Living in the silence of Holy Saturday
Today is a mean solar day when nosotros do zippo. For those whose tradition takes them through a detailed re-enactment of the events of Passion Week, the vii days set out in the gospels (particularly Mark), this day is striking in its stillness. In Cosmic tradition, zero tin can be celebrated, the but exception beingness in the example of the ministry building at the moment of expiry. In the by and large Catholic Philippines, y'all are traditionally not allowed to get swimming (though a concession has been made for Sabbatum afternoon) and even television broadcasters limit their output.
All this is in response to the stark silence of the gospel accounts for this day. Mark'south gospel mentions it merely in retrospect ('When the Sabbath was over…' Mark 16.ane). In Matthew, information technology is the day when the temple baby-sit is despatched to the tomb, just nothing else happens (Matt 27.62–66). Luke explains for the sake of whatever non-Jewish readers the obligation to rest on the Sabbath, thus accounting for the silent day (Luke 23.56). John also includes a piece of work ('Jewish') of explanation, just doesn't actually tell us what he is explaining (not mentioning the Sabbath; John 19.42).
Like trying to 'encounter' a black hole, we have to infer from this nigh silence what that day must have meant for them, and we are offered ii hints. The first is the mention of 'door locked, for fear of theIudaioi' (John 20.19), best understood hither as 'Judaeans' or 'Jewish leaders'. This dramatic renewal move, which had gained a following especially in the n, but also had important allies in and around Jerusalem, including amongst the Pharisees, seemed to take been snuffed out. The shepherd had been struck down, and the sheep had been scattered; we might say, the motility had been effectively decapitated. If the leader had gone, so the inner circle would surely be adjacent. The second hint is the sound of disappointment in the voices of those walking—trudging, dragging their feet—along the Emmaus Route in Luke 24.19–21:
Jesus of Nazareth…was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;only we had hoped that he was the 1 who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the tertiary day since all this took identify…
You can almost hear in their words that their faces were 'downcast' (Luke 24.17). Their hope had been expressed from the earliest words of Luke'due south gospel, in both the Magnificat and the Benedictus, anticipating that this person would, indeed, be the ane to fulfil all their hopes. And yet those hopes had been cruelly and publicly dashed in the torture and execution of the one they had come to trust and hope in. (It is worth noting that, though Luke only refers to these two, they are unlikely to accept been on their own returning along the route from the festival; you can imagine them gesturing to the others in the pilgrim crowd when asking the ultimately ironic question 'Are yous the only company to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?' Luke 24.xviii)
And what must they all accept been thinking on the silent Sabbath, unable to distract themselves from their whirling thoughts by the distraction of activeness? How must fourth dimension have dragged without being able to immerse themselves in busyness? How many times did Peter remember once again the crowing of the cockerel that counted down the flimsiness of his resolve and delivery to Jesus, uttered vainly merely the evening before? And how did the others reflect on their feeble actions, gripped as they were by fear, leaving merely the women and the Beloved Disciple to witness shut at mitt the suffering and death of Jesus? How frequently did they rue the fact that they were non in that location when it counted? (To exist fair, the men amongst Jesus' followers had more to fright; his female followers were hardly going to be seen as a threat or picked out every bit a target.) Yes, they perhaps had the spark of promise in the later-remembered sayings of Jesus that 'on the third twenty-four hour period, I volition be raised'—merely these had not nonetheless been fanned into flame by the surprise of the empty tomb.
Nosotros do not know and we cannot tell what pain of regret they thought and felt—notwithstanding this Holy Sat of silence resonates with us, so much so that it has been claimed that 'We live in Holy Saturday', that this moment most conspicuously captures the reality of the Christian life. And the reason is that, despite all our hope, nosotros still live with disappointment and fright and failure, at times so much so that it threatens to overwhelm united states of america, and these things sear themselves on our memory.
