I spent a lot of time in 2019 meditating on the resurrection of Jesus. I know of no other word in the English language that singlehandedly contains the story of the gospel – life, death, and life again. I revisit it every so often because confining the memory of Jesus’ resurrection to one Sunday a year is practically criminal. This day in 2020 falls between the celebration of two of the most seminal events in human history – Good Friday and Easter. For some reason, no one talks about the Saturday in between. It feels like a state of limbo between death and life. We mourned yesterday but we won’t rejoice until tomorrow. So what is left for us today?
That sentiment may ring true for you in the present as the planet has been engulfed in a state of panic, confusion, and fear. Like the disciples some 2000 years ago, we’re hiding away, waiting until it’s safe to reemerge. I wrote this essay in 2019 during my reflections on the resurrection but it feels timely today. If you ever feel suspended between the best of times and the worst of times, I encourage you to remember the story of Saturday. Hope’s not dead yet.
People say that Good Friday was the worst day in history. I can’t help but think that maybe Saturday was just a little bit worse. Can you imagine being a disciple in A.D. 30? Jesus dies during Passover. They came to arrest Him and then you ran. You promised to stand by Him to the end and then you swore you never knew Him. You watched Him wash your feet and then you watched them drive nails into His. You saw it all happen on Friday. Sobbed yourself to sleep that Passover night. Woke up Saturday morning…and He was still gone.
That Saturday was the worst day in history. It was the first day in over three decades that the body of Jesus wasn’t breathing. The first day in thirty-three years that the world didn’t hear his heartbeat. The first day in recent memory that He wasn’t healing or teaching. There were no parables, no blind men healed, no promises for the future, no captives set free. But Saturday was not a silent day. It may have felt like the world had ended — in one sense, it had — but the story was nowhere near over. There were three distinct threads rapidly approaching the climax of the narrative, each one independently moving toward the finale. This is the story of the darkest night before the greatest dawn. This is the end before the beginning. This is the story of Saturday.
Jesus’ followers were silent. They quietly took His body to a nearby tomb, wrapped it in cloth and spices, and went home. It was the day of Preparation, after all, and the Sabbath was rapidly approaching. So they did what the Father had commanded from the dawn of creation: they rested. In the Greek, Luke 23:56 adds in another word for emphasis, saying that they truly rested. When their greatest hope had quite literally died, when there was nothing left, they well and truly rested. They went back to the first page of history and just rested. There was probably a lot of pacing, a lot of tears, a lot of mourning. But it was the Sabbath, and they obeyed. Jesus and the Father were one and the Father commanded them to rest on the Sabbath. There is no doubt that Jesus had taught them to practice this every week prior. They rested in spite of all of the chaos.
The Pharisees were troubled. They had finally smothered the extremist but weren’t convinced it was over just yet. Jesus had hinted at resurrection and since that wouldn’t actually be happening, they had to prevent His desperate followers from attempting one final stunt to keep their charade alive. Despite the fact that it was the Sabbath (Matthew politely calls it the “day which followed the day of Preparation”), they met with Pilate. Jesus was already a deceiver who claimed to be the Messiah, they explained. But what if His disciples could claim that He was a resurrected Messiah? That would be even worse than the first lie He told. Pilate agreed, allowing them to set a guard at the tomb. No one in or out. The Pharisees were terrified of this Man. Can you imagine killing the greatest political and religious threat alive and still not being sure that His words weren’t going to be fulfilled? They were scared — scared enough to set up a meeting with Pilate, to seal the tomb, to post guards, all on a Sabbath.
Jesus was fighting. The story on earth had to pause for a moment because the story of history had to be completed. There were millions of souls who had lived clinging only to the hope of rescue. They had waited for a Messiah and never seen Him. They believed that the Holy One would come to set His people free. There were those who never knew nor cared about the promise of redemption. They lived and died, following idols, doing as they pleased. They never wanted a Messiah because they never needed a Messiah. 1 Peter 3:18-19 says that by the Spirit, He went down to preach to imprisoned souls. People who had been there since before the Flood, trapped for millennia before He arrived. Jesus came to finish it once and for all. The curse of sin had been broken for all those who were still alive but it was now retroactive for every soul in the past four thousand years.
Saturday was the worst day in history but it was not the last day in history. Jesus stayed dead all through Saturday. His body never stirred, never took a breath, never coughed. He never called out or uttered a word. He was dead on Saturday. For more than 24 hours, God in the flesh had been silenced. The sun went down on Saturday night. The disciples went to sleep. The Pharisees went to sleep. The whole world went to sleep. And somewhere in the early hours of Sunday morning, a dead body in a tomb began to breathe.