Finding Ourselves in Holy Week: Part 4
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 am sharing 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.
Catch up on parts 1, 2 & 3 here:
Chapter 5 - Continued:
Life in the In-Between of Holy Saturday
Singing a New Song
As Christians we thrive on the joy of Easter. We somehow expect that we are supposed to be “happy” all the time because we have the love of Jesus way down in our hearts. In reality, we all face seasons in life when we cannot sing a joyful song. Like the Israelites by the rivers of Babylon, we feel as if our captors are taunting us to sing praises to the Lord while they laugh in the face of our suffering (Ps. 137). When the tragedy of Good Friday comes crashing into our Easter joy, how can we sing? Kate Bowler describes it this way:
I used to think that my life was like a melody, but then when the crisis hit, everything just stopped.
I couldn’t find the tune, couldn’t put it together, couldn’t make it sound just like before.
We live with constant reminders that there is something seriously wrong in this world, our own Paradise Lost. Cells that multiply when they shouldn’t. Senseless violence. Gas leak explosions. Fractured relationships. As the Canadian poet (and national treasure) Leonard Cohen said, “There is a crack in everything…”
I started wondering what if this huge tragic thing that has crashed into my life has set in motion a deeper resonance, sounding together with the old melody? What if I can go on singing, but with a new intensity that rings truer somehow?
Since then I have been thinking about joy as something we live into. In all that we live with. And precisely because of what we live with.[i]
The songs we compose and sing on Saturday are songs of lament and joy, songs of despair and hope, songs of things that have been, things that are, and things that are yet to come. They are the songs born not out of Sunday’s fairy-tale world “where everything is sweetness and light,” nor do they reduce us to Friday’s desperate shadow of faith which can “barely help make life bearable until death ends it.”[ii] As we sit in the silence of Saturday bringing the full weight of our experience into God’s presence, the Holy Spirit communicates a deeper truth within us. God does not erase the pain of our reality by promising an easy future. Nor does God leave us stuck in our despair. Saturday is the place where the crucifixion and the resurrection meet, and we discover that joy and hope are possible only because we are haunted and driven toward new possibilities that only God can dream.
Sharing a Blessing
Rev. Vernon Gordon says that people don’t share vision, they share experience.[iii] Saturday is a day for sharing our experiences. We don’t know what the disciples did on Saturday. Perhaps that is one reason we are so quick to skip over it entirely, as if it does not matter. But it does.
It matters because it was the Sabbath Day. If nothing else, we know those who followed Jesus honored it as such. Luke tells us that a man named Joseph who was a member of the council made sure the body was taken down and buried before the day of Preparation had ended. The women saw Jesus’ body in the tomb and then they all “rested on the Sabbath in keeping with the commandment” (Lk. 23:50-56). In the middle of the most traumatic weekend of their lives, the disciples practiced the sacred rhythm they had honored since they were children. They rested. They sat silently in the stillness with God. They sang the old songs from the Psalms and likely heard them in new ways as they thought about Jesus’s prayer from the cross.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the
words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.
Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel
- Psalm 22
On Saturday they lived with the tension between agony and hope, between doubt and faith, between death and resurrection. I can’t help but wonder if, after spending much of the day in silence, at least some of the disciples may have gathered for supper to share their experience. I imagine the sounds of cutlery hitting their plates and the occasional gulp of wine echoing loudly through the silence. Perhaps a few words of comfort or questions about what to do next, but more than anything, might they have communicated their shared experience by simply be present with one another around the table. An occasional look or a nod likely said more than could be written on a thousand scrolls.
The trauma of Friday is past. The joy of Sunday has not yet come. It is on the in between days like Saturday that the church should be at her best. On such days it does no good to wallow in the pain. Neither can we ignore or diminish it by putting on our happy Easter faces. These are the days we must embody the message of Holy Saturday. We must enter the mystery between the already and the not yet. We must be still and wait in the silence. We must rest in God’s presence. We must learn to sing a new song. And we must share a blessing with one another. As Jan Richardson writes:
Do not tell me there will be a blessing in the breaking, that it will ever be a grace to wake into this life so altered, this world so without.
Do not tell me of the blessing that will come in the absence.
Do not tell me that what does not kill me will make me strong or that God will not send me more than I can bear.
Do not tell me this will make me more compassionate, more loving, more holy.
Do not tell me this will make me more grateful for what I had.
Do not tell me I was lucky.
Do not even tell me there will be a blessing.
Give me instead the blessing of breathing with me. Give me instead the blessing of sitting with me when you cannot think of what to say.[iv]
“There is a peace that settles us when we look steadily at the truth, not pretending life is something it is not.”[v] This is the blessing we share on Saturday.
The Star Shines on Saturday
Reflecting on the Magi in Matthew 2, David Crabtree asks, “Are you following the star or the empire?”[vi] Good Friday exposes the way of the empire. It is a way driven by the fear of death and the unbridled passion for absolute power and control at any cost. We reject this path of darkness and turn wholeheartedly to the light of the Easter sunrise.
Yet to our surprise, we do not find the Star on Easter either. On Easter, the eternal sun has already risen and there is no need for a star. Easter points us to the New Heaven and the New earth, where there is no more death and no more night (Rev. 21:4, 23). We do not need a star to guide us when all is light. We need the star to guide us through the night.
On Friday the star is hidden by the cloud of hopelessness. On Sunday, the star is washed out by the light of the sun. But on Saturday, the day in which we live and breathe on this earth, we must follow the star. We must point others to the star. On Saturday we learn to walk together in the dark, trusting that one day, this star will lead us to the dawn.
Saturday is indeed a holy day. Saturday is a thin place. Saturday is the sacred space in which we live.
For further reflection…
Reflect on a time when Easter joy simply felt out of reach, when you sat by the rivers of Babylon wondering if you could ever sing God’s songs again. What did you need most in that time? If that time is in the present, what do you need most right now?
How do you think the silence and waiting of Saturday impacted the disciple’s experience of Easter morning?
How has the space between Good Friday and Easter shaped your own experience of Resurrection?
Is the star leading you in God’s path blacked out by the darkness of Good Friday or washed out by the radiant light of Easter? What do you need to pay closer attention to that stars leading in your everyday life?
As these Holy Week reflections come to a close, what is God’s invitation to you as you seek to live into the rythms of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday in your own life?
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] “Living into Easter Joy,” Kate Bowler, April 23, 2019, https://katebowler.com/living-into-easter-joy/.
[ii] Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth, 82, 96.
[iii] Vernon Gordon, “D.Min 904: Communication, Inspiring and Guiding Change” (Lecture, Duke Divinity School, January 10, 2020).
[iv] Jan Richardson, “The Blessing You Should Not Tell Me.” Cited at “When You’re Not Feeling Very #Blessed,” Kate Bowler, February 20, 2020, https://katebowler.com/the-cure-for-sorrow/.
[v] “When You’re Not Feeling Very #Blessed.”
[vi] Crabtree, “D.Min 904: Communication, Inspiring and Guiding Change” (2020).