Holy Saturday

It's Saturday. The day between Good Friday and Easter. But there was a time where it was simply Saturday. There was no Easter yet, and the grief was fresh--heavy and real. The disciples didn't know what would happen on Sunday, and they were certainly feeling disoriented, disillusioned, and a multitude of emotions that come with grief.

What is interesting to me is that as Christians we don't really know what to do with Saturday. And even on Good Friday we tell everyone "death isn't the end of the story!!" We want to rush to the end of the story...we want to lessen the blow and rush to Easter. Why are we so uncomfortable with grief? What if we made room for the tension and entered into the space between?

And especially now. We are in a long drawn out "Holy Saturday" so to speak. That space between...we have experienced loss on so many levels as we had to cancel pretty much our whole April calendars. Everywhere we look, we are reminded of loss. Messy homes remind us that our kids are home all the time and we can't keep the house clean for very long. Spring break passes with no where to go because we have had to cancel vacations, and we can't leave the house to go anywhere but to buy groceries.

Loss.

Good Friday.

Grief.

And we don't know when our Sunday will come. And somedays we might even find ourselves wondering will there be a Sunday to follow all of this? Thankfully, history proves that Sunday will come. But none of us know when, or how, or what Sunday will mean. It certainly won't be as we predict. 

The disciples, and Jesus' mother Mary...they didn't know what would come next. After three years of doing everything with Jesus, the disciples must have felt lost, confused, disoriented, angry (especially at Judas), and heavy. How much sadness can one bear?

What will life look like for them now?

Did they turn to each other for comfort? Or did they find themselves so heavy with the weight of what they had witnessed that it was too unspeakable to even know how to talk about it with one another? 

And so for a whole day...for more than 24 hours the disciples, Mary, and so many others felt a grief that was beyond what they had imagined. This was not how the story was supposed to go.

I imagine Holy Saturday did not feel holy. So why do we call it Holy? What makes it sacred? Is grief not a sacred space to live in? I recently read an article by Christine Valters Paintner (article here) about threshold space...that space that is betwixt and between.  Christine writes: 

"Much of our lives are spent in Holy Saturday places but we spend so much energy resisting, longing for resolution and closure. Our practice this day is to really enter into the liminal zone, to be present to it with every cell of our being."

Friday marks the loss, Sunday marks the joy. But Saturday marks the deep grief between the two. The space between where the story is still unclear. It's as if time stands still.

And perhaps it is made holy when we allow ourselves to sit there in tension. If we do not have the tension, then it is merely a regular old Saturday. A ho hum Saturday. Because like so many have said on Good Friday. Yes, he died, but don't worry. He will come back to life on Sunday. So then everyone goes about life as normal on Saturday. The disciples would look at each other and laugh. Because they know the end of the story. Tomorrow Jesus will do his magic. He'll come out of the cave and his burial cloths and it will have been no big deal. Because they would be freed from the tension that grief creates.

But that's not how it went.

The disciples had no idea.

And we lose the holy in Holy Saturday when we do not allow ourselves to sit in the tension.

In a "normal" year (aka a non-covid year) we would fail to see the sacred space of Saturday as something relevant to sit in. But is there not an invitation to us this year to have the gift of grief and lament when we still do not know what resurrection will look like for us? Are we not also longing for life to return to normal? Are we not also crying out "how long O Lord?" Are we not heavy and disillusioned and disoriented in our own places of Holy Saturday? I know that this year, more than ever, I find Holy Saturday has gifts to offer my actual real life I am presently living. More than ever I am able to contemplate the place the disciples, his mother, friends and followers of Jesus found themselves on their Saturday. This year I am one who is grieving losses. I am one who is unsure what comes next. I am one who needs to cry and grieve. Will you sit with me in this place of tension on Holy Saturday? There are gifts awaiting for us as we sit with others who have grieved. As Christine says, life is full of Holy Saturdays. The joy of Easter will be more full for those who have grieved.