The women wept, the soldiers gambled, one prisoner mocked, the other pleaded. The centurion acknowledged that they’d killed the king.

The next day was dark. Not the darkness that had come with Jesus’ death, the sun rose as usual. But the light had gone.

The night before Jesus’ death he prayed in the garden and asked his father to take this cup from him, but only if that was his will. He didn’t want to go through with this, he wondered if there was another way, a way out, a way that could avoid the darkness. But the darkness was already around him. He had already been betrayed, the authorities had decided once and for all that this menace, this man who claimed to be from God should be silenced.

And for a day he was.

And so are the scriptures, we can only guess what went on during that passover Sabbath. The religious leaders were so keen to protect their purity on the Sabbath that they hurried him off the cross and into the pristine tomb donated for his body. They wanted this finished so they could enjoy their festival without blood on their hands.

I suspect the women cried and the men were silent. I suspect some were in shock, others angry, most afraid for their lives. Because the Son of God they had came to believe in was now gone. The one they had placed their trust in was no longer there. The distance was impenetrable.

The distance from God that they felt that day. The distance from God that Jesus experienced as he was torn away from the father he had known from the start. The distance that is reflected into this day when we call on God to answer our prays and all we get is silence.

Unanswered prayer is nothing new. When Jesus prayed in the garden, if this be your will, he was not pretending to be more spiritual than he was. He wanted to avoid having to die. How often we want to avoid things. We pray to God for something and he seems to reject our pleas. We ask God for what we want and he leaves us to our own.

How often we want to avoid having to die. We cling to ourself. We hold onto the life we know.

Because we do not think that God is there, we think that he has left us, ignored us, rejected us. We think that we are not good enough to come to him, and he is too far away to reach out to us. We think the distance is unreachable.

We think that the king has gone.

Things started to get pretty intense at this point Jesus is ducking and diving to keep out of the way of the authorities. He calls his disciples together for dinner the day before passover is to begin, it must be important they think we’ll be celebrating the festival all week.

The atmosphere is different. It is quieter, it is darker.

Jesus begins to talk and he’s got a few screws loose. The disciples really thought this was going to be an intense strategy session, planning the operation for the next week. If ever there was a time to usurp authority then this was it, Jerusalem was thronging with people, they were ready to rise up in rebellion.

Because if he is king this is what he should do. He should claim what is rightfully his. And the Peter was sure that the others would help him achieve this on his Lord’s behalf. Because kings rule.

They don’t serve.

So Jesus stood up from the table, he left his place, he took the water – maybe they thought he was going to turn it into wine again – and he began to wash their feet.

Peter was furious, who did he think he was? That was the job of a servant, how could he possibly follow a man who with a towel wrapped around him started scrubbing away at people’s feet. He might as well strip off altogether and let him wash his hands and head as well.

This king did things differently, he was a servant before all else.

Politicians often talk about serving the people, in the military you serve in the armed forces. Serving is not always what it seems. Sometimes serving is actually just a power play. Or to demonstrate that you are one of the people, that you recognise there struggles and their difficulties. In churches in the twenty first century washing people’s feet is a symbol of leadership, it is still a service, and really a particularly pleasant thing to do, but in echoing the actions of Jesus as a Servant King they are reinforcing their position as a leader.

Funny. The upside down kingdom. How to be first we must first be last.

After Jesus had called Judas out on his betrayal the disciples and Jesus walked through the streets. And they talked, or more to the point Jesus talked and the disciples listened on in varying stated of puzzlement. The disciples were worried, as the evening drew in the talk was also getting dark. Jesus said he was going, but where? He said he would be gone a little while, what’s a little while?

Eventually the pictures gave way to clarity. And they started to understand. That he knows all things. That he came from God. And that the father loves us.

This king, this king who washes feet has come to do away with the religious figures that say they are the only way to God. This king says we get to go straight there. This servant king.

I’m reposting a series I wrote last year for Holy Week, I suggest you start with Sunday’s and Monday’s posts if you’re just joining.

It had begun at a wedding, his mum of all people had let the cat out of the bag. He didn’t think it was quite time to start his campaign. But a wedding without wine was a pretty big problem. He wanted people to know that under his rule there would be plenty of joy and celebration.

