Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, March 30, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Stop here and dwell a moment. While this account neatly tees up the resurrection story (Joseph buried Jesus without anointing the body first, leaving it open to the necessity of the women coming to the tomb on the third day, once the Sabbath was over) we are not there yet.
Jesus is dead.
Not hiding out. Not pretending. Dead. The fully human man that was Jesus has ceased to breathe. His heart has stopped beating. His brain no longer functions. The fully divine God who was mysteriously and miraculously embodied in the person of Jesus was dead, too. It wasn’t as though the divine aspect of Jesus got to be transported safely to some other dimension. God—actual God—loved us so much that God would experience that which humans fear above all else in solidarity with us.
I have to believe that in that moment the very essence of reality was fundamentally altered. But we cannot know that yet. We are not there yet.
Today, let us dwell in subdued awe of what God gave up out of love for us.
How does it feel to fully acknowledge that God, in Jesus, died?
