It is Saturday. Jesus is Lying Dead in the Tomb.

Jesus is lying dead in the tomb. 

His demoralized, terrified and broken disciples are in hiding. 

The women who stood and watched Him die are doing their best to do the womanly things women do on days like the Sabbath. They are battered by grief, but as often happens with women, they are not broken. 

Tomorrow, while the men hide, they’re going to get up early and go anoint His body.

The tensile strength of women is what holds families and civilization together when everything else has blown apart. Their strength held when Jesus died His agonized, degrading death on the cross. It’s holding now as they serve the Sabbath meal and care for their families. It will hold tomorrow when they find the strength to get up before their days’ chores and go back to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ torn and decaying body.

Yesterday, a wealthy man, a member of the Sanhedrin, who had evidently been a secret follower of Jesus, stepped out of the shadows to save Jesus’ body from being thrown into the refuse heap. 

Joseph of Arimathea owned a newly carved tomb that he was preparing for his own burial. He took the risk of going to Pilate and asking if he could put Jesus’ body in this new tomb. Pilate was startled by the request, but he granted it. 

In this way, Joseph of Arimathea entered history and at the same time fulfilled a prophecy about the Christ that God had given through Isaiah over 700 years before. 

That was yesterday. 

Now, the jeering crowds are gone. The mocking soldiers have moved on to other duties. The priests who murdered Him are going about their Sabbath work and enjoying their conquest of this rabble-rouser they got rid of. The cowardly politician who had handed down His sentence is back at work. The women are serving Sabbath dinner. The disciples are hiding in terror, fearful of what the Pharisees are going to do to them in the days to come. 

It is over. Done as death. Finished. 

He raised the dead, healed the sick, gave hope to the poor, the disenfranchised and the weak. He had been the Light of their world. And now, He was dead, lying in a borrowed tomb, his body already beginning to blacken and decay. 

The Church teaches us that, while Jesus’ stunned followers grieved, He was preaching to the multitudes who had died before He came. Imagine for a moment what it must have been like for those long dead to be greeted by their Maker and their Savior, to have the Good News revealed to them and then be lifted up and taken to heaven.

While His followers were overwhelmed with grief and fear, He was doing what He came to do: He was being the Way for those who had no way without Him.

It is Saturday. The Sabbath. The Passover. 

And it seems to Jesus’ followers and friends that everything Jesus taught was a lie and everything he did was a fantasy. 

He is not who they had thought He was, and they are not who He had told them they were. 

 This is their bottom, and, like the well Jeremiah was cast into, it has no solid floor. Like Jeremiah, they are sinking, deeper and deeper into the depths of their despair. 

They are Joseph, sold to slavers by his own brothers. 

They are Elijah, hungry and alone, telling God I’ve done everything you asked, but they’ve killed all your other prophets, and now they want to kill me too. 

They are Mary when she told Joseph the baby she was carrying was from God and he thought she was lying and rejected her. 

They are Jesus at Gethsemane, praying for reprieve. 

This is Saturday. The Sabbath. The Passover. 

And it seems like the end. 

Note: As usual, I’ve paraphrased both scripture and Church teaching from memory rather than quoting it exactly. Here are the places where you can read the exact wording. You can read about Joseph of Arimathea and the tomb he gave to Christ in Matthew 27:60 and John 19:41. Read about the Crucifixion in Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 19. A scriptural basis for the Church teaching of the harrowing of hell is found in 1 Peter 3:19. The teaching itself is in the Catechism, paragraphs 631-637. Read about Jeremiah being thrown into a well in Jeremiah 38. Read about Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers in Genesis 37. Read Elijah’s cry of despair in 1 Kings 19. Read that Joseph did not believe Mary and wanted to “put her away quietly” in Matthew 1:19.