His followers believed he was the special one. It had taken a while for them to be convinced of his cause; to begin with most of them had just come along on the jaunt for a bit of fun. It made a pleasant change from catching fish. But after a few years of following him around, day in day out, through days when the crowds threatened to overwhelm, and the days when they turned away to find something else to occupy their minds.

They stood with him as he brought healing to the hurting, they were astonished as he shook off the social norms and spoke to a woman alone, a Samaritan woman, and not a respectable one at that. But she had proved a great evangelist for the cause, running back into the village and bringing others back to see him. They had seen him cry when he heard the news of Lazarus’s death, but then preceded to say he was only asleep, and called him out of the tomb, it was like seeing a mummy walk.

It was not all simple for the disciples. Some of the things he said were really confusing, when they wanted an answer to their questions he told them a story or asked them more questions. But it was captivating.

He threw off the constraints that society tried to impose. It was as though he had another rule to live by. Normally when people wanted to climb up the social ladder they were very careful who they spoke to, and even more aware who they ate dinner with. Jesus wasn’t like that, he called out to Zacchaeus the tax collector who had climbed up a tree to catch a peek and proceeded to sit down and eat with him, in his house.

And Mary and the incident with the perfume. It was rather embarrassing really. They did their best to keep up with Jesus and the way he operated, but each time they thought they had the measure of him he turned things upside down. Here was another woman any self respecting Jew would stay away from but Jesus counted her and her sister Martha as some of his closest friends. Her behaviour was scandalous: she poured good perfume, that could have been sold to care for the poor, all over Jesus’ feet and then, to make matters worse, undid her hair to rub it in.

But through it all these disciples stuck with Jesus. Despite not really understanding his grand plan, despite struggling with the way he courted controversy with the religious leaders, and courted those no one else did.

When most of the fair weather followers had deserted Jesus they stayed. They saw that he was Christ the Lord. And that he was the only show in town.

Part 2 of a series for Holy Week, if you’re just starting it might help to read yesterday’s post

The crowds who watched Jesus enter Jerusalem were puzzled. He came on a donkey, he avoided the crowds. When they started to fawn all over him he stood up and talked in such a bizarre manner that most of them turned and left. Yet the authorities were worried, the chief priests were looking for a charge to lay against him, they even went after the man he raised from the dead.

Surely he was just doing all of this to increase the intrigue? Build up an underground following that would burst out at the crucial moment and declare him as their king. Some of them had seen him speak, most of them had heard the stories, the loaves multiplied, the blind given sight. This was the hope that they needed.

They were ready to answer his call. The religious authorities thought they could control everything, they were particularly keen on making sure no one threatened their cherished position as the underlings of the Roman Empire. There was this sense of anticipation around Jerusalem that things were about to change.

This Jesus had been wondering around for the past few years, he’d covered a lot of ground, after all building an insurgency in Judea called for a sophisticated retail politics operation. He’d made the calls, formed his exploratory committee, dubbed ‘the disciples’. He’d shook a lot of hands, kissed a lot of babies, grabbed some attention with carefully timed and brilliantly executed PR stunts. He’d commissioned field directors for his core constituencies and sent them out on practice runs to act as his operatives. They were even doing some surrogate media spots, casting out the odd demon, healing the sick, making sure they were doing it in his name. All in all he had a pretty good grass roots operation under way.

Now he just needed to make his big splash. The big entrance. Declare his candidacy to the world.

This Jesus had made some pretty big claims as he’d travelled around. It seemed as though he reckoned he had some kind of special access to God. Who could forget the tales of when he was baptised in the River Jordan?

After years of oppression it was time for something new. After the tired rules of the Sadducees and the Pharisees maybe the time had come. The Essenes had fled to the hills and the Zealots were sharpening their swords. Here was a king for the post-priesthood era of politics.

He could unite the factions, he could transcend their partisan differences. He was from the line of David but raised in the home of a carpenter. Here was the king to lead the revolution, no wonder the crowds had lined the streets and laid down their palm leaves.

They didn’t quite get everything he said, some of it just went straight over their heads. But they saw something, they felt it when he spoke, the hairs on their forearms started to rise.

This one was special. And he was here, they thought, they hoped, ready to lead their revolution.

He is a revolutionary king.