Welcome to Wednesday’s podcast. Our Bible reading today is Matthew 27:57-66, and we’ll be focusing on verse 62: “The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate.” Continuing our theme of ‘Who is Jesus?’ today we’ll be reflecting on Jesus – the One we Prepare for.

REFLECTION:

The great thing about the Bible is that it always has something new or relevant to say to us…..even when we read very familiar passages. I have read this passage about Joseph of Arimathea placing Jesus’ body in his tomb, rolling the stone in front of the entrance, and then Pilate ordering guards to be placed outside it, many times. However, v62 and the mention of Preparation Day leapt out at me for the first time, as I was reading and praying about this podcast.

As a person I think it is fair to say that I like to be organised. I don’t like leaving things to the last minute. I like writing lists and ticking things off them. I like things to be planned. I don’t like waking up on holiday and thinking ‘Ooh, what shall we do today?” I like to know what we are going to do before I go to bed. I definitely don’t like surprises. When we were dating, Alan flew back from America earlier than expected, and surprised me by picking me up from the train station as I got back from work. I was furious, and spent the walk home berating him, and then walked into my house and harangued my parents for colluding with him.

Whilst many of you are now questioning my sanity, and thinking about the amount of prayer that my poor husband needs, do stay with me……

Some of us will be procrastinators and some of us, like me, will be planners – but all of us are designed by God to be people who prepare.

Let’s unpack that idea a bit more:

In verse 62 we read about something called ‘Preparation Day.’  Preparation Day wasn’t actually one single day in the Jewish calendar, but the name given to the day before any Holy Day or Sabbath. To be able to keep the Sabbath or Holy Day properly, preparation would need to be made beforehand. Preparing in advance, and keeping the day itself free from work and other distractions, meant that on the Sabbath or festival day, Jewish people could engage with the real purpose of that time; and that was to rest and meet with God.

We may already know or understand about the Biblical principle of rest, but have we also understood that God wants us to prepare?

If we spend 6 days of our week with charging from the breakfast table, to the office, to the school run, to the ballet class, to bath time, to bed……then we can end up just falling into Sunday, or Christmas or Easter or Pentecost, and it is hard for these days to be times when we rest and meet with God, because our hearts and minds are focused elsewhere.

Are we unprepared to meet with God because everything that we are involved in or do on the other six days, makes that preparation impossible?

The rhythms, the spiritual disciplines of preparation and rest, marked the Jewish people out as different. And God intended it to be that way. His design and plan was that His people would prepare their hearts and minds to meet with God, and that the way they lived their lives would show others the way to Him.

However, when Jesus was here on earth, the people missed it, they weren’t prepared; they weren’t ready to meet with God Incarnate. The people weren’t prepared to recognise Jesus as the Messiah – their rescuer and their king. Their hearts and minds were too focused on other things to meet with God.

Is the same true of us? Do the rhythms of our lives mark us out as different and show others the way to Jesus?

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