So they took his body down. The man who said he was the resurrection and the life was lifeless on the ground. The sky was red as blood along the blade of night. As the Sabbath fell, they shrouded him in linen they dressed him like a wound the rich man and the women they laid him in the tomb.
Huddled in the upper room on Saturday morning, the disciples sat in a stillness that was anything but calm. They had thrown in their lot with Jesus, they had completely bought into His contrary way of doing and seeing things, and His light had pierced the shadows of their captivity. Finally, the irreconcilability of Christ’s light with the darkness had reached a critical point, and the long-awaited collision had occurred. Light and darkness had entered into the final confrontation, and as far as the disciples could tell, Jesus had fallen under the shadow of death.
Six days shall you labor the seventh is the Lord’s in six. He made the earth and all the heavens but He rested on the seventh. He said that it was finished and the seventh day. He blessed it — God rested.
Perhaps, in the storm of emotions they now experienced, some of their minds went back to another storm, one that had come upon them suddenly on the Sea of Galilee (Matt 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41). That time, too, they had been following Jesus, and yet, when trouble had come upon them, at just the moment they needed Him most, He had been asleep. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” they had asked Him. They were certainly perishing now, or so it felt: if the darkness had taken their Head, it would not be long before it took them too.
So they laid their hopes away they buried all their dreams about the kingdom He proclaimed. And they sealed Him in the grave as a holy silence fell on all Jerusalem.
On that boat, rising from His cushion in the stern, Jesus had asked them why they were afraid. But why not? How could He have been so calm in the middle of the storm? Because, as it turned out, He was the Lord of the storm. Had the disciples but known that — like Jairus’ daughter, like Lazarus — Jesus was again sleeping as they trembled in the upper room, they might have guessed that once again He was demonstrating His complete, unrivaled mastery. The war was over; His work was finished.
The defeated darkness understood this well. The stone that closed Jesus’ tomb with such finality was not enough; the chief priests who had embraced the darkness were already hastening to secure their temporary victory against the utter defeat they still dreaded. And why should they be so afraid of something that is not possible?
But the Pharisees were restless and Pilate had no peace and Peter’s heart was reckless. Mary couldn’t sleep. But God rested.
In Ezekiel 37, God brings the prophet into a valley filled with dry bones. These bodies long-dead, He tells Ezekiel, “are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.'”
He asks Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
“O Lord God, you know.”
Prayer:Lord, today we sit in the silence. We do not know what to do with a Saturday like this, when the tomb is sealed and the stone is in place and nothing has moved yet. Forgive us for rushing past this day toward a morning we have not yet earned the right to see. You rested on the seventh day, and Your Son rests now. Teach us to wait with open hands. We do not have the answer. But You do. In Jesus’ name, Amen.