Passion Week: Saturday - The "In-Between"

Scripture Reading: Matthew 27:62-66

The man who, on Sunday, rode into Jerusalem being hailed as the Messiah and King was now, on Saturday, in the grave…or so it seemed.

In Matthew’s retelling of this time “in-between” the cross and the resurrection, the chief priests and the Pharisees were quite concerned. In fact, according to Matthew they said, “Sir, we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.” Put briefly, the chief priests and Pharisees had a problem on their hands—a big problem.

It was possible that this deceiver—as they saw Jesus—might not yet be done deceiving everyone. Sure, they killed him. But what if his disciples took his body so it appeared as though he rose from the dead? Then this problem they were afraid of would become all too real.

On the other hand if Jesus actually rose from the dead then what couldn’t he do? And if he rose from the dead, then how in the world would they control his disciples? They couldn’t afford to do nothing. They had to get in front of the entire situation. So Pilate commanded, “Take a guard and make the tomb as secure as you know how.” The tomb was then made secure with a large stone being rolled in front and a guard standing a post. It would now be “impossible” for this deceiver to deceive anyone else. This much is clear.

What is less clear is “where” Jesus was during this time between the cross and the resurrection. If we think back to his conversation with the thief on the cross—today you will be with me in paradise—Jesus was in paradise. Although his body was in the tomb, he (in whatever reality that was) was not there. Unfortunately for us (as we often lament), this might be all we’re told about this “in-between” time.

Before we move on to quickly, there is that one verse in 1 Peter 3 where we’re told that Jesus (being made alive) made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits. This, however, I submit has nothing at all to do with this time from the cross and the resurrection but, instead, his ascension to the right hand of the Father in glory and authority.

What are we to say, then, about Holy Saturday? Not a whole lot. And that’s okay. The Bible doesn't say a lot about a lot of things we think we’d like it to. That’s not Scripture’s problem, it’s ours. But, even after saying that, it doesn’t mean we can’t say anything.

The tomb was secure and Jesus’s body was inside, but Jesus was with the thief from Friday to Sunday. This means that contrary to an unfortunate misunderstanding of an ancient translation of both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, he was not in hell. It’s a strong contention of mine that we do whatever we can to rid ourselves of the idea that Jesus had to suffer in hell after the cross. Setting aside the fact that he said “it is finished” on the cross, hell is not a final reality right now—it is final judgment. “Death and hades,” as it says in Revelation, “will be thrown into the lake of fire.” But, as I’ve said at other times in other places, this is not the right discussion for this article.

What do we know well for sure? What do we know with no doubt? We know that Jesus died on Friday. We know that he said he would be in paradise after he died. And we know that he resurrected on Sunday. If that’s all we know about this “in-between” time then it is still more than enough.

More than enough, for sure, to get us to one more day—Easter Sunday.

Passion Week: Friday - The Beginning of the End

Scripture Reading: Luke 22:47-53; Mark 14:60-64; Luke 23:39-43

If the beginning of the end wasn’t when Jesus rode into Jerusalem as a king, it most assuredly was when Judas brought a crowd to arrest him. From that point forward Jesus would no longer walk freely throughout the land with his disciples. From here on out he’d be bound, either by chains or by nails to a cross.

One of the more gut-wrenching moments of this arrest story is the way Jesus asks Judas what’s going on. He asks not because he’s confused, but (I think) in mercy to extend another opportunity for Judas to turn from his wickedness. “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” In other words, Is this really want you want to do, Judas? You’ve been with me for years and now, tonight, you’re going to hand me over? It’s hard not to scream out STOP! while reading this story.

Judas doesn’t need to do what he’s doing. He’s being fueled by a misunderstanding of who Jesus was and a misunderstanding of how the kingdom of God was going to come about. Judas wanted the rewards of following Jesus, which is fine—we want the rewards, too. The problem is those rewards weren’t coming for Judas—and they’re not coming for us—until the New Heavens and New Earth. When we try to get now, what we’re going to get later through trusting Jesus, we always hurt ourselves and the world around us.

