A friend, strong Christian, whom I love and respect, wrote this a couple of weeks ago:

Celebrating our Lenten journey to the empty cross and tomb of our Risen Lord and Savior! 

I appreciate his faith and enthusiasm, but I think he’s rushing things. We probably ought to give a bit more thought to a cross and tomb that were NOT empty. Jesus hung on the cross for hours and died. The tomb was occupied. “He descended into hell. The third day he rose…”

But this isn’t the third day, it’s the second day. How were the disciples feeling? Afraid?

Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. (John 16.31, ESV, emphasis mine)

Despondent?

They said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. (Luke 24.19 – 21, ESV, emphasis mine)

Sit with it a little while today.

PS An article in Christianity Today, Before Christ Rose, He Was Dead, reminds us of this truth while analyzing its theological and liturgical aspects. Here’s a sample from the introduction to the article:

The question of God’s presence in mortality is central to a significant, but seldom recognized, day in the church’s yearly calendar. Holy Saturday is that odd day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday during which Jesus Christ—life himself!—lay dead in a tomb…The church has had little difficulty fixing its attention on the dying of Christ, and even less difficulty on the rising of Christ, but the being dead of Christ has found relatively little expression in its theology and liturgy. Holy Saturday, however, has an integrity of its own. If the church can attune its ear to its frequency, so easily drowned out by the dominant tones of Good Friday and Easter, it may be able to hear a profound word about human living and dying between the Cross and the Resurrection.