Day Forty

What a strange day this is. Symbolically it represents the last day of the Hebrews’ forty years of wandering in the wilderness. I wonder if they knew that tomorrow they would enter the Promised Land? This is why the gospel texts carried that symbolism forward to Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness prior to the commencement of his itinerant ministry. I wonder if this was the day that he argued with Satan; if he knew that tomorrow would be the day that he would return “in the power of the spirit to Galilee” to begin teaching in the synagogues? (see Luke 4:14-15) And in the Western Christian tradition of Lent this is the day between Jesus’ crucifixion and the Resurrection of the Christ.

This is also the Sabbath, per the Genesis creation stories. Perhaps this explains why—in conjunction with the Hebrew Scriptures’ formulations regarding the Son of Man—it was so important (particularly to the synoptic evangelists) to have the Resurrection occur on the third day rather than during or immediately following the crucifixion. The early Christian creeds took advantage of this “day off” for Jesus to descend into the depths of hell (the history of the creeds and their development offers fascinating reading for those interested in learning more about the subject). Finally, there is a rather weak justification offered for why the tomb of Jesus was left unattended until Sunday morning, even though Shabbat ended at sundown Saturday.

For the contemporary Christian armed with the foreknowledge that tomorrow is Easter, today is the day to run all the last minute errands in preparation for tomorrow’s sunrise services and traditional ham dinners (which were originally intended to keep the Jews away from the table; bet you didn’t know that, did you?) How utterly different it must have been for those first disciples. Today for them must have been a time of intense grieving, disappointment and despair. Their world had literally come apart before their very eyes and the texts imply that any memory of something Jesus’ might have told them about death’s inability to sever their relationship with God was far from their minds. Of course it can’t, but it’s too bad that such a frame of mind could not set the tone for how we ourselves might choose to spend this day.