Each year I find Holy Week pilgrimage is a bit different.  This year I have spent some time thinking about what happened between Good Friday and dawn on that First Easter Day.   What has touched you this year?  As I consider the possible feelings of Peter and John, and the women I wonder if any of this relates to your thoughts at this time.

We don’t know at what point Peter left the proceedings on Good Friday but we do know that he was sitting in the courtyard while Jesus was tried before the Sanhedrin.  He had denied knowing Jesus three times before Jesus was taken to Pilate, and he ‘ran away, weeping bitterly’.  I wonder where he went.  Maybe he just went back to his lodgings, to plan his journey home once the Sabbath was over.  No doubt he went over and over what had happened, asking himself how he could have denied that he knew Jesus.

Perhaps his wife and mother-in-law, whom Jesus had healed, were in Jerusalem, having travelled up for the Passover.  Probably they didn’t know what had happened overnight and so Peter would have had to fill them in with the awfulness of the situation.  Perhaps the women were able to point out that although of course he had been wrong to deny that he knew Jesus,  it was unlikely to have made any difference to Jesus’ fate if he had acknowledged that they knew each other?

What could Peter have done?

But more importantly how had it all gone wrong?

Why was Jesus on trial?

Judas‘ betrayal  was only possible because the authorities wanted to deal with Jesus the trouble maker.  So probably the family discussed all this and shed many tears for the man they had all known and loved.   Maybe they went into Jerusalem later on to join the crowds watching the crucifixion of three men, two murderers and Jesus whom Peter had identified as the Messiah several weeks before.

And what of the future?  Now that Jesus was gone presumably Peter would go back to being a fisherman.  But that would never be the same after his encounter with the Messiah.  Whatever Peter did on Good Friday, by sunset he would have been back in his lodgings, sharing the Sabbath with his family, or alone.  The Sabbath is not just about having a ‘day of rest’ but also about having a ‘Holy Day’, a time for a devout Jew to spend time with God, praying, studying and meditating. I wonder if Peter felt any sense of forgiveness as he did this.

It was a little while after Peter had identified Jesus as the Messiah that James and John had asked that they be given special places in Christ’s Kingdom.  Jesus told them then that they would have to suffer with him, but that even then he had no way of giving them what they had requested.  That was up to God the Father.  However it would seem that John at least meant it when he said that he would share in Christ’s sufferings.

On Good Friday, according to his Gospel, John was to be found at the foot of the Cross, and he was asked by Jesus to take care of his mother.  John and Mary were also far from home but it is reasonable to presume that when Jesus had died and his body was taken down from the Cross, John took Mary, probably to Mary’s lodgings.  It is normal for the bereaved to be looked after by friends, and so caring for Mary in this way would have not seemed unusual.

What did the future hold for John with his ‘new mother’?  Would they go to Nazareth where Mary had her home, or back to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where John lived? For John and Mary too the Sabbath was just beginning and perhaps as Mary wept for her son, she told John again the story of the Annunciation, Jesus’ birth, his childhood, and his ministry.  Maybe they looked at the prophecies about Jesus in their Bible, as they prayed to his Father and tried to make sense of it all.

Luke tells us that the women followed Joseph as he took Jesus’ body, so that they would know where his grave was.  Preparing a body for burial usually took some time but we know that it had to be rushed so that Jesus was in the tomb before the start of the Sabbath.  We do not know the names of all the women who were involved in preparing Jesus’ body for burial but it is likely that Mary and Martha were among them.  They lived in Bethany, just a short distance away from Jerusalem.  The women who loved him so much wanted him to be prepared for burial properly and probably went back there to get the spices ready to be used on the day after the Sabbath when it would no longer be taboo to touch a dead body.  Before setting off for Bethany they had to make sure they knew where to find the tomb.

On Good Friday Jesus would have been hastily wrapped in a shroud around his body, with a separate head cloth and had the embalming liquid of myrrh and aloes that Nicodemus had brought with him poured over him.  The women planned to unwrap the shroud and lovingly rub the oils and spices that they had prepared into the skin of the corpse.  It was a way they could show how much they loved him and could still care for him even after his death.  They may not have had time to finish preparing the spices before the Sabbath, but they rested all that day as required by the Law.  No doubt they talked about Jesus and the awful day of his crucifixion but they were also looking forward to doing something practical for their Lord.  When the Sabbath was over they finished their preparations and maybe went to bed early: they wanted to be at the tomb as dawn was breaking, just like today.

While we wait for the children to come back into church perhaps we can take a few more moments thinking about just how Jesus’ friends and disciples might have felt on the first Easter morning.  Bear these thoughts in mind as we listen to the Gospel reading from John.