Several years ago, Andreas Köstenberger and Justin Taylor worked through the possible date of Jesus’s crucifixion, and they landed on April 3, AD 33. The interesting thing about that date, is that this year Good Friday also falls on April 3rd. The dates of the first and most important Easter week, then, could very well line up with our Palm Sunday on March 29th this Sunday, and then progress through this massively consequential week from March 29th to April 5th, the Sunday of all Sundays when Jesus was declared to be the Lord and Christ with his resurrection from the dead.
Regardless of the exact dates on the calendar, though, Easter week remains just what Köstenberger and Taylor call it in the sub-title to their book, The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived.
As we encourage revisiting the incarnation during Advent in December, this week is a great time of year to revisit these last days of Jesus’s earthly ministry and the beginning of his life as the resurrected Lord.
Jesus did not go quietly to the cross in a barely visible manner. Hardly! Rather, from the very public declaration of Palm Sunday to his daily encounters with the Jewish leaders to the Last Supper to his trial and crucifixion, his ministry in these last days fills our four Gospel accounts. Notice that about a third of each of the four Gospels is devoted to what happens from Palm Sunday to resurrection Sunday. If your Bible has the words of Jesus in red, these pages are filled with his teachings.
Jesus was likely born in 5 BC and did not die until AD 30 or even 33. But of these three dozen years of living and doing remarkable things, it is the eight days from Palm Sunday to Easter that demand far more attention and detail than all those other years. God is telling us something! We have just over one chapter in our Bibles dedicated to the 7 days of creation (six plus God’s Sabbath). But the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are even more important and so demand far more description.
Here is a brief summary of these last days with Bible readings connected to each of the days. I’ll use the Gospel of Mark, since it is fairly chronological through these days and includes material for each day.
Palm Sunday, March 29, AD 33
Reading: Mark 11:1–11
The Triumphal Entry begins this climactic week in Jesus’s ministry. Fittingly, it is a public and glorious acknowledgement that Jesus is none other than “he who comes in the name of the Lord” (11:9). This quotation from Psalm 118:26 celebrates Jesus as the expected Messiah. Rightly do the worshippers connect him to “the coming kingdom of our father David” (Mark 11:10). Yes, indeed. He is the Son of David, who will one day be acknowledged by all the world as “the King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev 19:16).
Monday, March 30
Reading: Mark 11:12–19
The next day brings about a serious rebuke to centuries of Jewish religion. There is the cursing of the fig tree: “May no one ever eat fruit from you again” (11:14). This seems out of place in Jesus’s ministry, until we connect it to the cleansing of the temple, which immediately follows. The Jews had erected a fruitless worship in their ornate temple, and Jesus’s cleansing would come as a massive judgment against it. What God had intended to be “a house of prayer,” these worshippers had made into “a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17). This fruitless worship would one day be cursed in the same way that the fig tree was. The temple would be destroyed in AD 70, a dramatic way of God speaking to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again” (11:14).
Then we read that, “when evening came they went out of the city” (Mark 11:19). The curtain closes on this final Monday before the cross.
Tuesday, March 31
Reading: Mark 11:20–13:37
This Tuesday is marked by seeing the cursed fig tree “as they passed by in the morning” (Mark 11:20). Christ’s word happened exactly as he spoke it. Then begins a day of much teaching, a lot of it fueled by “the chief priests and the scribes and the elders” who came to test Jesus and challenge his authority. His answers are brilliant, unimpeachable, concise, and perfect. The retorts of Jesus reveal his deity as much as his miracles.
He tells the parable of the tenants, who are ultimately killed by the owner of the vineyard when they kill his “beloved son” (12:6). The Jewish leaders confront him about whether it is right to pay taxes, and he gives the profound statement, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (12:17). He teaches on the two great commandments to love God and love your neighbor (12:28–34).
The poor widow who gives her “two small copper coins, which make a penny” is observed (12:41–44), a reminder that amidst whatever world events are happening—like Christ saving his people—God sees all that we do.
Finally on this remarkable Tuesday, Jesus teaches on the Mount of Olives about the events to come, the near-term when Rome destroys the temple in AD 70 but also about the great day of the Lord when Christ himself returns (13:3–36).
