NOTES for Mat 27:45-66

By the standards of the ordinary flow of time, death on the cross came quickly, but can ordinary clocks measure the course of time in the sufferings of the cross, when every second stretches on endlessly?..

When almost all the disciples scattered and hid, those who formally were not counted among the closest disciples found themselves near the Teacher being executed. But how often steadfastness and courage are shown by people who, under ordinary circumstances, were not in view at all. There is something important, perhaps even prophetic, in the fact that on the day of Golgotha the women did not waver. From the beginnings of church history to our own day, we constantly see remarkable women servants of God who more than once defended the faith and preserved it in the hardest years.

Among those standing there we see the mother of the sons of Zebedee. Quite recently she had been naively interceding for her sons, but now the hour had come, and now she could see what the Teacher was to pass through and what He had asked the disciples not to turn away from. Now she, like other Christian women, must bear her own cross, unnoticed by those around her, but such a difficult cross of service at home and pain for her children.

In someone else's cave the earthly path of Christ began, and in someone else's burial cave it ended. The One who gave all of Himself to people took nothing for Himself. And those among people whom He called His own were facing bitter days and nights. It appears that few of the disciples remembered the Teacher's warnings about His Resurrection in those hours.