They didn't get it

"Taking the twelve disciples aside, Jesus said, “Listen, we’re going up to Jerusalem, where all the predictions of the prophets concerning the Son of Man will come true. He will be handed over to the Romans, and he will be mocked, treated shamefully, and spit upon. They will flog him with a whip and kill him, but on the third day he will rise again.” But they didn’t understand any of this. The significance of his words was hidden from them, and they failed to grasp what he was talking about."

In the New Living Translation of these sentences, Jesus is as specific as prophecy gets. He tells the disciples, his disciples, that some fairly significant predictions from Israel's prophets are about to come true. He tells them He will be given over to the Romans. He tells them he will be mocked, spit on, flogged with a whip and eventually killed. Then He gives them the greatest thought ever ... that he will rise from the dead.

Hey, this doesn't get more specific than this. He does everything but tell them what clothes he had picked out to die in. He could have told them the seven last words, the stations of the cross, all the emotional moments about to come. Jesus lays it all out like someone marinating every evening's dinner for a week. And yet the disciples don't get it still. "They failed to grasp what he was talking about," Luke's Gospel says. They didn't grasp it. That's like saying Monkey Glue is sticky.

Jesus' prophecy is as plain as a Judean Summer sky. The Romans are going to take him. They're they're going to beat him, flog him, kill him. All that was going to happen in the next week.

He was going to die as sure as night follows day. But there was more. After three days, He was going to return from the dead. Get up and go back at it. Resurrection, not revival, was coming.

That seemed to be as simple as prayers for rain during a drought.

Yet
they
didn't
get
it.

I've always wondered why. Why would the disciples not get what seems to be as simple (if amazing) as any prophecy ever given?

If they were so specifically warned—and especially if they knew in advance that Jesus would rise from the dead—why were the disciples so confused and frightened during the drama of Easter week?
 Surely, much of their confusion was simply the result of their being, well, human—like everyone else, they were prone to forgetfulness and misunderstanding. Consider that Jesus’ teachings profoundly challenged the religious assumptions they had grown up with. Because Jesus taught both in plain speech and in parables, the disciples might have had trouble understanding when he was speaking literally and when metaphorically. Perhaps, even though they’d seen him work many life-giving miracles, the disciples couldn’t bring themselves to believe Jesus’ most dramatic claim—that he would die and rise from the grave. And the events of Easter week were stressful, to say the least.
Some Scripture passages also hint at other possibilities. When Jesus made predictions about his death and resurrection, he wasn’t doing so just to warn the disciples in advance. Consider these passages:

Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand…. I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am who I am.” — John 13: 7,19
After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. — John 2: 22
 

He told them. He told them again. He showed them what He told them. He did what He showed them He told them He was telling them what He was going to do.

And
still
they
didn't
get
it.

Hey, I love the fact that all that final week together they proved just how human they were, just how much like me they were. They didn't get it, couldn't get it, wouldn't get it and maybe even shouldn't have gotten it. Till they got it. They hid. They ran. They cried. They failed. They were cut down fig trees. They never got it, till they got it; and I suspect they had little to do with them actually getting it. Till 50 days passed, a might wind began to blow, fire lit the air above some really hard heads, and the Holy Spirit became the teacher of the year did they ever truly get it. Without Him, there was no them.

Look, it's rather easy today to talk about someone coming back from the dead, because we're discussing it in the abstract. Getting a child who lives in the Twilight or the Heavenly Bodies universe to believe that someone can come back from the dead is as easy as CGI. Dead men walking? Sure. Happens all the time. Well, actually, no it doesn't.

In truth, none of us has truly seen anyone do it. We've seen special effects put holes in a hand, but we've not felt that hand. We've seen stones rolled away on film, but we've not seen angels doing the rolling in reality. When Jesus walked away from death's cold moment like it was nothing at all, it was as real as sheep's wool. Too often, however, we're living in the fiction aisle, not the reality show line. We're stumbling around on Walking Dead not quacking up on Duck Dynasty.

But let me be real here. If Jesus were to suddenly appear in your office, your home, your gym, and make himself known to you and everyone else as the one who left via wispy-thin white clouds or the one who has come back via pink-streaked sunsets, you would see things much differently.

The disciples heard him, but they didn't HEAR him. The Holy Spirit had to take a vacation in Palestine before they would.