Today is the day in between. Saturday. The day after Good Friday and the day before Easter. We don’t give much thought to this day as Christians. We think of Thursday more than we do this day. Thursday of course was the day we call the Last Supper. When Jesus and his disciples observed The Passover and shared the traditional meal.
Let’s set the stage for Saturday. It had been a roller coaster week for the people of Jerusalem more than two thousand years ago. Last Sunday Jesus had entered the city to shouts of Hosanna! His celebrity as a healer and foe to the corrupted leaders of the Jewish faith was at its height. The expectation as he entered Jerusalem was that he would overthrow Roman rule and set right the bureaucratic, oppressive temple leadership. This expectation was held by not only the Jewish people, but the disciples as well.
A few short days latter Jesus was arrested by the temple guards and then endured trials in front of the High Priest, King Herod, and finally the Roman ruler Pilate. In the end, the people of Jerusalem abandoned Jesus. Even called for his crucifixion. Why? Because their expectations were not met. He was supposed to miraculously defeat the Romans and take charge of the temple and restore Israel as a nation. Were their expectations not met or was it rather a case of misunderstanding? Definitely the latter. Jesus never promised to restore Israel, but to establish His kingdom. A kingdom he often explained was not of this world. Regardless, the people felt let down and showed their disappointment by forgetting everything he had done and spoke.
Then Friday came and Jesus was crucified on a cross, the custom for Rome to punish those who had defied the Emperor’s rule. Pilate actually did not believe Jesus should be put to death, but let it happen to appease the people in the city. To the best of our knowledge, the only disciple who was at the cross was John. The rest were hiding in fear that they too would be punished as Jesus’ followers. The day ended and Jesus body was placed in a tomb. It was done quickly because at sundown it would be the Jewish Sabbath and such work could not be performed on the holy day. The completion of Jesus’ burial was scheduled for Sunday.
So what happened between Friday and Sunday? We can’t know for sure but we can realize what it must have been like for the people who had believed Jesus was the Messiah. For some, they simply wrote him off as another fake and went on with their lives. Others may have been angry to let themselves be fooled by Jesus and vowed to never be taken in a gain. Still others were left confused. They still believed in Jesus at some level but could not reconcile that belief with what had happened on the cross.
And then there were the disciples. Holed up somewhere in the city in fear and in shock. For three years they had followed this man who they believed would make everything right. Now he was dead and they didn’t know what to believe. Never mind that he had told them several times, most recently in the last week, what would happen. He even told then not to despair as he would rise again. But they forgot that and hid. Hid from the Romans. Hid from the temple leaders. Hid from those they had preached too. And hid from their own reality that things did not go as they thought they would.
We do that often still today. We build up expectations for the future and become so enamored with what we hope will happen that we are unprepared for the realities of what does happen. Unprepared was what the disciples were. Jesus had tried for three years to prepare them for this day. And perhaps they would have been if they had truly listened to what they had been taught. Instead, they based their expectations of the Messiah on what the current culture taught. Rarely do our worldly expectations of God match His reality.
And so, there the eleven sat throughout the day on that Sabbath and feared, worried, and fretted. From the time Jesus was laid in the tomb until the Sunday morning He was discovered risen was about forty hours. Forty hours of what must have been excruciating pain for the disciples. Forty hours of uncertainty and confusion. Forty hours wondering if all they had believed had been a lie. 
If the eleven men who had been taught by Jesus for three years could have that much doubt through a difficult time, is it any wonder that we today have times of doubt when we go through tragedies? Times when hope is the smallest pinpoint of light that threatens to wink out and leave us alone and broken. Times when there seems no solution to our troubles. Times when we are at a loss to even process what is happening.
We all have these times in our lives. We all have the Saturdays in between. But, as the old saying goes, (with a slight alteration):
It’s Saturday, but Sunday’s coming!
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