Silent Saturday
MARCH 30
Finished in the Incompleteness
Devotional by Rachel Dyvig, Administrative Coordinator
It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin. The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.––Luke 23:54–56
At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.––John 19:41–42
Sometimes, it can be easy to move too quickly from remembering the events of Good Friday to celebrating the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday. But the scant words in scripture about the day in between are enough for us to pause and truly sit in the space of anguished waiting and deep sadness that the disciples experienced as Jesus lay dead in the tomb. And there is enough on Jesus’ death for us to ponder what he went through so that when death touches our loved ones and ourselves, it will be but a taste because of what Jesus drank to the depths for us.
A Day of Incompleteness
For the women disciples, the Sabbath day was a day that they couldn’t finish what they had started––preparing spices and perfumes––after Jesus’ death. The body of their son and friend would have to wait to be tended to for proper burial procedures.
These women “rested” in obedience to the commandment about refraining from work on the Sabbath. But for anyone who has had a family member or close friend die (and how much more so in a sudden, violent way), the first day after the death is anything but truly restful. The mind is overwhelmed with the heaviness of grief, but sleep doesn’t come easy. It is a struggle to think about anything but the one who is no more. From what we know from scripture, it seems that many of Jesus’ followers were likely rehearsing the events of his death on that in-between day (Luke 24:14–15).
Equally true is the fact that a new form of completeness doesn’t happen until the body has been laid into the ground––finished. This hadn’t happened for these women. Their minds were undone, while their work was also undone.
What seems to also be present in all of the disciples is a forgetfulness of what Jesus had said before his death, “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy” (John 16:22). They had forgotten that he’d said that he was the Resurrection and the Life, at the tomb of four-days-dead Lazarus (John 11:25). Or their minds just couldn’t make sense that the One who could raise others from the dead would, one day, also defeat all death for good.
It Is Truly Finished
After Jesus cried out, “It is finished!” his bloody, mangled body was taken from the cross, wrapped in cloth, and hurriedly placed inside a new tomb in a garden. And then it was the Sabbath.
We don’t exactly know what all Jesus “did” in his death or what he experienced (scholars have various views), but we know enough to know that he was truly dead in that tomb. Jesus died and stayed dead. Whatever death holds for our loved ones and ourselves, it is nothing Jesus hasn’t already drunk deeply from himself.
The darkness of death was very dark to him, and yet, at the same time, it was not ultimately dark, for even darkness is not dark to him (Psalm 139:12). And after he had suffered, he would see “the light of life” (Isaiah 53:11).
He was cut off from the land of the living (Isaiah 53:8), and laid alone in the dust of death (Psalm 22:15). Cradled in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights (Matthew 12:40).
Followers of Jesus, wait just a little longer. Sunday is coming.
—
The sun went down
The sabbath faded
The holy day was done and all creation waited …
(Peterson, Andrew. “God Rested.” Resurrection Letters, Prologue. Centricity Music, 2018. CD.)
