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Saturday

           Then everyone deserted him and fled. A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. (Mark 14:50-52)


                On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.(John 20:19-20)


            Their hopes for freedom had been cruelly shredded and instead of bravely fighting for that dream, they had all fun away. Two had followed from a distance. They had both vowed that they would die before they would deny Jesus, but one had denied Him three times. The other was the only disciple listed as being at the crucifixion with all the women. Jesus was dead. He'd been put in a tomb. It was the Sabbath so they couldn't go far anyway. Even if they hadn't been paralyzed by grief and fear, their religion forbade them to go far. If they had tried, they would have been obvious and easily captured. What could they do except hide behind a bolted door and wait for the soldiers to come?
           I suspect that Saturday was worse than Friday. Friday was terrible in its violence. Unbelievable. Shocking. Mind-numbing. By Saturday morning they may have gotten some sleep and may have had a bite to eat. The blessed disconnection of trauma and shock would have started to wear off, leaving them to face the nightmare of their loss without the softening blanket of numbness. What were they going to do? Their hope was gone. Why live? Why bother doing anything? Why ask why, because there was no answer that could possibly make any of this make sense or take away the agony. 
         They still couldn't get their minds around it all. They had failed. No matter how they looked at it, they had failed. Jesus had told them, and they hadn't been able to grasp it. They'd made such brash vows, and had broken them all. He'd said something about rising again, but if that thought even entered the room, the bigger thought threw it out on the curb: He's dead...Dead...DEAD. Their pain and fear had reduced their world to this: He's DEAD. Pain and fear do that. 
           We tend to move quickly from Friday to Sunday. We leap from His death to His resurrection because that in between stuff gets in the way. It's just time wasted. Why was it important to rerun Jonah? Why not resurrect Jesus ten seconds after He died? It would still have accomplished what was necessary from God's perspective, so waiting has to have been for them and for us. When we move from the cross to the empty tomb too quickly, it's easy to let the dead part sort of slip by. It is because He was dead that the fact that He is no longer dead is so astounding. Looking back over two thousand years after the event, we may not need to feel their fear, but do we miss something if we do not feel their pain?







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