Finding Ourselves in Holy Week: Part 1
In my new book, When Every Space is Sacred, I make the case that Holy Saturday, the quiet space between Good Friday and Easter, is perhaps one of the most sacred spaces in the church calendar. This often overlooked and holy day provides a much needed space both for those who suffer from the ongoing trauma of Friday and for those who are disconnected from reality through an over-realized hope of Easter that we have not yet fully experienced in our everyday lives.
Over these few days from Maundy Thursday through Easter Sunday, I will share in parts the chapter on our need for Holy Saturday. May these reflections open you to a fresh awareness of God’s presence in each day of this Holy Week.
Chapter 5:
Life in the In-Between of Holy Saturday
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
Lamentations 3:25-26
The first “Word” spoken into the silence of eternity brought forth an explosion of light and life from the void of nothingness. This same “Word” becomes flesh in the person of Jesus (Jn. 1:1, 14). As his disciples, we must be living echoes of that Word which still has the power to cast out darkness, tear down walls, and build one another up as we speak life in the face of death. This Living Word is the Word of hope. It is the Word we call “Gospel” or Good News. It is the only Word that can save us not only from sin, but from ourselves and our self-destructive ways.
The Gospel of Matthew begins with the birth of Emmanuel, God with us, and ends with Jesus’ promise, “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt. 1:32, 28:20). The Gospel, or Good News, is simply this: “God is with us.” When we look at the whole of scripture and the whole of history, we often lose sight of this primary message. Our real-life experience begins in Genesis 3 when we eat the fruit in order to become like God, deciding for ourselves what is good and what is evil. We are born in exile with no memory of the Garden. Similarly, our story ends with Revelation 18, in a world that is crumbling around us like Fallen Babylon. Like the kings, the merchants, and the sea captains, we weep over all we have lost as we watch the waves wash away our castles of sand (Rev. 18:9, 11, 17-19; Mt. 7:26). In the hour of death, it seems nothing can last forever.
It often seems our story misses a few crucial chapters. We have forgotten Genesis 1-2, where God created humanity in the Divine image and declared that it was “very good” (Gen. 1:27-31). In forgetting our perfect relationship with God in Eden, we have also lost hope in Revelation 19-21, that Eden might truly be restored, and the Kingdom of Heaven might come down to consume all that is broken in our world (Rev. 21:1-3). This is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, Emmanuel. Just as God was with us in Eden, so God will be with us again. Jesus reminds us that God is not only the Alpha and Omega, the God of yesterday and tomorrow, but also the God of today. He is the one who was and IS and is to come (Rev. 4:8).
In this chapter, let us consider Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday as metaphors for the wide range of human experience, from suffering to despair to hope, or from death to grief to new life. When we fail to live and communicate the message of Emmanuel, the God who is with us in the in-between, we tend to get stuck on Good Friday or on Easter Sunday. It has been said that Christians can be so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good. It is equally possible to become so earthly minded that we can offer no hope of heaven. While we wrestle with the darkness of Good Friday and proclaim the hope of Easter, perhaps what the world needs most in this in-between time is the message of that often-forgotten in-between day: Holy Saturday.
The Hope of Easter Sunday
The Gospel is Good News. If it were not, why proclaim it at all? As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). This is the hope of Easter Sunday, that death does not have the last word. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). These are high and lofty words, speaking to the desperate hope that all of us carry in this broken world of darkness, death, and decay. Without such hope, humanity would crumble into an abyss of meaninglessness. Something deep within us clings to the idea of eternity. Even for the secularist, there is often a deep sense that there must be something more than this mortal life. As Julian Barnes writes, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.”[i]
Easter Sunday remains central to the Christian message. We are “Easter people.” But often this incredible hope of resurrection is too much to process. Even among Christian leaders, the resurrection is not always easy to accept. In 2002, United Methodist Bishop Joseph Sprague found himself at the center of a doctrinal controversy when he denied the bodily resurrection of Christ.[ii] In the same year, an article by religious correspondent Jonathan Petre estimated that two-thirds of clergy in the Church of England did not believe in the Resurrection.[iii]
While theologians continue to debate the nature of the resurrection, whether literal or metaphorical, two truths remain. First, resurrection is central to the Gospel regardless of the form it takes. Second, in a world scarred by the ever-present reality of death, the hope of resurrection remains out of reach for many people. We live in a period of history where God’s kingdom has already come, through the person of Jesus, and in which it has not yet been fully realized, as it will be in the New Jerusalem. When the church jumps straight to Easter without embracing Lent and Holy Week, we ignore this second truth. Resurrection may indeed be our hope, but too much emphasis on Easter without Good Friday leads to what Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun refer to as an “over realized already.”[iv] While it is true that the Kingdom of God is already present through Christ, an “over realized already” ignores or diminishes the parts of reality where the Kingdom is not yet fully realized. Pain, suffering, and injustice are pushed aside because they pale in comparison to the glory of the resurrection and eternity. Rather than sitting with people in their anguish or grief and actively working against oppression and evil in whatever forms they present themselves, we become passive and inadvertently make victims feel that if they just had more faith, all would be well because Jesus has conquered death.
