Silence

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No Silence

The joy of Palm Sunday has just passed by, and the week ahead is full for Jesus and His disciples. There is very little silence in Jerusalem during Passover week.

Monday

Matthew 21:12-13: On Monday, Jesus visited the temple and did not like what he saw. The scriptures give us witness to one of the few times Jesus lost His temper, and it was not in silence that Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. He overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

Tuesday

On Tuesday. “Jesus left the city and went with his disciples to the Mount of Olives, which sits due east of the Temple and overlooks Jerusalem. Here Jesus gave the Olivet Discourse, an elaborate prophecy about the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the age. He spoke, as usual, in parables, using symbolic language about the end times events, including His Second Coming and the final judgment.” Afterward, Jesus and the disciples went to Bethany for the night.

Wednesday

Bethany was in preparation for the Passover, and it was also the place where Jesus had raised Lazarus from the grave. Whether there was great public attention, or just a small gathering of the disciples and Lazarus and his family, Wednesday was surely a time of socializing.

Matthew 26:6-13: “While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. ‘Why this waste?’ they asked. ‘This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.’

“Aware of this, Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.’” Surely, they were exhausting emotional moments, with more to come.

Thursday

Thursday brings us to the Passover meal. Jesus told [the disciples], “I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. For I tell you now that I won’t eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.” (Luke 22:15-16).

Feet were washed, dinner was served, the body and the blood were offered, the walk to Gethsemane was taken, and Jesus’ desperate prayer was made:

“He said to his disciples, ‘Sit here, while I go over there and pray.’ And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.’ And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.’

“And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not watch with me for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’

“Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.’ And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy.

“So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Then he came to the disciples and said to them, ‘Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand’” (Matthew 26:36-56).

Friday

There was no down time following. Jesus was arrested, tried three times, beaten and condemned to death on a cross. He was spat upon, abused, and mocked as He was led to Golgotha and nailed to a cross. Around 3:00 that afternoon, He spoke His final words, “It is finished.”

Silence

And then … silence …

… the silence of death, of the tomb, of utter, mute grief. “It is finished.”

It’s devastating to contemplate what those who walked with Him experienced. Maybe it’s because we understand their feelings all too well.

Silent Saturdays

Max Lacado writes: “Easter weekend discussions tend to skip Saturday. Friday and Sunday get the press. The crucifixion and resurrection command our thoughts. But don’t ignore Saturday. You have them, too. Silent Saturdays. The day between the struggle and the solution; the question and the answer; the offered prayer and the answer thereof.”

Some Things Happen in Silence

Silence is a funny thing. There is the silence of death, but there is also the silence of the womb.

Scripture gives us some hints that all may not have been stalled on Saturday. It may have been a lot busier than we think, even if all that was heard was silence.

Things Were Happening

Matthew 12:40: For just as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

Matthew 27:51-52 Just then the temple curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks were split apart. And tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had died were raised. (They came out of the tombs after his resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.)

Acts 2:31: David by foreseeing this spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his body experience decay.

1 Peter 3:18-21: Because Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring you to God, by being put to death in the flesh but by being made alive in the spirit. In it he went and preached to the spirits in prison, after they were disobedient long ago when God patiently waited in the days of Noah as an ark was being constructed. In the ark a few, that is eight souls, were delivered through water. And this prefigured baptism, which now saves you – not the washing off of physical dirt but the pledge of a good conscience to God – through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who went into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels and authorities and powers subject to him.

1 Peter 4:6: Now it was for this very purpose that the gospel was preached to those who are [now] dead, so that though they were judged in the flesh by human standards they may live spiritually by God’s standards.

Eph 4:9: Now what is the meaning of “he ascended,” except that he also descended to the lower regions [of] the earth?

Rev 20:14: Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death – the lake of fire.

The New Testament evidence almost certainly indicates that Jesus “did something” between the Cross and the Resurrection.

Radio Silence

Let’s consider for a moment, something that seems very unrelated–missions in space. Not the sci-fi kind, the real thing. As astronauts prepare to return to earth after being in space on a mission, there is a time during the craft’s reentry called “radio silence.”

“At high flight velocities, the intense heating of the gas generates a plasma layer around the [craft]. The presence of free electrons in the flow field has been known to hinder the transmission and reception of radio-waves. Historically, this communications problem has been of subsidiary concern in hypersonic design as usually the more common re-entry vehicles will only undergo [communications] blackout for a relatively short time frame, while problems such as those dealing with heat transfer take precedence. This challenge, however, is likely to be a more significant obstacle for hypersonic glide systems as a considerable amount of the mission may lie within the blackout regime, potentially complicating guidance, tracking, radar identification, electronic countermeasures, and abort functionality” (https://www.colorado.edu/lab/ngpdl/research/hypersonics/radio-communications-blackout).

In other words, silence.

Does radio silence mean that the astronauts aren’t busy? Absolutely not. It means that for a brief period of time there is no communication with earth, but they are in preparation to return to the planet.

I find that a good analogy. Jerusalem experienced “radio silence” as Jesus did what needed to be done in preparation for His return to the planet!