I don’t know why, but I always think about the overlooked.
On holidays I always think about people who are especially hurt by celebrations of things they don’t/can’t/worry they won’t have. Like Mother’s and Father’s Day…
and so today on Holy Saturday, I think this is a day for those people. For all of us, at some moment in our lives. The Dark Night of the Soul, as they say in Roman Catholicism. A spiritual crisis.
Holy Saturday should be called Dark Night of the Soul day. It is probably one of the most hopeless days this earth has ever experienced. Friday there was hope. The disciples had seen all that Christ could do. He could, at any moment, call on all power of Heaven to prevent the cross… and he didn’t. Even while he was on the cross, he makes sure to tell John to take care of his mother – fully surrendering to death.
What happened when the disciples woke up on Saturday? Did they wake up, or instead were they awake all night? Grieving and mourning, wrestling, regretting (that one is for Peter), hurting. How lost they must have felt on Saturday.
We have this phrase we always say in the church around Easter.
It’s Friday….
but Sunday is coming.
But you know what? The disciples didn’t really know that Sunday was coming. All they knew was Saturday. They knew pain, grief, emptiness, confusion, and the absence of Jesus. We often rush past this day of Saturday because we know what ended up happening – we can see the way God transformed the sorrow of the cross.
Today there are people in our lives who live in Holy Saturday. Who believe that Jesus is the Messiah but are faced with a situation that doesn’t seem to show any sort of saving quality. Yesterday was the birthday of a little girl who we buried two years ago, when she wasn’t even two years old. Not the last tiny pink casket this world will see.
Earlier this week I carried around a four-year-old girl who is fighting cancer. I have been spending a lot of time with an 11-year-old whose parents are getting a divorce. There is poverty, there is rape, there is death and betrayal and brokenness and pain and loneliness and hopelessness and confusion. and they don’t know the victory of Sunday. They don’t know what will happen. They might know God is good – but all they can see, all they know, is this day.
That is why there is Holy Saturday.
Because Friday happened, Saturday sucked, but that means the victory of Sunday is that much more important.
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