14. Jesus is laid in the tomb

It is hard to imagine the Easter story without thinking of the resurrection, and often we teach the Good Friday message as if it was Easter Day. The Disciples and followers of Jesus, and his family, did not have the luxury of being able to skip to the end of the book. Good Friday is the day where all hope is lost. While Jesus remained alive on the cross, there was still some hope of a miracle. But, by the end of Good Friday, Jesus is dead. All hope is lost, and it becomes clear that Jesus is not the Messiah. The Disciples look and feel like fools. The strange and horrific events they had just experienced would still have been fresh and vivid. Saturday would have felt decidedly unholy for the Disciples, whilst the majority of people around them, including perhaps their family, were celebrating the festivities of Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. They were alone and abandoned, and all hope was gone... This is the Christian story, this is the Christian faith: Jesus dies. This is no pretence. Jesus is laid in a tomb. This is no fairytale. Death comes and death is faced … and death is defeated … but not on Good Friday or on the Saturday. Today we wait and contemplate the death of Jesus.