From this day until tomorrow evening, we wait. It’s the gap in the story, the time of sheer, uncomfortable silence, when we hold our breaths. As we wait, the body of our Lord rests in its tomb. After the turmoil on Calvary, the silence is unnerving, like trying to sleep in the quiet countryside when used to the city’s noise. We wait. And we wait.
Most of life is like this. Most of our lives, we live in the silence between Good Friday and Easter. This is the silence of sitting by the bed of one who is dying, of waiting for the test results, of praying for a new job, or of trying to make it until the next meager paycheck clears the bank. Holy Saturday is the stuff of real life. The liturgy of Holy Saturday (which we will observe tomorrow at 9 a.m. in lieu of Morning Prayer) is perhaps the shortest in the prayer book, and it’s rarely celebrated. We are too quick to move to Easter. If we have been to the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday liturgies, we will most likely relish this time of utter silence as we wait for Easter to spring forth from the darkness, even while the rest of the world wants to rush to Easter.
In his spectacular poem “The Answer,” the late Anglican priest and poet R.S. Thomas beautifully meshes the silence and absence of Holy Saturday with the mystery of our faith at the heart of the empty tomb.
Not darkness but twilight
in which even the best
of minds must make its way
now. And slowly the questions
occur, vague but formidable
for all that. We pass our hands
over their surface like blind
men, feeling for the mechanism
that will swing them aside. They
yield, but only to re-form
as new problems; and one
does not even do that
but towers immovable
before us.
Is there no way
other than thought of answering
its challenge? There is an anticipation
of it to the point of
dying. There have been times
when, after long on my knees
in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled
from my mind, and I have looked
in and seen the old questions lie
folded and in a place
by themselves, like the piled
graveclothes of love’s risen body. [from Collected Poems, 1945-1990, London: Phoenix, 1993]
In Seeds of Faith [Mark A. McIntosh and Frank T. Griswold, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2022], Mark McIntosh says that “[t]he resurrection is the Father’s response to the prayer that Jesus had made of our world, the prayer that Jesus had made of his entire life” (86). We could say that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is God’s answer to a world in need of salvation and of being made whole again, at one with God and one another. And our answer, as R.S. Thomas suggests, to the many questions raised by a faith centered around an empty tomb, which yet demands a response, is to stay on our knees in prayer, sitting with the silence and emptiness of our lives but living in hope. The empty tomb and the historical absence of Jesus’s physical body on the third day are the visible signs of God’s answer to a broken world, but as R.S. Thomas rightly points out, many questions still remain. Sometimes the remnants of those questions lie in the empty tomb, folded up neatly and abandoned. We catch fleeting glimpses of the resurrection’s palpable answer within our lives. But much of our lives we live in the haze of mystery where we still see suffering and violence and unspeakable tragedy. The truth of the resurrection eludes our grasp to control it, just as the risen Christ told Mary Magdalene not to cling to him. We can’t cling to solving this mystery. We can simply sit in the silence of life, rejoicing when the stone occasionally rolls from our mind and our old questions lie neatly folded in the aftermath of resurrection glory.
This Easter is, of course, a moment for us all to rejoice. We can rejoice in the victory of life over death, of forgiveness over sin, of freedom over slavery. We know this is all true. We can dare to hope because Jesus’s body was not in the tomb on the third day. But Easter will not and should not abolish our confusion, our doubts, and our sufferings. It will not prevent the world’s sorrow, but it will transform it. Easter is always a juxtaposition of sorrow and joy, just as in John’s Gospel, Jesus’s moment of glory is the moment in which he breathes his last on the cross.
A dismissal of the complexity of Easter (by skipping over Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the waiting of Holy Saturday) is irresponsible Christianity. If left unchecked, it will give us permission to ignore the plight of the voiceless and lowly who are trampled on in the world’s quest for unlimited physical power and greed. A shallowly triumphalist Easter will lead us to believe that if we’re faithful enough and doing things right, every day will be sheer happiness.
But from the beginning, God’s answer to the world came in the “twilight in which even the best of minds must make its way now.” Even in the aftermath of that divine answer, “the questions occur, vague but formidable for all that.” And still, God comes to us, in our pain, walking beside us as we weep, question, and celebrate the joys of life. For the One who has redeemed us has also wept like us and been in the tomb as we will one day be. And in the startling but marvelous absence of “love’s risen body,” the best news of the resurrection is that the story continues. Love the Good Shepherd still calls our name, leads us to still waters, protects us through danger, and one day, he will bring us home to the green pasture of paradise. May this Easter be a blessing to you, as we revel in its joy, ever sweeter because it holds our pain, too.
I want to thank all who are giving of their time, energy, and gifts to ensure that the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter proceed smoothly and reverently. Thank you! I will look forward to sharing in the holy mysteries of this week with you.
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle