What a dismal day it must have been. Whether the sun shone brightly, or the sky remained overcast, I don’t know. But for Mary, Martha, and the disciples, it was a day of lead skies and dead calm. Some of them huddled together in a room in Jerusalem. It was the Sabbath, but none of them were motivated to participate in any of the Passover rituals. A lot of the day was just spent looking at each other with blank expressions. The question on all their minds was, “What do I do now?” No one needed to say it. It was a question that hung in the room like fog on the Sea of Galilee.
How could this have happened? How could He enter Jerusalem like a Messiah at the beginning of the week and end up dead on a Roman cross yesterday? How could they have become such different people in such a short period of time? Judas a betrayer? Dead. Suicide. Peter, so mortified by his own emphatic denial – over and over again! All of them forsook Jesus in the Garden!
Occasionally some of them wept quietly. Almost all their emotions were past being spent. Watching Jesus traverse the Via Dolorosa was enough to wring every last tear from their eyes until they were literally exhausted. Then watching him from a distance as he writhed on the cross in agony kept them from sleeping lest that image indelibly fixed in their minds’ eyes produce nightmares.
I know. Sunday is coming. But the little group of women and disciples didn’t know what was going to happen the next day like we do. For them, this Passover was a day of mourning, not celebration. They did not yet know the connection between the blood of lambs splashed on the lintels and door posts, and the blood of The Lamb that was shed for them yesterday. They mourned in ignorance for the Lamb whose blood caused the angel of death to pass over them.
But it’s okay to mourn. It reminds us that our world is broken. Instinctively we know that. And we yearn for the day of deliverance. We pine for the one who will come and make it all right again. It reminds us of our hopeless situation. It reminds us that without a Savior, a Messiah, we are already in hell.
How could this have happened? How could He enter Jerusalem like a Messiah at the beginning of the week and end up dead on a Roman cross yesterday? How could they have become such different people in such a short period of time? Judas a betrayer? Dead. Suicide. Peter, so mortified by his own emphatic denial – over and over again! All of them forsook Jesus in the Garden!
Occasionally some of them wept quietly. Almost all their emotions were past being spent. Watching Jesus traverse the Via Dolorosa was enough to wring every last tear from their eyes until they were literally exhausted. Then watching him from a distance as he writhed on the cross in agony kept them from sleeping lest that image indelibly fixed in their minds’ eyes produce nightmares.
I know. Sunday is coming. But the little group of women and disciples didn’t know what was going to happen the next day like we do. For them, this Passover was a day of mourning, not celebration. They did not yet know the connection between the blood of lambs splashed on the lintels and door posts, and the blood of The Lamb that was shed for them yesterday. They mourned in ignorance for the Lamb whose blood caused the angel of death to pass over them.
But it’s okay to mourn. It reminds us that our world is broken. Instinctively we know that. And we yearn for the day of deliverance. We pine for the one who will come and make it all right again. It reminds us of our hopeless situation. It reminds us that without a Savior, a Messiah, we are already in hell.
