Silent Saturday

Can you imagine what Jesus’ disciples were feeling on this day before the resurrection? It was a complete 180; a complete absolute contrast to the three years previous. Those three years with Jesus were like attending a constant revival. They saw the dead raised, the multitudes miraculously fed. They saw people’s lives transformed. They felt the love from their Master—a love and acceptance they had never experienced and strong enough to compel them to leave their careers to follow Him.

First it was the brutality of the beating and the witness of His dying on the cross that if they had any idea that Jesus was invincible, any idea at all—those ideas were dashed to powder. So Jesus was gone, the center of their endorphin rush, and they were left alone with no direction totally deflated, defeated, and dejected. They never got the message from Jesus about the resurrection, even though He tried to tell them symbolically through the example of Jonah—the one prophecy Jesus laid out to connect the plan of heaven to earth. The Bible clearly tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:8 that had Satan known killing Christ would release the Kingdom of God, he would never have crucified Him. The plan was a mystery. It had to be.

It’s easy for us to look back and skip from the crucifixion to the resurrection and not pay any thought or attention to the time in between. Just imagine what was going through their minds. They all rejected Him, because Christ had to experience total rejection, even the rejection of His Father. Can you imagine the “what ifs” and “I wishes” that were running through their minds? Peter probably thought, “What if we had rushed the soldiers and rescued Him?” John probably thought, “I wish I had spent more time washing His feet.” Matthew may have thought, “What if we hadn’t come to Jerusalem? Why didn’t we turn and go someplace else?” I know those thoughts. After a bad experience I run them all the time. But going from the rush of a triumphal entry into Jerusalem with misguided thoughts that this might be when Jesus takes the kingdom back from Rome and becomes king taking His rightful place as the descendent of King David—going from that rush to the brutality of seeing the king beaten and killed to the Silent Saturday of total self-focused lonely reflection—"I totally failed Him."

Pastor Don