A Journey to Easter - Day 46

The next day, which followed the preparation day, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember that while this deceiver was still alive he said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give orders that the tomb be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come, steal him, and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.”

“Take guards,” Pilate told them. “Go and make it as secure as you know how.” They went and secured the tomb by setting a seal on the stone and placing the guards.

(Matthew 27:62-66 CSB)

Saturday began much like Friday ended—Jesus was still dead. And yet time somehow went on. In the quiet, in the immensity of their grief, the witnesses were left to their thoughts.

The co-conspirators were still conspiring (Matthew 27:62), even mocking the dead (Matthew 27:63). They remembered how Jesus said He would rise, and so they scrambled to ensure it couldn’t possibly come true. So, they sealed the tomb and posted guards—plotting, once again, in vain.

In the stillness of their Shabbat, did the priests even wonder about the temple’s torn veil (Matthew 27:51)?

John Mark may have remembered taking flight from the arrest scene so quickly that only his clothes were left behind (Mark 14:51-52).

Did ten of the disciples remember fleeing under the cover of darkness, seeking the nearest hiding place?

It grieves to think of John, Mary Magdalene, the mother of Jesus, and her sister, who beheld the gruesome Crucifixion (John 25:25-27). How that prophesied sword pierced His dear mother’s heart (Luke 2:35)! Scripture says, “the women rested” (Luke 23:56). But did their minds play on repeat the place where Jesus was buried? 

Then there’s Pilate, the one who could find no fault in Jesus and yet gave in to the crowds yelling, “Crucify!” I doubt he suffered from a guilty conscience. But he could hardly put this Jesus behind him, with the Jews continually plaguing him with their paranoid requests.

The roman centurion must have wondered about the righteous Son of God dying on a Roman cross (Matthew 27:54).

I wonder if the multitudes who, days earlier, raised their hosannas in praise of God’s Messiah were pondering how the One they pleaded would save could now be lying in a tomb.

And Peter, alone with his thoughts, may have recalled cutting off the ear of the servant of the temple (John 18:10). It’s doubtless that his denial—not once, not twice, but three times—could be erased from his mind. There was no escaping the haunting sound of a rooster’s crow (John 18:15-27). I imagine he underwent incessant self-condemnation. After all, wasn’t he the one who asserted he would lay down his life for Jesus (John 13:37)?

But Jesus, knowing all this, “loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

None of this is written in judgement, but wonderment. It is to honor their tremendous suffering. For those who loved Jesus suffered excruciating pain that dark and mourn-filled Saturday. They had been under assault, caught in the line of fire of the spiritual warring legions, battling to take out Jesus.

And what of Jesus? No one knows what happened beyond the veil. But we do know that a thief on a nearby cross was spending his first full day in paradise (Luke 23:43).

Sometime after 6:00 p.m., when their Sabbath was over, the women went and bought spices to anoint the body of Jesus (Mark 16:1). Though low in a grave He lay, they ached to serve their beloved Lord.

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