Monday, December 28

²⁸After this Jesus, realizing that by this time everything was completed, said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty!” ²⁹A jar full of sour wine was there, so they put a sponge soaked in sour wine on a branch of hyssop and lifted it to his mouth. ³⁰When he had received the sour wine, Jesus said, “It is completed!” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

³¹Then because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not stay on the crosses on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was an especially important one), the Jewish leaders asked Pilate to have the victims’ legs broken and the bodies taken down. ³²So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two men who had been crucified with Jesus, first the one and then the other. ³³But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. ³⁴But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water flowed out immediately. ³⁵And the person who saw it has testified (and his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth), so that you also may believe. ³⁶For these things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled, “Not a bone of his will be broken.” ³⁷And again another scripture says, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced.”

³⁸After this, Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus (but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders), asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission, so he went and took the body away. ³⁹Nicodemus, the man who had previously come to Jesus at night, accompanied Joseph, carrying a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about 75 pounds. ⁴⁰Then they took Jesus’ body and wrapped it, with the aromatic spices, in strips of linen cloth according to Jewish burial customs. ⁴¹Now at the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden was a new tomb where no one had yet been buried. ⁴²And so, because it was the Jewish day of preparation and the tomb was nearby, they placed Jesus’ body there.

¹Now very early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been moved away from the entrance. ²So she went running to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out to go to the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down and saw the strips of linen cloth lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter, who had been following him, arrived and went right into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen cloth lying there, ⁷and the face cloth, which had been around Jesus’ head, not lying with the strips of linen cloth but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, came in, and he saw and believed. ⁹(For they did not yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead.)

¹⁰So the disciples went back to their homes.