Tag: battling

Easter Saturday is the day in churches where the altar is stripped, where the church is laid bare, where things wait. But I believe during that space between crucifixion and resurrection Jesus was really busy. As Henri Nouwen says in a recent mediations

I don’t think you’ll ever be able to penetrate the mystery of God’s revelation in Jesus until it strikes you that the major part of Jesus’ life was hidden and that even the “public” years remained invisible as far as most people were concerned. Whereas the way of the world is to insist on publicity, celebrity, popularity, and getting maximum exposure, God prefers to work in secret. You must let that mystery of God’s secrecy, God’s anonymity, sink deeply into your consciousness because, otherwise, you’re continually looking at it from the wrong point of view. In God’s sight the things that really matter seldom take place in public. . . . Maybe, while we focus our whole attention on the VIPs and their movements, on peace conferences and protest demonstrations, it’s the totally unknown people, praying and working in silence, who make God save us yet again from destruction.https://henrinouwen.org/meditation/ 26th March 2024

One of those “majorly hidden” parts was during those three days.

As a child I found the whole thing that Jesus says he’ll be in the tomb for three days and three nights but that the church calendar had him only dead for two nights and a half day on Friday, a full day on Saturday and then he was up really early on Sunday. That is not three days and nights at all.

Apparently as the church got more organised it decided to have Jesus crucified on a Friday and risen on a Sunday to stop people being idle for too long.

Until the 4th century, Jesus’ Last Supper, his death, and his Resurrection were observed in one single commemoration on the evening before Easter. Since then, those three events have been observed separately—Easter, as the commemoration of Jesus’ Resurrection, being considered the pivotal event.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Good-Friday

I heard one time that when Jesus died it was a time when there was more than one Passover at the same time. So the regular Passover to celebrate the exodus for Egypt but also the Jubilee Passover when slaves were set free, land was allowed to lie fallow, debts were cancelled, etc. – which seems about right with what Jesus was saying he was all about. As well as a regular Shabbat.

So if we move Jesus death forward by a day – at the start of the Jubilee Passover – then get the three nights before he rose again. But we also get the Jewish peoples thinking about not just being freed from slavery but the whole redemption thing that goes on with Jubilee. As well as the whole resting and trusting God to sort things – which can be easy to say when we’re in a good place but remember these people were oppressed.

So over what is now known as Easter Saturday which is a bit of a down day it was the time period – of probably 3 days and nights – when Jesus was battling with various things that stop us trusting and believing in God – slaves to our own ways of thinking and being, to our own issues and ways of dealing with life, caught up in our own debts and over work of ourselves and our land.

Whether Jesus was battling a real life devil and gaining those keys of hell from that devil we will never know, but there is enough “sh*t” in all of us that needs battling with to set us fully free that Jesus would have his work cut out there.

So instead of using this is an “oh my what do I do with it day” I’m going to do some journaling and free writing around what things I need to battle with in my life and hand over the Jesus. Remembering all the time that he has already won the battle but he won it in secret.

And it is that secret which is the mystery.