It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon but darkness had spread over Jerusalem like a thick cloud. The streets were hushed. Just hours ago they had been roiling with the fury of thousands of raised voices calling for blood.
All that was before they had watched him die. The undulating mob, the dour-faced priests and the stoic Roman soldiers had all been carried along on a tide of blood lust and rage that had saturated the sticky air around them. Like ravenous wolves they bared their teeth at the bloodied young man who staggered along the cobbled streets.
Jesus of Nazareth.
Only days before they had waved palm branches and hailed him as their king. Now they were ready to rip him to shreds with their bare hands. If he was their king he would never have allowed the Romans to capture him. No king of theirs would ever concede defeat so readily.
They would have followed him to the ends of the earth if he had wielded his power to secure their triumph over the Romans. Now they just wanted him dead. Like any other mob they were fickle, foolish and driven by emotions that they couldn’t decipher but were desperate to burn off.
When they reached Calvary they stood in quivering knots along the craggy hillside and watched him die. They had seen men die on Roman crosses before. They knew the effect that the excruciating pain and abject humiliation could have on a man.
But as they watched Jesus struggle for breath they realised there was something different about him. He wasn’t just another condemned Jew splayed out on a Roman cross. He was more than that. They had seen men die on Roman crosses before but none of them died with the same dignity or composure.
If watching Jesus live had captivated this mob, watching him die unsettled them.
What the Jewish mob couldn’t verbalise the stunned Roman solider articulated. “Surely this man was the Son of God” he breathed.
In death as in life Jesus commanded both reverence and worship.
When he finally breathed his last the ground shook and the sky cracked with thunder. The fury of the mob dissipated on a gasp of fear and the city was hushed.
Who was this man?
Soon after Jesus died, Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus quietly made their way to Pilate and secured his permission to take possession of the body. Setting a tall ladder against the rough hewn cross, Joseph climbed up to where Jesus hung and pried out the nails in his lands. Below him Nicodemus took out the long nail that held his feet secure. They wrapped his body in a shroud and took it away to be embalmed with spices they had specially prepared.
Joseph then led the way to his own personal burial plot, a cave with a heavy stone over its mouth. As they laid him inside the sepulchre perhaps their minds went to Lazarus, who had been buried in a similar cave and resurrected just four days after he had died. But the One who had called Lazarus from the tomb was now being placed in one. Who would raise him from the dead?
As they rolled the stone over the mouth of the cave, they probably felt a sense of finality. Jesus had raised the dead. There was no one to raise Him.
As a precaution against theft and wild stories of resurrection the priests persuaded Pilate to set a guard of Roman soldiers to watch the tomb.
