Grave Silence

Growing up in an evangelical, midwestern, Baptist-esque church, we heartily celebrated Easter Sunday each year, and Palm Sunday I suppose too. But as a young girl I don't recall learning until years later that so many others around the world honor the sacred, darker days of Holy Week each year. Maundy Thursday -  marking the last Passover Jesus shared with his disciples before his betrayal. Good Friday - Jesus' death on the cross. Or darker still, Holy Saturday when Jesus’ body is in the grave, tomb sealed and guarded, disciples scattered, and just about zero hope on the horizon because they still just couldn’t understand what was coming. 

Holy Saturday is a day of tension and waiting, with no answer or end in sight. It's a day of darkness and grief. Of silence. It's a day for the artists, doing their wordless, Spirit-led work on canvas or page or instrument.

I'm sure I’m not the first to make the connection, but I often like to imagine our own life stories through the lens, or arc, of Holy Week. Think of the stories of your own life as if written in a book, how they begin, develop, affect you, change you as a person, resolve (or go unresolved for now). A "triumphal entry" of some sort often marks the beginning of a good tale, the place where the main character enters - you or me if it's one of our own stories - showing up in space and time, bold yet human, almost naively on the scene. It's the place where the story begins to unfold. Over time our narrative develops complexity, nuance, growth... complications. A stone in the road, or 2, or 10. We receive praise for our achievements or personhood. Encounter fellowship. Eventually suffering. Betrayal. And eventually, by the "Good Friday" of our story we encounter a death of some kind. A lost relationship or betrayal. Adultery perhaps. Alcoholism. Abuse.  Disease or even physical death of a near one. (See? Holy Week...)

Then comes Holy Saturday, and we grieve before we can rejoice. 

I'm grateful for Holy Saturday, grateful in some ways even that our own real life stories don't jump straight from Good Friday deaths to Resurrection Sundays, even though there's compounded pain - pain on pain - in the waiting and silence. I'm grateful our hearts and bodies are designed to grieve after a death in our life, to collapse in need and cry out from what was lost. In these tenuous spaces, Romans 8:26-27 promises us that the Spirit, our paraclete,"advocate," moves into prayer and spiritual battle on our behalf:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Rom. 8:26)

He does so when we're at our weakest, when we're just a heap on the floor, at the end of our own futile words, and God the Father feels distant and silent himself. On no better day than Holy Saturday in my story, I learn to "dwell in the shelter of the Most High" and "rest in the shadow of the Almighty," letting the Spirit tend and defend me. (Ps. 91:1)

It's also not lost on me that “Holy Saturday” falls on the day of the week that would have been shabbat for Jesus and his followers as Jews. Sabbath. A day intended for bodily rest, soul rest, and Jesus' sweet body lay resting in a cold dark tomb, broken like a seed, planted it would seem in anticipation of new life.

All our saviors get planted for Holy Saturday, by the way.
All get put to the test, to rest, buried, when we're grieving and life is turned upside-down. When we hit a Holy Saturday in our personal story and grief has us by the throat, silenced, all our saviors fall dead into the grave.

Our little "s" saviors...
...our finances, occupations, skills and abilities, our personality strengths or resumé. Our know-it-all-ness. Or tight-fisted illusory control of our lives. The addictive relationships or habits we turn to when the world threatens to go black around us. Anything we too sorely rely on for rescue, comfort, or control.

And the capital "S" Savior, Jesus. He gets buried too right alongside them.

Little "s" or big, all get delivered together into the ground on Holy Saturday, like seeds, to be tested in darkness, heat, and silence. 

Then we wait.
To discover what truly rises to new life. And what won't.