Such over realization lends itself toward the Prosperity Gospel. Nothing is evil because “all things work together for the good” (Rom. 8:28). To explain away the bad things that happen in life, we inadvertently make God the author of sin and evil, as if everything that happens is in line with some perfect Divine plan. We quickly find ourselves making excuses for God or as Frederick Buechner says,
…trying to sell Christ as an answer that outshines all the other answers by talking up the shining side, by calling even the day of his death Good Friday when if it was good, it was only good after it was bad, the worst of all Fridays.[v]
When we do talk about the cross, it is often the kind of golden cross we wear around our necks. In transforming our crosses into perfectly polished symbols of life, we tend to forget that it is first an instrument intended for brutal executions. Most churches highlight the empty cross to remind us that God is not dead. As my colleague Dr. Kaiya Jennings says, “carrying a cross with blood and nails is risky business.”[vi] And so before we pick it up, we make sure Jesus is fully ascended into heaven to prepare our mansions. Then we clean off the blood, pull out the nails and sand down the rough edges to make sure no one gets even the slightest splinter from carrying this great symbol of God’s victory. No matter how much hope we may find in the empty cross, a cross without blood and nails ultimately has no power over death.
On the other hand, an “underrealized eschatology”, or too little emphasis on resurrection, may leave us stuck asking ourselves, “What if this is all there is?” or “What if this is as good as it gets?” Such concerns turn us inward and lead to constant battles for status and power. If this is it, we better find a way to be on top, or as James and John put it, to make sure we are sitting at Jesus’ right and left hand. On the other hand, those who find themselves in a position where status and power are not an option may lose hope altogether as they are crushed under the weight of injustice. When we under realize the power and hope of resurrection and its implications for our everyday lives, we find ourselves living as though every day is Good Friday instead of Easter. The best we can hope to do on such a day is to run and hide or deny Christ to save our own skin…
For further reflection…
Looking back over your life, do you find yourself leaning more toward the dark pessimism of Good Friday, the eternal optimism of Easter Sunday, or somewhere in the middle? Take some time to reflect on specific examples of each.
How does the idea that you were created good resonate with you? How does this idea impact your view of God and your understanding of sin?
Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, what does the resurrection mean in your life?
In what ways have you been hurt by constant expectations of hope and joy, whether internally or from others? What difficult emotions or griefs haunt you as a result of trying to stay positive all the time?
__________
For more on cultivating sacred space in your everyday life, check out my new book, When Every Space is Sacred, and open yourself to a deeper awareness of God’s presence in your life, in the church, and in every corner of this wondrous world.
Order your copy today!!
References
[i] James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 15.
[ii] “AFA Journal - UM Bishop Denies Essential Truths of Gospel,” AFA Journal, accessed March 23, 2020.
[iii] Jonathan Petre Correspondent Religion, “One Third of Clergy Do Not Believe in the Resurrection,” July 30, 2002, sec. News.
[iv] Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun, For the Life of the World: Theology That Makes a Difference. (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2019), 159.
[v] Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), 36.
[vi] Kaiya Jennings, during a class led by Gregory Jones, “D.Min 904: Communication, Inspiring and Guiding Change” (2020).