The Redeemer and Risen Lord

At a meal in Bethany, Martha serves and Lazarus is among those at the table. In John 12:1–8, Mary anoints Jesus’s feet with costly ointment and wipes them with her hair. When the gift is criticized, Jesus receives it in connection with His approaching burial. John lets a household act of devotion stand beside the gathering weight of what is coming.

This Mary belongs to the household of Martha and Lazarus. Her gift takes place among people whose lives have already been touched by Jesus, and John preserves its fragrance, cost and reception. Love becomes a concrete act at a time when the meaning of His approaching death is not yet fully understood. The scene invites us to consider the care we can offer now, while a person is still before us, instead of waiting until every feeling can be perfectly explained.

At the Passover meal, Jesus speaks of His desire to eat with His apostles before His suffering. In Luke 22:14–20, He gives thanks, breaks bread and connects bread and cup with His body and blood. The actions take place before His arrest, giving the disciples a way to remember the sacrifice toward which He is moving.

The sacrament turns remembrance into something a community receives and practices. In Latter-day Saint worship, that remembrance continues with covenant promises and renewed attention to the Savior. The meal is not merely a farewell gathering; it belongs to His deliberate preparation of His followers. Reading it slowly can help us approach our own worship with greater awareness of whom we remember and why.

At the same meal, John 13:21–30 records Jesus speaking of betrayal and giving Judas a morsel. The disciples do not understand why Judas leaves. The small gesture belongs to an evening in which the Savior shares the table with His friends while facing the suffering ahead.

On the Mount of Olives, Jesus withdraws from His disciples and kneels in prayer. In Luke 22:39–46, He speaks openly of the cup before Him and submits His will to the Father. Luke records an angel strengthening Him and describes His agony, while His disciples sleep in sorrow. The scene gives us prayer within suffering, rather than a picture of suffering as effortless.

In Doctrine and Covenants 19:16–19, the Savior’s own words connect His suffering with the invitation to repent. Together the passages help us approach the Atonement with gratitude and reverence. We need not imagine that we can measure everything He endured to receive the help He offers. Nor should His submission be used to tell a hurting person to hide honest anguish: His prayer itself holds both the plea and the willing response.

Matthew 26:36–41 also records His return to the sleeping disciples. Their weakness and His invitation to watch and pray remain beside His solitary anguish, giving the garden account a deeply human setting.

Pilate questions Jesus about kingship. In John 18:33–38, Jesus distinguishes His kingdom from the world’s familiar contest for power and speaks about bearing witness to truth. Pilate’s questions take place within a trial whose consequences are deadly, so the exchange should not be detached from the vulnerability of the prisoner standing before him.

Jesus’s words turn attention from whether He can defeat an opponent by force to the nature of His mission. He does not abandon truth because political authority questions Him. This account also calls for care in how the Passion is told: responsibility belongs to the people and institutions described, never to Jewish people collectively. The Savior’s own Jewish life and the Gospel’s specific voices must remain visible.

As Jesus is led away, Simon of Cyrene is compelled to carry the cross behind Him. Luke 23:26–31 also describes people and women following in lamentation, and Jesus speaking to the women about what lies ahead. The road to the place of execution includes both forced participation and the grief of witnesses.

Luke leaves Simon’s inner response unrecorded, but gives his service a visible place on the road. A person arriving from the country suddenly bears a burden within the Savior’s suffering. As reflection, the encounter can help us examine how we respond when another person’s pain becomes impossible to keep at a distance. Compassion often begins with the concrete task before us, even when we have no complete explanation for what has happened.

John places Jesus’s mother and other women near the cross, with the disciple Jesus loves. In John 19:25–30, Jesus entrusts His mother and that disciple to one another. The passage then records His thirst, the completion of His work and His death. Human care remains present within the account of His sacrifice.

This moment does not lessen the suffering of the Crucifixion; it lets us see the Savior attending to a relationship within it. The Christian proclamation of His Atonement concerns His willing gift for the world, and the scene also keeps a mother and a disciple from disappearing into that broad statement. Reverent study can hold the universal reach of His redemption alongside the particular people at the cross.

Joseph of Arimathea asks Pilate for Jesus’s body. Nicodemus brings myrrh and aloes, and together they prepare the body with linen and spices. John 19:38–42 places the burial in a new tomb within a garden near the place of Crucifixion. These details give the hours after His death a quiet, concrete gravity.

Joseph of Arimathea is a different person from Joseph in the Nativity accounts. Nicodemus is identified here with the earlier nighttime visitor to Jesus. Their actions do not yet read like a triumphant Easter announcement; they perform the care that can be given to a body after death. Before moving to Resurrection, it is worth allowing this part of the story its silence and the faithful work of those present.

The disciples are startled when Jesus stands among them. In Luke 24:36–49, He invites them to see His hands and feet, speaks of flesh and bones, and eats food before them. He then opens their understanding of the scriptures and connects His suffering and rising with the message they are to carry.

Luke’s witness joins a real risen body with a renewed understanding of God’s purposes. Resurrection is more than the survival of an idea or the disciples keeping His memory alive. The same Jesus who died lives, and His followers are to become witnesses of repentance and forgiveness in His name. Their astonishment is part of the account; understanding grows as He teaches them what His victory means.

Before His Ascension, the disciples ask about the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. In Acts 1:4–11, Jesus turns them from a timetable to the power and witness they are to receive. They will testify near home and outward to the ends of the earth. A cloud receives Him, and heavenly messengers speak of His return.

The Ascension does not leave the disciples with only the task of watching the sky. The account places hope in His return beside a present commission. That combination still matters: we can await the Savior while attending to the people, responsibilities and opportunities for witness already before us. His promise does not authorize a predicted date; His instruction gives His followers useful work to do now.