I tin remember the time in my tardily teens when, after only coming to living faith two or three years before, I experienced a sense of spiritual darkness, as if the presence of God that had seemed and then tangible at kickoff had departed, only to render very gradually in the following years, and never in quite the aforementioned way as at that first flush of faith. I remember the person I travelled with on my gap year away telling me in no uncertain terms what a fraud and a failure I was—the calendar week before starting university—non actually the thing that you need when embarking on a new phase of life. I remember at the end of my first yr there sitting, sobbing, in the window seat of my college room, wondering what on earth I was doing at that place. I remember the words of my late male parent at my graduation, having got a two (i) in maths: 'You should take got a first!' (He was right, but it wasn't perchance the moment to hear that.) I retrieve being told that, because I had been recommended for ordination training two years before starting, and because I had accepted the invitation immediately to study for a PhD, and considering there was no national plan so my bishop refused to ordain me, that my recommendation for ordination had expired, and I would need to go through another discernment process. I remember the person who interviewed me request about my enquiry, and then reporting that I was so enthusiastic virtually that, he doubted my sense of call to ordination after all. I recollect not once, not twice, but iii times being blocked from date to what seemed, at the time, to be pregnant roles, mayhap illegally (in terms of process) only certainly unfairly. On the offset occasion I was made to look two hours in an adjacent room whilst I was existence discussed, and so faced a three-hour bulldoze through a rain-swept dark in which the rain on the windscreen seemed to match my tears of frustration and disappointment.
And at that place are other disappointments to call up too. Some of the disappointments that come to us seem to come entirely from without, that is, our own decisions do not contribute to what has happened to us. Only at that place are other times when our ain faults and failures contribute to the passage of events—yet that does not diminish our sense of disappointment and frustration. Even so I am very enlightened that any thwarting I take experienced pales in comparing with what others known to me have experienced.
I have not known the loss of a spouse, such as the tragic car accident that affected a onetime colleague, his young married woman existence killed as they were making preparations for moving house prior to his ordination. I take not known the premature expiry of a sibling, every bit take both a friend through academic circles with whom I accept shared rooms at conferences, and the person I volition be visiting later today. I take not known the loss of a son, as my brother has, in a tragic motorcycle blow. Nor am I afflicted with a life-long, debilitating illness, every bit another friend is. Knowing this puts my own disappointments into a much larger perspective.
And I am besides aware of how, mysteriously, God has used these disappointments to bring something new and life-giving to me and to others through these experiences. Out of my despair at university I heard God'due south call to ordination. Out of the disappointment of the offset failed job interview I found my preaching and pedagogy transformed. And I take ended upward now in a place which offers opportunities for fruitful ministry. I hesitate easily to apply this to the experience of others, since we all demand to make sense of disappointment in our own ways, but I accept seen the harsh climate of hard experience break open the soil of my life and God and so being able to constitute a seed which, in time, bears fruit—and which could not easily take come any other way.
At the beginning of Lent, the Church Times published a remarkable interview with Kate Bowler, a historian of the prosperity gospel movement in America. (I would cite from the article, only the Church Times website appears to be offline at the moment—perhaps in line with the silence of Holy Sabbatum!). Her analysis of the megachurches of Joel Osteen and others has acquired a particular poignancy equally she was (at the fourth dimension of the interview) suffering from Phase 4 cancer. Y'all might call back that she would exist unreservedly critical of the 'over-realised eschatology' of such churches, who obliterate real reflection on the suffering of Good Friday and the silence of Holy Sat in order to focus on the triumph of Easter Dominicus alone, and she is. But she is attentive enough to understand the reasons why people need such comfort and encouragement, and she notes that many Reformed churches (to which I would add other traditions as well) have an 'under-realised eschatology'. Exercise we never expect God to deed, to arbitrate, to answer prayer?
The reality is that, much equally the silence of Holy Saturday connects with some of our experience—and an important part which we must non trivialise, sideline or ignore—this silence does not have the concluding word. We certainly will have Holy Saturday experiences, but we practice non live in that first Holy Sat, because nosotros know that Easter Sunday followed, something that those beginning disciples did not so know. This tension between disappointment and hope is captured in Paul'south remarkable words to the Christians in Corinth:
Nosotros accept this treasure in jars of dirt to show that this all–surpassing ability is from God and not from the states. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, just non in despair; persecuted, but not abased; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the expiry of Jesus, then that the life of Jesus may too exist revealed in our torso. For we who are alive are always existence given over to death for Jesus' sake, then that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, expiry is at work in us, but life is at piece of work in you lot.
It is written: "I believed; therefore I take spoken." Since we have that aforementioned spirit of faith, we as well believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise u.s. with Jesus and nowadays u.s. with you to himself. All this is for your do good, so that the grace that is reaching more and more than people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.
Therefore we practice non lose heart. Though outwardly nosotros are wasting away, nonetheless inwardly nosotros are being renewed day past day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for usa an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our optics not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor 4.7–eighteen)
We need to wait during Holy Sat, recognising the demand to grieve in our frustration and disappointment. But we know that at that place is another day to come up, one whose reality already casts its lite in among the shadows of the nowadays. We exercise grieve, simply not as those without hope.
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