Surface Tension: Waiting It Out

Behind me as I write, the clock on my living room wall ticks loudly in the stillness. My children are all sleeping, my husband, too. I'm the early bird (though I prefer to skip the worm, unless the 'worm' is Nutella on homemade bread with a freshly-brewed mug of coffee. Now you know).

I digress. 

That ticking clock reminds me of bated breath. As I listen to the passing seconds, I think of the moment when I dive beneath the waters of a swimming pool. The breath in my lungs is on pause. The normal inflow and outflow of oxygen and carbon dioxide is still. The whole process sits motionless inside my ribcage... waiting. Waiting.

Waiting until I break the surface.

...

Somewhere today, there is a clock that loudly ticks out the passing seconds into a still room.

Somewhere today, there is an hourglass that drops grains of sand in a steady trickle through a narrow, constricting aperture.

Somewhere today, the sun will move a tree's shadow from the west to the east as it traverses across the great heavenly dome.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

...

The centurion stares up at the still body of this Man called Jesus. He says: "Surely, this Man was the Son of God." 

The women who have traveled from Galilee with Jesus and His disciples watch from a distance. Day is dying, evening will be upon them, and the Sabbath cannot be broken.

Troubled, knowing they should find a place to stay, to rest, to somehow grieve...

Instead they watch. And wait. And pray...

Helpless lips and tongues form the plea. What words can they say? There are none; they can only pray to the One Who holds their grief. Adonai...

...

Joseph, a man from the small village of Arimathea, a member of the Council of the Sanhedrin, and a disciple of Jesus (there's so much there!) approaches Pilate and asks for the body of Jesus. 

Pilate is surprised. Crucifixion isn't supposed to go so quickly. It's a fastidiously excruciating punishment that exacts pain from its victims for hours and hours -- and sometimes days -- before death occurs. Jesus has no business dying so quickly.

He sends for the centurion who had witnessed Jesus' death. "Is it true?" he asks. The echo of his earlier question to Jesus rings inside his head: What is truth? "Is the man dead?"

The centurion nods. He's witnessed everything, moment by moment as it has gone down: the darkness covering the land, the mighty last words of the Man on the cross, the earthquake... He knows Pilate has done an unjust deed in handing over an innocent man. 

Yes, He's dead. The centurion himself has thrust a spear into the fluid-filled pericardium surrounding the physical heart of Jesus, and blood and water has flowed down the shaft of the weapon.

Dead. 

Dead.

Dead.

...

Joseph of Arimathea pushes aside the danger, suspicion, and judgment he faces from his colleagues in the Sanhedrin. He and Nicodemus, who had earlier visited Jesus at night out of fear of that same Sanhedrin, take Jesus' body and wrap it in linen. They pack the body with seventy-five pounds of spices, and they carry Him to Joseph's own tomb.

Joseph, who is likely nearing his life's end as he makes preparations for his own funeral.
Joseph, who has likely made his home in Jerusalem to dedicate his life to the study and instruction of Moses' law.
Joseph, who meets Jesus... and cannot resist the message this Man preaches.

Joseph hears the silent beat of time as he hurries to his own tomb, no longer carved for him. He will need to purchase another one now. His current one will be occupied.

Occupied by the Man he'd thought genuine. True. Different. 

He'll deal with the disappointment later.

At another hour. Another minute.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

...

The night is a long one for many of the witnesses, including the chief priests and the Pharisees. Horror of horrors, what if the Man's miscreant disciples steal His body and declare Him alive again? Jesus had prophesied that He would rise again in three days. What if He has instructed His disciples to steal His body to make it look as though He were telling the truth?

On Sabbath morning (Saturday), the chief priests and the Pharisees do something very un-chief priest-like and un-Pharisee-like. They ignore all the laws they themselves enforce with rigid precision and lack of grace... and they approach Pilate and request a guard for the tomb where Joseph has laid the body.

They do something many of us are guilty of today: They mix religion... with nationalism. They declare their obedience to God (by keeping the "Blasphemer" under the ground) and use the power of Rome (the ruling government) to enforce their work. All hail to God, they seem to say in the same breath with All hail to Caesar.

They take the Roman guard with them to the garden tomb, they set Caesar's seal on the stone that covers the entrance, and they post a guard.

They do everything humanly possible to make sure the Son of God stays as dead as they can make Him.

But thank God that humanly is not enough. Not nearly enough.

...

Because in the heavenly realms, in the spiritual world where the forces of heaven wage war against the forces of hell...

Things are happening. 

The Scriptures give us no transcribed record of the direct conflict: we only get hints of it in places like Genesis 3:15 where Satan "strikes His heel," but Christ "crushes his head."

The countdown begins. 

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

...

Dawn begins to creep over the edge of the eastern horizon. The stars slowly blink out one by one by one. The sky turns from inky blackness to a deep indigo blue to pearlescent gray.

The brilliant sun makes its way toward the breaking point, that roiling surface tension where it pulls free of the horizon in a cataclysmic silent victory. 

The brilliant Son makes His way toward the breaking point, that roiling surface tension where He pulls free of the chains of death in a cataclysmic silent victory.

It hasn't come yet. He hasn't come yet.

But... with the inevitability of time...

It's coming...

He's coming...

Light is on its way.