I don’t think anyone would disagree with the statement that this is one the strangest Holy Weeks we have ever experienced—at least in my lifetime.  Once again, we have that harmonic convergence where the holy days of Passover overlap our own holy festival.  The amount of separation and loss being experienced by those apart from friends and family is palpable in the air.  And it’s amplified by the sight of empty churches and tabernacles across the country.  So I guess it’s no surprise that I am turning inward to make sense of not only COVID 19 but of the very mysteries of Easter.

To say that there are many aspects of the Easter story that are confounding to the modern mind would be putting it lightly.  Crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection, incarnation, assumption.  None of it makes “sense”.  In many ways, the notion of blind faith has to come into play.  But for me there has always been one mystery that is more confounding than the others.  That is simply, what three days are we talking about?

Ever since I was a child, I got caught up in the actual day count.  If Jesus died on Good Friday afternoon and then was resurrected on Easter Sunday morning, how do we get to three days?  At the outside, we are talking about forty hours between death and resurrection.  Yet every creed we recite mentions “three days”.

Of course, I am not the first to raise this conundrum.  Many theologians have proposed different reasons for the numerical discrepancy.  And the Bible itself does not state which specific day of the week Jesus died—the Bible only provides context about the Sabbath and the regulations that forced specific actions in the hours following Jesus’ death.  But here is the thing, aside from the important aspect of fulfilling the prophecies, the number of days is not what is important.  What is important, in addition to the resurrection, was that Jesus was fully separated from the light.  That experience alone would have be excruciating—whether it was for three minutes, or three hours or three days.

What we lose sight of when we worry about details like hours or days is that the complete isolation Jesus felt, the hell that he endured, was beyond comprehension.  None of us has ever experienced such a complete sense of isolation.  During my most acute depressive moments, I got a taste of what being removed from all sense of light must feel like.  When depression had taken over to the extent that I experienced, the very task of opening my eyes was overwhelming.  And even with my eyes open, the emotional darkness that surrounded me left me physically crying out for relief.  I know that there are many people who have experienced a similar sense of physical turmoil.  When it is so emotionally dark that I actually considered whether death would be a better option, I believe that I had just the smallest taste of what Jesus experienced.

And in those moments of darkness, time becomes meaningless.  Minutes stretch into hours, hours stretch into days and days stretch into what seems to be an eternity.  Jesus’ cry asking why he has been forsaken is something that becomes personal.  And that sense of hellish despair is not dependent on time.  It is all consuming.

So yes, the fulfillment of the prophecy is important.  Yes, the pain that Jesus endured is important.  Yes, the resurrection and all the followed is important.  Good Friday as a remembrance is important.  As is Easter.  What’s not important is how many hours comprised those three days.  What’s not important was whether the crucifixion took place on a Wednesday or a Friday.  What’s not important is our trying to put the world’s greatest mystery in a box so that our fallible human minds can make sense of it.

Good Friday is here.  Jesus’ isolation will make our everyday trials and tribulations seem like child’s play.  The really good and important news is that, like Jesus, we will all be lifted unto the light one day.  How joyful that celebration will be.