After Jesus had been arrested he was brought before the officials—both religious and state—to proceed with a trial and eventual pronouncement of guilt and punishment (which had basically already been decided). Before that pronouncement of guilt the high priest got angry with Jesus because he wouldn’t defend himself. Finally he asks him plainly, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” To this question Jesus says what will ultimately secure his death. “I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

This is Daniel 7 language. This is language that you only use if you are the Christ—the Messiah. This is language that makes it clear that you believe yourself to be the king of the world—Yahweh. And this is language, that when used by Jesus—although it is absolutely true—brings an end to any supposed hope of him escaping a sentence of death by crucifixion. “Why do we need any more witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy.”

And that’s where we find Jesus next. Upon a cross, in between two criminals. One who hurls insults at him, demanding Jesus rescue himself and the criminals. And the other who rebukes the first, pleading with Jesus to not forget him when Jesus is received in his kingdom. To which—and this might be one of the most astonishing moments of this entire story so far—Jesus, with one of his last moments of his life here on earth, does not ignore the criminal who is rightly condemned by the state, but answers him saying, “…today you will be with me in paradise.”

This is Jesus. This is who he is and who has always been. He spent his life loving others and in one of his last—seemingly insignificant—moments of his life, he loved someone to the uttermost.

The end of Passion week is not yet. Easter is approaching, but there is a day in-between—Saturday—which we will turn to next.

Passion Week: Thursday - Our Last Time Together... Like This

Scripture Reading: Mark 14:22-24; John 13:12-17, 34-35

For several years Jesus had been with his disciples almost all the time. There was little he did without them.

They walked from town to town together. Met new people together. Jesus taught amongst his disciples. And he healed people in the presence of those twelve he had chosen to follow him. Now, things were getting to change in a big way.

Their time together was drawing to an end. In fact, this would be the last time Jesus and the disciples closest to him would be together like this (that is, until the resurrection and the eventual outpouring of the Holy Spirit). And so, what does Jesus do with his disciples during their last evening together? He shares a meal with them, of course.

Actually three events take place during their last time together. Jesus easts with his disciples. He washes their feet. And, lastly, he gives them a new commandment to live by.

First, the meal. In celebration of the Passover, they share a Passover meal. And, at the end, Jesus gives them what for the next 2,000+ years will be celebrated by the Church as The Lord’s Supper, or Communion. In that act Jesus took bread, which he said represented his body (that would be given for the many), and a cup of wine, which represented the blood of the new covenant (that was poured out for many). He offered it to his disciples and they ate and drank together. In much the same way we continue to do today.

Secondly, after the meal, Jesus took off the outer garments he was wearing, got down on his knees, and washed his disciples feet until they were clean. This, Jesus said, was done on purpose in order to show his disciples how they ought to live amongst one another and in the world. “I have set an example that you should do as I have done for you.” This was both the way the kingdom of God would be brought into the world and the way the children of God would live in the kingdom of God. Above all, they would serve one another. And, lest there be any objections to this kingdom way of life, Jesus tells them, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you should also wash one another’s feet.”

Lastly, a new commandment. Jesus already showed the disciples what it looks like to serve one another. He showed them what type of people the kingdom of God contains. Now, he sums it all up in one command: love one another. He tells his disciples, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” This is weighty. Love will be the identifying mark of those who follow Jesus. And not just love in a generic sense. This type of love is like the love that Jesus showed for his earliest disciples, and us. This kind of love drove Jesus to the cross both as a king and a sacrifice.

Next is the arrest, the trial, and the crucifixion. Under the cover of darkness, through the cooperation of one close to Jesus, the authorities will come for him in order to make him pay with his life for the life he led.

Passion Week: Wednesday - The Scheme

Scripture Reading: Luke 22:1-6

What do you do with a person who says and does things that invite others to believe that he is not only the king, but God in the form of a human being? If you don’t like his message of kingship and divinity, you come up with a plan to end all this nonsense by getting rid of him.

This was the state of the world (the world of Jerusalem) a few days before the Passover. According to Luke, “..the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus”. At the least, they wanted him elsewhere. Better yet, they wanted him gone completely. If some revolutionary was trying to start something new in Rome, fine, but this was Jerusalem. And this “revolutionary” was starting something new that would forever turn upside down the world in which the chief priests and the teachers of the law lived, moved, and had their being. In other words, again as Luke puts it, “they were afraid.”

