Eucharistic Meditation, Fifth Sunday of Easter

2 Kings 20:8-11: Now Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord the third day? And Isaiah said, This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that He has spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten steps or back ten steps? So Hezekiah answered, It is easy for the shadow to decline ten steps; no, but let the shadow turn backward ten steps. And Isaiah the prophet cried to the Lord, and He brought the shadow on the stairway back ten steps by which it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.

We’ve just been told that Hezekiah recovered from his sickness, and then he’s asking for a sign. What does he need a sign for? Isn’t the healing enough?

One way to handle this is to say that the verb “said” in verse 8 should be read as a pluperfect: “Hezekiah had said to Isaiah.” That would place the request for a sign before the healing. But if that’s what the narrator wanted to say, it would have been easy to put Hezekiah’s request for a sign before the healing.

A better answer is to say that Hezekiah wants a sign not to confirm that he will be healed, since he’s already healed. He wants a sign, as he says explicitly, that he will “ascend to the house of Yahweh the third day.” He’s been suffering from a form of skin disease, a boil, which would exclude him from the presence of Yahweh. Even after one is healed of a boil or other form of leprosy, he would normally have to go through an 8-day rite to be cleansed and re-qualified to enter the Lord’s presence. Isaiah has prophesied that the king will enter the house of the Lord ahead of schedule, and Hezekiah wants a sign to show that the Lord will accept him.

The sign is appropriate to this request: The Lord moves the shadow back ten steps on the stairway of Ahaz, demonstrating that Yahweh is Lord of time. He is the Lord who made the sun, moon, and stars; He is the Lord who can make the sun stand in the heavens while Joshua wins a battle; He is the Lord who can turn back the clock; He is the Lord who can do in three days what normally takes eight days, who can bring the end of the week into the middle of the week.

It is no accident that this passage refers twice to Hezekiah’s entrance to the temple of Yahweh on the “third day.” That should remind us of the resurrection of King Jesus from His deathbed on the third day, and His entry into the heavenly temple of God. But it should also remind us of all the other events that take place on the third day, or in the third month or in the third year. The third day is in the middle of a week, so a third-day judgment is a judgment that comes in the middle of things rather than at the end of things. A third-day resurrection is a resurrection that begins before the end, before the expected time of resurrection.

We are here because of what happened on the third day, because we have entered into the third day. How is it that we can come into the presence of God and feast before Him, when we have not yet been purified from our sins? How is it that we can enter His temple when we have just recovered from the plagues and boils of Egypt, and only just been cleansed from the death of leprosy? Don’t we have to wait until the end to enjoy the feast of the end? Don’t we have to be raised from the dead before we enjoy the feast of resurrection? What is the sign that we belong here at this table now?

There is no sign given except the sign of Jonah, the sign of death and resurrection, the sign of our risen king. This is the gospel, the good news of the third day. Only that sign gives us the confidence that we have a right to be here, at this meal that is the meal of the end of history, the wedding feast of the lamb, while we are still in the middle of history. That sign, the sign of the third day, gives us the right to be here, now, at the feast of the eighth day.