Without exception they are seriously grace-challenged. No less than twice, the Savior gives them a mind-boggling display of extravagant, wasteful, superabundant grace by feeding a multitude from a few loaves of bread, but they don't get the point. They watch awe struck as pieces of bread are broken and multiplied under the nimble fingers of Jesus and passed to the crowd. Grace is heaped high on their hands, stuck crumbling to their beards, scattered helter-skelter on the grass, and weighted heavily on their shoulders in wicker baskets, but they still do not see it. Amazingly, they do not and from this time forward the twelve begin a spiritual nosedive as is seldom witnessed.
Failure piles on failure.
In short, their spiritual resources simply do not sustain them in the crisis and they implode in to the infinite vacuum of their graceless souls. We wait in vain for Mark to rescue them. John redeems them by the breakfast at the sea. And Matthew and Luke do so by having Christ appear to the eleven in the upper room. Instead he abruptly ends his story with two bewildered women trembling at the empty tomb, and wondering about the message they have been given to pass on to the disciples and to Peter.