Jesus had made an appointment. It was with these dear friends who had responded so lovingly to His wooing. It was a significant appointment, most significant. He had appointed to meet them three days after His death. He had made a further appointment to meet them in Galilee. What a stupendous appointment to make!

It was a sacred appointment, sacred as the love that made it, sacred to Jesus as the friendship of these men with whom it was made, sacred as His word that never was broken. Our Scottish friends use a most significant word for appointment, the word tryst. They used to use it some for ordinary appointments, but chiefly it is used for friendship and for love-appointments. The appointment is a tryst.

Tryst is the same word as trust. In the old Gothic language it was one of the words used for a covenant or treaty. In medieval Latin it was a pledge given that an agreement would be kept. It is a fine turn of a word that uses the very spirit of confidence in one's heart in another as the name for the appointment made with him. The trust in the heart gives the name to the appointment. It's an appointment with one who can be trusted to keep his word, and who is trusted.

So an appointed tryst becomes more than a mere appointment. It is a pledge of faith. Now this is the real force of the word here. Jesus had appointed a tryst with these men, and in making it He was plighting His troth, pledging His word to them. He had asked them to risk all for Him. In this tryst He is pledging all to them.

He never forgot that sacred appointment. He had thought much before He made it. He knew it would involve much to keep it. The power of God was at stake in the making and the keeping of it. He knew that. He thought of it. He made the appointment and He kept it. Jesus keeps His appointments. His word never fails. Not even the gates of death, nor the power of the evil one, can prevail against it.

This was a staggering appointment. It took so much for granted. It reckons God's power is as big as it is. But then that's a way Jesus had, and has. And it is a way he will come to have who companions much with Jesus.

Jesus had spoken of this indirectly but distinctly when first He told His disciples of His suffering and death, six months before. And each time afterwards when He told them of His death the words were always added, "and the third day rise again."[130] I The two things are nearly always linked. But they hadn't seemed to sense what He meant. The thing seems quite beyond them.

He spoke of it again on that never-to-be-forgotten night of the betrayal, the night of the feet-washing, and that last long talk, and that wondrous Kidron-prayer. He spoke of it more than once that night.

It was a very emphatic word He spoke as they were walking along the darkly shadowed Jerusalem streets out towards the east gate. He said, "a little while and ye shall behold Me no more; and again a little while and ye shall see Me."[131] And the disciples pick this up and puzzle over it.

And the Master explains rather carefully and at some length. There was a time of sore trouble coming for Him and for them. And while they were sorrowing the outer crowd would be making merry. But it would be just as with the expectant mother, He said. All the while even when the pains cut she is thinking of the great delight that is to be hers. Her after-joy clean wipes out of her thought the sharp cutting of the pain.

So it would be. "I will see you again," He said in plainest speech. And again that same night He said, "after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee." Could any appointment be more explicit as to time and place?

But they forget. Aye, there's the bother, this thing of forgetting. The memory is ever the index of the heart and the will and the understanding. You can tell the one by the other. Some things are never forgot. A bit embarrassing and odd this thing of forgetting what Jesus says.

His enemies remembered, and took special pains to head off any breaking of their careful plans.[132] And even when the angels remind the women of the promised appointment, and they with great joy repeat the reminder to the disciples, it seems like "idle talk" and is not accepted. The thing couldn't be, they think.[133] Finally the evidence becomes so convincing that they start off for the trysting place, "into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them."[134]