Luke 23:56b

Posted by DJL on Mar 30, 2013 in Lenten Devotions | 1 comment

On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

Of course they did. Rested on the Sabbath, that is. How could they do anything else? They are exhausted. Put yourself in their place for just a moment. Their world has come crashing down around them. Their hopes and dreams crushed before their eyes. Their Lord, teacher, and friend has been crucified. They can be nothing but exhausted. And so they rest.

They also rest because they are obedient. That is the commandment: it is the Sabbath and so time to rest. They have worked for six days in a variety of capacities, and now they will rest.

So they rest because they are exhausted, and they rest because they are faithful.

But after the Sabbath rest comes a new week, a fresh start. Sabbath, it is easy to forget, is tied to creation. God created in six days and then rested. The week with its six days of work and a day of rest repeats in an endless cycle that anchors us in the rhythm of the story of God.

But that story is about to take an unexpected twist. Death, disappointment, these have been part and parcel of the human story since the beginning, since Adam and Eve first chose the apple they believed held their independence over the relationship God offered that granted them identity. Work and rest, hope and disappointment, life and death – these are all parts of the story we know far too well.

But that story is about to change. Because this time, after the Sabbath rest, God will create again. God will create something new. God will re-create by raising Jesus from the dead.

And just as in the first act of creation something entirely new was fashioned, so also in this act there is something new – life that will no longer be overshadowed by death, hope that endures beyond disappointment. For when God became incarnate in Jesus, God not only took on our humanity – including our mortality – but also brought to us the divine promise of eternal relationship with God.

The women resting don’t know this. It is, for them and their companions, the end of an awful week. But soon they will see it was not an end, but merely a pause, a transition, a brief respite before God does something new, creating once again from nothing in order to bring light from darkness and life from death.

And so they rest, both from exhaustion and fidelity. And it’s a good thing. For soon they will need all the strength they can muster to share word of God’s new creation.

Prayer: Dear God, draw us again and again into the cycle of your redemptive story that we might taste the promise of eternal life here and now and share it with all we meet. In Jesus’ name, Amen.