It was the Sabbath, a dark Sabbath for Yeshua’s followers. Throughout that day, they remained hidden, locked away for fear of the Jews, left only with their shock and their grief at the great tragedy that had so suddenly befallen them. Yeshua, their teacher and friend, was dead. The investment of the past three years seemed to be lost forever to a man crucified and now laid in a borrowed grave.
What was to become of them? The eleven men who represented Yeshua’s closest friends had to wonder if anything remained for them. They had thrown their lot in with Yeshua. His defiance of the Jewish leaders was theirs. They had sacrificed home, family, and livelihood for Yeshua’s sake. What good was that now?
Perhaps, they were angry too. Why had Yeshua insisted on coming to Jerusalem? Why had he insisted on provoking the Jewish leaders time and time again over the past week? Why had he insisted on eating the Passover in Jerusalem when he could have gone to Bethany or somewhere else? Their anger might have been hotter at themselves. Why had they run when Yeshua was arrested? Why had they scattered when their friend needed them most?
Peter, the leader of Yeshua’s disciples and Yeshua’s likely successor, suffered under what probably seemed like unending grief at denying his companion friend. Yeshua had warned him, yet when the time came, he acted as if he did not know him. Peter had denied Yeshua when Yeshua needed him most. Now Yeshua was dead.
John, possibly Yeshua’s closest friend, had watched him die. He had stood there helplessly and alone, as Yeshua hung in agony on that cross; the only help to his friend was to take in Yeshua’s grieving mother. Over and over again, those terrible events must have played through John’s mind. Yeshua had died. He had seen it.
Mary, Yeshua’s mother, must have repeated over and over the words spoken to her thirty years before, “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” That cross fulfilled what that prophet at the Temple had spoken, and her world was darker for it. Nothing could solace the loss of her firstborn, not after what she had witnessed.
So they waited, afraid and alone, perhaps a hundred and twenty souls who had followed Yeshua, who had listened to his teaching, and who had dared to hope that the man might just be the Messiah. Now that man was dead, buried in a borrowed grave, along with their hopes for the future they had invested in him. What remained for them?
We know what remained for them, yet we too must wait one more day. We wait on this Saturday for this same Yeshua, Jesus Christ our Messiah. We wait to celebrate His glorious resurrection from the dead as the firstfruit of all those who will be raised. We wait for Him to return to claim us as His own, His children by grace through faith. We wait because He asked us to wait, because He promised to return to us.
While we know that the disciples’s grief came from their misunderstanding of who Jesus was and what He came to do, we understand their grief. As we wait for that same Jesus, we share their grief in our witness of the constant triumph of sin around us, and we wonder if we have the strength to endure the devil, the world, and our own sinfulness constantly tempting us to give up on our Messiah so long in coming.
Yet, this wait is for our benefit just as much as is our faith. In this wait, we are tempered and tested, refined and molded for the realization of our ultimate good. When the time is right, a time ordained by the Father, Jesus will return for us, and we will join to Him in glorious union. Until then, we wait and we hope, knowing something better is coming.
Watching and waiting for the Kingdom