What were they going to do when it seemed like the whole world was going along with this Jesus the world was happy to call not just the Messiah, but their Messiah? Luckily for them, an opportunity presented itself in the form of a betrayal. This betrayal played out as Judas going to the chief priests, and the officers of the temple guard, to discuss with them how he might hand Jesus over to them.

The scheme is set, as it would seem. This “would-be” Messiah will finally get what’s coming to him.

Someone from within Jesus’s own group has turned his back on him. Maybe Jesus wasn’t so powerful after all? Either way, the religious leaders have now found their way forward. They have this Judas—who had been having a growing problem with how Jesus was doing things for some time—decide that it would be better to put an end to this, as well. “They were delighted and agreed to give him money.” Thirty pieces of silver, as we find out later.

Judas consents, takes the money, and spends the rest of his time “watching for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.” All Judas needed was a brief moment when it was just him, Jesus, and—if there was no way around it—Jesus’s disciples. Then he’d have the freedom to move forward. Then he could betray his “friend” by handing him over to people who didn’t have the authority to take Jesus’s life on their own, but would consort with the Roman government—who they didn’t even trust and, more than likely, really grew to resent—to have them take care of Jesus for the religious leaders.

This is the result of being hailed as a king as you enter Jerusalem. This is the result of going to the temple and cleaning up the mess. And this is the result of healing those in a way only God could.

Jesus’s time was drawing short, and it would only take an arrest under the cover of darkness to bring everything to a point of no return.

Passion Week: Tuesday - The Wisdom of Man vs. The Wisdom of God

Scripture Reading: Matthew 21:23-27

What happens when someone like Jesus comes into a city being hailed as king, and then goes to the temple demanding things be different? Debates happen.

After Jesus showed that it was God who was the one in charge, and that he was the embodied representation of that God, he got into debates with the religious leaders—the chief priests and scribes—because when you go around reforming how the temple ought to work and healing people, you have to answer for your actions. So those with an intimate knowledge of the Scriptures came to Jesus demanding he give an account for what he had been doing, not just over the past couple of days, but over the past several years of his life and ministry.

Their questions were simple. Notice I said simple, not honest. They were not coming to Jesus with questions because they were working hard to reframe what they had known about God now with who Jesus claimed to be. They were coming to Jesus in order to trap him. They had enough of him, and one of the ways to put a stop to all this madness and deception (as they saw it) would be to demand he answer for himself in public.

So they asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?”

Because, you see, in their minds the things Jesus was doing—reinterpreting the Torah, healing people on the Sabbath, and clearing the garbage out the temple—were things only God, or a God-appointed person, could do. So as far as their wisdom allowed, Jesus needed to satisfy the requirements they had built up about what this God-appointed person, this Messiah, this God-in-the-flesh human being, was able to do. And Jesus, being happy to entertain their question, responds with a couple questions of his own, “John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from God, or from human beings?”

The religious leaders know what’s at stake. Jesus has turned the tables on them and, in effect, put the ball in their court. If they will answer his questions, he will be happy to answer theirs. The problem they have, though, is that they know that if they say that John’s baptism came from God Jesus will ask them to explain why they didn’t believe what had come from God. They’re the religious leaders for goodness sake. If anyone ought to accept that which comes from God, they ought to be first in line. They also know that if they say it wasn’t from God but from man, then their own people would come after them—they would make them answer for that—because they held that John the Baptist was a prophet.

We would call this being stuck between a rock and hard place.

And so, they say nothing. They can’t afford to have their trust in God put into question, and they can’t afford to have those they were called to shepherd come after their very lives. Jesus then, in turn, doesn’t answer their questions. “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”

The debates continue, but this is quite enough to get a flavor of what’s going on. There are people with questions for Jesus, but they aren’t real questions. They’re fueled by human “wisdom”, which of course, is brought to nothing by the true wisdom of God.

The only thing left for those who think they’re really running the show is to come up with a plan to end this whole thing—to take Jesus’s life—which, brings us to Wednesday.

Passion Week: Monday - God Is the One in Charge

Scripture Reading: Matthew 21:12-15

The day after Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem he went to the heart of the city. He went to the temple. The dwelling place of God. God, himself, who put on flesh to dwell on earth with mankind, went to the building in which man could meet with God. And he did not like what he saw.

