The Silence of Saturday

It's Friday, but Sunday is a-comin'.

We hear that a lot on Good Friday, don't we?

We take time to contemplate the staggering cost of our sin as Jesus suffers and hangs on the cross. We shudder as the darkness rolls in and the earth heaves and the lone voice pierces the darkness, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" We stand aghast as our Saviour cries out, "It is finished!" and breathes his last breath. Head falls. Jaw slacks. Muscles sag. Flesh tears as the full weight of his body pulls on the nails. And ... silence. No more struggle. No last, heaving, ragged breath. Nothing. It is finished. His body is taken down and hastily wrapped and put in a borrowed tomb. There is a finality about the thud of the stone as it drops into place across the entrance of the grave.

But we, who know the end of the story, are not willing to linger there.

It's Friday, but Sunday is a-comin'! We tut the disciples for their lack of faith. "Jesus told them he'd rise again. They should have known!" So they, who had just watched their loved one be betrayed by a friend, tried, tortured, and killed, should have looked at each other and high-fived (in an appropriately-socially distanced manner) and said, "It's Friday, but Sunday is a-comin'"? Really?

It's Saturday, and Jesus is dead. His body is undergoing the indignity that happens to every body upon death. His body cools. His skin pales. His muscles stiffen. His cells begin to break down. But we don't want to linger there. Some of us are flinching from those words, emotionally recoiling at the thought of our Saviour's body decomposing. We're already planning Easter dinner. We dismiss the disciples' pain with our schoolmarm scolding. We cannot sit in the pain.

And yet, here we are. It's Saturday. And the whole world is sitting in pain.

There will be no Easter dinners this year. No joyous church services, where we cry out to each other, "He is risen! He is risen indeed!" No hugs. No family gatherings. Oh, we'll celebrate. After all, he is still risen. But our celebrations are muffled. They are, at best, bittersweet. A pall hangs over our world, and we are in pain.

Someone ought to tell us to smarten up. Snap out of it. Get over it. After all, we know the end of the story. Tut-tut! And some people are trying to do just that. Positive thinking, faith in God, trust in science and all of that. Let's name it and proclaim it and declare this disease done! Bright hope for tomorrow! Ignore the experts! Chin up! Keep calm and carry on! We cannot tolerate sitting in the pain. We cannot bear to linger in the loss.

And it's true -- we do have faith in God. We do have bright hope for tomorrow. We know that God is on the throne. Someday this will all be over. It will be something we look back on, not something we are living through.Tomorrow will come, it is true. This season will pass, it is true.

But today is not that day. Today, the loss continues.Today, it is Saturday.

It is a day to sit in the pain. It is a day to acknowledge the loss.

It is a day to grieve.

There is much to grieve. We grieve the loss of community -- Zoom meetings and FaceTime and Skype may be better than nothing, but they are a poor substitute for a warm hug, for a cuddle with grandkids or nieces and nephews. We grieve the loss of our sense of safety -- the world feels a far more frightening place now, and we feel so dreadfully alone. We grieve the loss of routines -- getting up, getting dressed, going to work, whatever the routine was, it has inevitably been changed. We grieve the loss of freedom -- remember the days when we could pop by the grocery store to pick up a bag of milk, and it wasn't, quite literally, a federal production? We grieve the loss of seeing faces, seeing smiles -- masks, while preventing us from "speaking moistly", make us strangers to each other. We grieve the loss of health, the days when a cough was just a cough. We grieve the loss of life, and when life is lost, we grieve the ability to grieve, together. Everything has become complicated. Everything has become difficult. Dreams have died. Weddings and funerals and milestone moments have been postponed. Loved ones are separated. Husbands and wives and children are living apart from each other in the same home because one of them is an essential worker. We grieve the loss of jobs and financial security and a sense that we knew what tomorrow would bring. We have much to grieve and we are a people in pain.

And today is a day to stop fighting , to sit there, to feel the pain, to grieve the losses, to cry out to our Abba that we are hurting and we are sad and we don't understand. No petitions for it to all be over quickly, no declarations of triumph, no rushing past the moment or trying to escape it in Netflix or food or silly memes or conspiracy theories or whatever other escapist behaviours we engage in because we cannot stand to feel the pain. None of that. We feel the pain. We bear the pain. Not because we don't believe that God is on the throne, but precisely because we know he is. We do not fear the pain because we know it will not lead to despair. We are able to grieve on Saturday because we know that Sunday is coming, but Sunday's coming must not short-circuit Saturday's grief.

So today, in the silence of Saturday, I am sitting still. It was Saturday, and Jesus was in the grave. Today is Saturday, and my life as I knew it is in the grave.

Today, in the silence of Saturday, I am sad.