And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus saw where he was laid. – Mark 15: 46-47
The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard. – Matthew 27:62-66
Very little is written about the day between the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus. The scriptures above tell us that Jesus was buried and that the religious leaders were worried about some sort of resurrection hoax. Sometimes we call this day Silent Saturday. It seems appropriate. Jesus is dead. The disciples are hiding. But the rest of the world picks up where it left off. It’s just another Jewish Sabbath. A quiet day of rest.
This is where the Christian life is lived, in Silent Saturday between death and resurrection. We have died with Christ and one day we will be raised with Christ. Until then, just as Jesus lied buried in the earth, we have been buried into Christ awaiting the fullness of our resurrection.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. – Romans 6:8.
Just as the disciples waited nervously in between the death and resurrection of Jesus, we live in between the ages. In the “already but not yet.” Ours is a quiet place. A place of waiting for our resurrection. A place full of suffering and sorrow.
But let’s be honest, we don’t like the quiet do we? Like a child who fights against bed time, we fight the command to live simple, quiet, and peaceful lives until Christ returns. Instead we want a triumphalistic faith. We want big displays of God’s glory. Miracles. Breakthroughs. Testimonies of answered prayers (when’s the last time you heard somebody give testimony of an unanswered prayer?). We demand to hear Jesus in our quiet time, because God forbid we ever just sit in our doubts and questions. We need loud worship music, bright lights, lots of screens, and spiritual experiences that make us feel better about ourselves.But what if God intends for us to dwell mostly in Silent Saturday? The space between death and resurrection. The place of Sabbath rest. The place of burial into Christ.
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. – Romans 6:4
TETELESTAI: Greek (perfect tense) for “It is finished”. Of the last sayings of Christ on the cross, none is more important or more poignant than, “It is finished.” Found only in the Gospel of John, the Greek word translated “it is finished” is tetelestai, an accounting term that means “paid in full.” When Jesus uttered those words, He was declaring the debt owed to His Father was wiped away completely and forever. Not that Jesus wiped away any debt that He owed to the Father; rather, Jesus eliminated the debt owed by mankind—the debt of sin.
In his death and burial, Jesus has completed his union with humanity. He has now done everything a person is destined to do – be born and live. And everything a sinful person is destined to do – die and be buried. He has been buried into us, so that we can be buried into him.
And now we wait. We wait in our suffering and sorrow. We wait for our resurrection from the dead. We wait in between death and life. And yet, there is nothing more to be done. Jesus did it all on that day. On Silent Saturday Jesus was alive but no one could see it. His life was hidden. His body was in the tomb but his spirit was in Heaven presenting his sacrificed life to God.
Jesus entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. – Hebrews 9:12-14
Everything is finished. Jesus’ sinless sacrifice, and the presentation of his righteous life, have made our salvation possible along with all of its blessings. Together with Christ we share in his inheritance, we participate in the divine nature, and we walk in newness of life.
But we also wait. We wait in the quiet. We wait in faith while Christ is hidden from us, yet actively interceding for us in Heaven, just as he did on that Saturday. And though we cannot see him, we love him.
We may think that we need grand gifts and supernatural signs, but the true sign of Christ in us is the resurrection of our hearts unto love (1 Cor. 13). Quiet, humble, selfless, love. A life lived faithfully for Christ in the silence of Saturday, as we wait for a glorious resurrection Sunday.