As Jesus entered the temple courts he “drove out all who were buying and selling there.” Why—what’s the problem? In short, the temple was not a place to make money hand over fist. It was the place on earth where mere human beings could get as close as humanly possible to the one who created them. And now it was being turned into a market with hurdles people had to jump over and hoops for them to get through in order to have communion with their God. So, Jesus quotes a couple big time prophets from the Hebrew Bible—Isaiah and Jeremiah.

“My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The amazing thing is that when Isaiah and Jeremiah each said those things back in the day, they were speaking for God. Or, he was speaking through them. Now, God (in Christ) was speaking for himself. My house will be called a house of prayer. This was no hyperbole. This was the God of the universe, in flesh, declaring that the temple is his house and it will not be turned into something other than what it was made for. This was Jesus letting everyone know that God is the one in charge.

And then something miraculous happens.

As a way of confirming what he had just said he starts to heal the blind and the lame. Why? Because, this is what Isaiah said would happen when the king arrives—when God comes home. In fact, this is the same thing Jesus said to John the Baptist’s disciples when they came to him asking (for John) if Jesus was the Messiah they had been waiting for. “Go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (Mt. 11:4-5).

This is the gospel. This the good news they had all been waiting for. God has arrived and he has arrived as king. However, this is not what the chief priests and the teachers of the law thought when they saw all these things happening. They were not happy. They were not joyful. They were not relieved that their hopes had been realized in the person of Jesus. They were angry.

And so, Jesus’s final week continues. He has entered Jerusalem as king. He has confronted the hypocrisy and blasphemy occurring in the temple. And, as a result, those “in charge” know they have to do something about it.

Passion Week: Sunday - The King Is Here

Scripture Reading: John 12:12-19

Passover was a week away. Jerusalem was beginning to grow to over 5-times its size. And a “new” king was coming to town.

As John tells it, even those who were following Jesus from the time he raised Lazarus from the dead were the ones following him to the edge of town joining up with others from the area bringing both palm branches and shouts of joy for their king riding on a donkey.

Hosanna! Blessed is the king of Israel!

Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.

John tells us something the other gospel writers don’t that ends up being one of the more interesting things about this “triumphal entry” story. John writes, “At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.”

For some, this didn’t make sense in the moment. Why was Jesus coming to Jerusalem like this and why are there people with palm branches shouting hosanna? This isn’t how a real kings come into their cities. They don’t come in on a donkey’s colt; they come in on a proper horse, with a procession of the most important people leading and following. For Jesus, though, it was the poor, the destitute, the outcasts who were accompanying him, and he not only approved of this, but invited this sort of company. You can see then why someone might be wondering how a king like this could have any influence in the realm of those in charge.

For others, however, this did make sense and they were not happy about it. According to John, the Pharisees were speaking to one another saying, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!” Notice that. For those who had been in charge for a long time and could read the tea leaves, this was no insignificant king riding in. Instead, this was a king with a people who were not focused on controlling, but following. They were not a people bent on force, but on peace. Not a people looking for servants, but a bunch who were learning to serve as their king served them. In other words, this was a king with a people with whom the controlling world was not ready.

This was the original Palm Sunday. And it is what we continue to celebrate today.

The king—hopefully, your king—is here!

Passion Week: Behold the Man

In the next few days, churches all over the world will begin to think about, preach on, and celebrate Passion Week. That is, the last week of Jesus’s life on earth (until his return).

It’s admittedly an odd time in the Christian calendar.

Palm Sunday is big. Loads of churches will be handing out palm branches for service that morning to commemorate Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem. Maundy Thursday (for years, when I was younger, I thought it was called Monday Thursday…and that didn’t make sense to me) will be celebrated (though, not as widely as Palm Sunday) as the time when Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper and washed his disciples’ feet. Then there’s Good Friday (the prelude to the day for Christians—Easter), a time when we often think about how this day came to be celebrated as good.

Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday.

What about those other days, though? What was Jesus doing during his last week of life on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday? And what in the world was going on on Saturday, that sort of “in-between” time?

The short answer is: a lot.

The longer answer will be contained in the next seven brief articles (once a day starting Sunday, April 2) where I will try to help us consider what Jesus was up to during his final week and what that might mean for how we see him. In short, I’d like us to behold the man, as Pilate famously said to the crowd itching to get rid of Jesus.

So, come along with me as we behold Jesus by following him through the last week of his life.