Tip: each Easter, read only one Gospel account; absorb what God the Holy Spirit through that human author wishes you to receive. Next Easter, read another Gospel account, and so on for four years. In other words, each Gospel was intended by the human author and the Holy Spirit to be read on its own terms. Praise God for giv­ing us four different but complementary accounts of these wonderful events.