Holy Saturday: Life from Death

There was nothing especially uncommon about that week in Jerusalem. Jesus was not the first messiah to appear and gather followers. Jesus was not the first man to threaten the establishment of the Temple. Jesus was not the first rabble-rouser to be arrested by the Roman occupying force. Jesus was not the first man to be crucified, nor was he the last. Jesus was not the first person to die.

But sometime Saturday night, something extraordinary occurs.

Behind the heavy stone sealing the tomb, the Spirit is at work. When morning comes, the body of Jesus will be gone and his burial shroud neatly folded. What exactly occurs in the dark of the borrowed tomb we may never know or comprehend, but the result changes everything.

Death — once the end of everything — is no longer a barrier.
Death is vanquished.
Death is meaningless.

During the night, a spiritual calculus is performed. A single sacrifice pays for the accumulated sin of all humanity for all time and the slate is wiped clean. As Paul would later write to the Romans, "...We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."

Jesus overcomes the grave and death itself to free us from sin. I don't know how that math works. I don't know how the sacrifice of one man can liberate an entire species, but I am humbled to think that my soul is worth dying for. The mystery of that depth of love will forever captivate me with its beauty.