The Night Before Easter

(I wrote this last year on Maundy Thursday.  As I reflect on Lent and Holy Week on this Holy Saturday I thought it would be good to post and edited version of it since I am still in many ways here)

The feet have been washed. The bread and the wine have been eaten. Jesus has been taken away…On Friday the church remembered the crucifixion of Jesus. For a while I have wondered if sometimes we fail to really grasp the meaning of Good Friday.  We know the end of the story. We know that even as we remember the death of Jesus in just a few days we will gather to celebrate his resurrection. However, over the past few years I have tried, on Good Friday, and this year more so, to put myself in the place of Jesus’ followers. If you do that it drastically changes your perspective.

How would you respond to the death of Jesus if you did not know he rose again? How would you feel if your leader and friend, one that you followed around for three years - you saw him heal the sick and raise the dead - you heard him teach. You watched him challenge the Pharisees, Herod, and Pilate - you heard Peter confess, “You are the Christ, the Son of God…” - you experienced his love - a love such that you have never felt before - you thought he was the new Messiah, the new King - how would you feel if you saw him die?  He is dead and buried...and you have fled with the others…

You thought you could have faith in Jesus, but now it seems he has failed you…

Can we even begin to place ourselves in this situation? Can we even now begin to experience the darkness of Friday? Is it really “good” if you know only Friday, and do not, at the same time, know Sunday? Do we, even though we have “Sunday” really know Sunday? Or are our lives stuck in a perpetual Lent…A Lent waiting on the joy of Sunday?

The preacher says, “Friday’s here…but Sunday’s coming…” Maybe Sunday is coming soon, and maybe for some people it has already come, and of course tomorrow we will celebrate Easter and the Resurrection, but now we feel stuck on Friday, or even more trapped in Saturday.

Today we have remembered Holy Saturday. The dark day of the Christian year - a day of silence and mourning. A full day without the presence of Jesus. A day of darkness and despair.  A day when the death of Jesus has finally become real. A day when God seems absent.

But the feelings of Holy Saturday are feelings that many experience for most of their lives. They are feelings many will return too after Easter Sunday. They are, after all, the feelings of this life.

For many “Saturday” is where we live most of our lives. We remember the resurrection, and even on Sunday will joyfully sing, “Christ the Lord has risen today, Alleluia…” But it probably won’t change anything. In many ways, it doesn’t seem true for us. We try, and sneak into the joy of Sunday, but something keeps pulling us back to Saturday. Our Alleluia is cold and it is broken. It is a Alleluia that hopes, not a Alleluia that believes.

In Real Presences, the literary critic George Steiner writes of this broken Hallelujah, of this hope and this longing, of this life lived in some sort of sorrow…It is “a long day’s journey of the Saturday. Between suffering, aloneness, unutterable waste on the one hand and the dream of liberation, or rebirth on the other.”

Saturday is the in-between day. A day when Jesus is gone and buried, but has yet to rise again. The day when the disciples thought it was hopeless, that it was over. It is a day where it almost seems that again he has failed us. He has left us singing a broken song at an empty cross to a dead, and failed, god, and not a joyful anthem at an empty tomb to a risen Savior.

But even in the darkness of our Saturday, a small light shines forth from afar…Though it is small it is a light of joy…A light of hopes fulfilled…A light that will make our Hallelujah one that believes…It is the light of Sunday. However far away it may be we are able to glimpse it. It is a light we are drawn too. A light that keeps us going, and makes everything meaningful. That shines through despair and sorrow to joy.  A light that keeps us going as we wait for our time to smile.

Maybe Sunday will not be “Sunday” for us. Maybe Easter will only be a small glimmer of light. Maybe this year all Easter will do is rekindle the hope that Saturday is trying to kill. It will give us the strength to go on for a little bit longer. But maybe that is all that we need in order to continue singing, even if the song is cold and broken. Because even broken praises are beautiful to the ears of a God that loves us.  And even in silence we can know that.