After the angels deliver their message, reiterating Christ’s words to them, we see in verse 8 this: “And they remembered his words.” In their place, we who worship Christ and listen to his teachings might have held most profoundly to his proclamation of his imminent resurrection following the death he’d also promised would happen. A child who’s been promised that they could go to the park, go for a bike ride, or whatever their desired pastime would be following an undesirable task, won’t fail to remember what they were promised. They will remind you again and again until that promise is fulfilled. You can’t help but wonder how such a promise, with much greater value, could have been forgotten. Perhaps it was because of the grief of their loss, profound as it would have been, of their deliverer. Perhaps they simply were not listening properly or had received Christ’s proclamation with confusion, only gaining clarity once events had come to pass. Whatever the case, it is clear Christ’s return was not expected.