Wednesday, April 1
Reading: Mark 14:1–2; Luke 21:37–38; John 12:20–50
We don’t get a lot of detail about this Wednesday, though Luke tells us that “every day he was teaching in the temple, but at night he went out and lodged on the mount called Olivet” (Luke 21:37). Mark places an important timestamp on this moment, however: “It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread” (Mark 14:1). The crisis is building, and “the chief priests and the scribes” continue their plotting to “arrest” and “kill” Jesus (14:2). A portion of John 12 was added to fill out the reading for the day, a reading that includes Jesus saying, "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32).
Maundy Thursday, April 2
Reading: Mark 14:12–42
Mark opens his account of this Maundy Thursday by saying with tremendous foreshadowing, “And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb” (Mark 14:12). Paul will say a few decades later, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:7).
This Thursday is called “Maundy Thursday” because of Jesus’s teaching recorded in John, “A new commandment I give to you” (John 13:34). “New commandment” in Latin is mandatum novum, so the day is labelled for this final teaching of Jesus.
The disciples will prepare for the Passover meal, originally given to Israel to provide the blood required to save the firstborn of the household from the Angel of Death (Exod 12:22–23). For later generations, the killing of the Passover lambs would memorialize this act of deliverance from God’s wrath. This last Passover meal was to mark the definitive salvation from God’s wrath that occurred on the cross. We don’t mark this event with the Passover but with our regular taking of the Lord’s Supper, which Jesus inaugurated on this dark Thursday night (Mark 14:22–25).
The weight of the cross can be forgotten with our familiarity with it. Yet, Jesus’s triple prayer in Gethsemane reveals just how wrenching it would be: “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet, not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36, 41). The Son of God had endured all manner of hardships in his life of poverty and oppression, both from humanity and from the devil himself. But what he was about to experience was far greater. “This cup” of God’s wrath was his to drink, however.
Good Friday, April 3
Reading: Mark 14:43–15:47
The early hours of this Good Friday are the setting of the arrest of Jesus, likely occurring after midnight (Mark 14:43–50). There would be a kind of trial that night and early Friday morning, but it’s never clear throughout the proceedings whether they are putting Jesus on trial—or the true Jewish Messiah is putting his Jewish accusers on trial.
The disciples have their own trial as well. And they would all fail and be proven “guilty.” Peter the outspoken leader proved his inherent weakness by denying Jesus three times (14:66–72).
The day will dawn with another horrible miscarriage of justice. The judge in this case was Pontius Pilate, a “Procurator” or steward of Rome over Judea in AD 26–36. He would condemn Jesus to crucifixion and deliver the murderer Barabbas (Mark 15:6–15).
Then follows the crucifixion of the Son of God, both the greatest sin ever committed against another person and the greatest act of redemption the world has ever seen (Mark 15:16–39). It is here when Jesus bears God’s wrath for us definitively, never to be repeated. So complete is the act that “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (Mark 15:38). The way to the very presence of God is open now for God’s people.
Saturday, April 4
Reading: Matthew 27:62–66
Mark records nothing of this Saturday of quiet, but Matthew records a conspiracy by “the chief priests and the Pharisees” to make sure that the fame of Jesus dies with him. Their answer was to secure the tomb with a large stone and guards (Matt 27:62–66). The point was to prevent the disciples stealing the body and lying about the resurrection, an absurd idea that misses entirely that no reasonable person would risk their reputation, livelihood, and life for a lie like that.
Resurrection Sunday, April 5, AD 33
Reading: Mark 16:1–8; John 20:1–23
This Sunday of all Sundays gets an unexpected description in Mark. We are accustomed to thinking of the much longer narratives in Matthew and Luke and John. Mark, the earliest Gospel, was content to give us the key facts through the witness of the empty and the testimony of an angel. Yet, the key facts are nonetheless proclaimed: The tomb is empty, and truly, as the angel said, “He has risen; he is not here” (Mark 16:6). John, however, records the empty tomb but then meeting of Jesus and Mary earlier on Sunday and Jesus meeting with the disciples "on the evening of that day, the first day of the week" (John 20:19).
With his resurrection from the dead, Jesus is declared Lord and Christ (Act 2:36), the Son of God and not just the Son of David (Rom 1:3–4), the Prophet of God true in all he said and did (Matt 16:21), the Holy One who is the promised Messiah (Ps 16:8–11; Acts 2:24–28), and the source of salvation for all who trust in him (Rom 4:23–25).
Hallelujah!
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (1 Cor 15:3–5)
Amen.
Daniel