Passion Week - Silent Saturday

 

So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. (Matthew 27:24-26 ESV).

 

The World waited in relative silence on Saturday of the first Passion Week. The tomb has been sealed, the guards stand watch, and the disciples likely hide in confusion, fear, and devastation. It seems reasonable to imagine this is exactly how we might respond in the shadow of the cross. The disciples had to have a thousand painful questions. It was all playing back through their minds while they waited on Saturday. It is much easier on this side of history. We can still hear the dark, sobering echoes of Thursday and Friday. But we wait with expectation for Easter Morning and the empty grave and risen King. Filled with hope, we can look back into the crowd that crucified Jesus and see our old selves, and then forward, in preparation for Easter, rejoicing in the transformation that’s taken place in us because of his sacrifice. We’ve been covered by the blood that confounded those first followers.

 

We should remember the cries of the crowd just the day before. Deceived and manipulated, so corrupt in their sin that they give the Son of God over to death and spare a known murderer. Pilate knew that what they were demanding was wrong, that

Jesus was innocent. He wanted no part or role in his execution. But these people, filled with unbelief, with rebellious hearts, with envious rage against their own Messiah, cried,

“Crucify him! Crucify him!” “Pilate, if you won’t kill him, let his blood be on us!”

 

Do you hear your voice in that crowd? Their unbelief and their jealousy, their sin led them to the ultimate act of defiance and rejection of God. They crucified his Son, the Promised One he had sent to save them from centuries of unfaithfulness. All with the cry of Let his blood be on us! This is sin, to reject Jesus, to declare he is nothing but a man. And this is the condition of our heart when we refuse to open our hands to His gift of grace in our unbelief. We have screamed, “Crucify him!” with our unfaithfulness and disobedience. We have said with the crowd, “He is not our King!” “He is not our Messiah!” “Let his blood be on us!” But God, being rich in mercy and being patient with us, his chosen people, “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of [this crucified] Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). And being alive by faith in him, we cling to the cross on which our Savior died. It is by his precious blood that we are forgiven and freed from sin and its consequences.

 

Today we say with an entirely different meaning, let his blood be on us, not defiantly as the crowds that crucified him, but desperately with gratitude, hope, and adoration as those who depend wholly on his sacrifice. Jesus, let your blood be on us. Let it cover us. Let the blood that flows from your head, your hands, your feet wash over us and cleanse us from all of our iniquity. We proclaim Jesus’ death. We rejoice in his death, not because we believe he was a fraud or a lunatic, but because it is by his death, by his wounds, by his blood that we are healed. Sunday is coming!