Today is the day of the great confusion. The day of silence. The day of frustration.
God had been working so clearly in their midst through the Jesus. He was working in ways that they had only read about in their scriptures. They read about how when the Messiah would come he would perform great miracles, like Moses, thereby demonstrating that God was with him.
How could it be that now he’s dead, just like that? It all happened so fast, so sudden. One day God was at work, and now he’s absent. The great silence. How were they to understand this?
They hid. They were afraid, frustrated because they weren’t able to bury him properly. Would they be next? Their hopes were so high, then suddenly dashed against the rocks in ruin. What now? Back to fishing?
How did they miss it? How is it that they so grossly misunderstood? Their misunderstanding was even evidenced in their actions on Sunday morning as we read about in Luke 24.
Jesus even foretold his death and resurrection, but they still missed it!
The question is, why?
Why were their first century messianic expectations so disoriented? After all, they had read the scriptures and the prophets about what to expect. He was to be the Davidic king. He was to be the Mosaic priest and prophet. He was to create a new covenant and usher in a new age of political dominance for Israel. What’s this death business all about?
You see, God’s plan for salvation through the death and resurrection of the king was so dramatically different from human thinking that no one could possibly conceive of this strategy for redemption. God’s plans, his thinking, and His great redemption transcends us. It’s greater than we can comprehend. This is why proof cannot always yield faith.
After all, is it not true that all experience death? We know of no one who comes back to life after being dead (even Lazarus eventually died again). There are no formerly dead people walking around? Death is just a part of human life. Death is just a part of being human. It makes us mortal. Death is death and we’re simply accustomed to that. For the human mind to capture the idea that death isn’t the end is, well, impossible. This concept never even entered their thinking.
This means that God’s redemption plan is bigger than our thinking (Hallelujah!). That’s one of the things that makes him God. He’s beyond us. His plan is greater. His plan and thoughts are transcendent. That’s what makes him able to offer something different, something set apart, something holy. He can break into human reality and offer something else. He represents another option for living.
But what makes the redemptive plan transcendent? What makes it so different?
Everyone was expecting for him to come down and pronounce judgment. Fire and brimstone. Pillars of salt, destruction, Lake of Fire stuff. The Jews understood that all these pagan Gentiles were filthy, dirty, unclean, and guilty. For that, they would suffer. For that, they would pay. According to the human way of the world, justice means eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. Revenge and justice go hand in hand. Destroy the guilty one.
The Trinity, however, lives by a different standard (Glory to God!). Rather than coming and calling to plague and judgment upon the world, he took on the judgment himself and offered forgiveness…
“Forgiveness? That’s a horrid idea! Those who made me suffer won’t pay?! How could this be?” Sounds like Jonah, right?
Rather than whipping humanity into shape with great hailstorm, fire from the sky, darkness and plague, weeping and gnashing of teeth, God took it upon him self and offered forgiveness. He offered a new start.
This is outside of human comprehension on two levels.
First, it’s outside of human comprehension in the sense that we don’t forgive. We make people pay.
Second, it’s outside of human comprehension in that we don’t know what it is to feel free from guilt. We walk around with the daily load of guilt hanging on our shoulders. The shadow of death looms heavy over our lives, even at the moment of our birth.
Jesus says, “No.” Jesus says, I forgive you. He removes the shadow of death. He redeems it.
The day is coming.
