I’ve often seen the Saturday before Easter referred to as the period of waiting. Waiting for resurrection, new life. Sunday’s coming! And it is…for us. We live in a Sunday world.
But those who loved Jesus, spent time with him, and watched him die weren’t in a waiting period. He was as good as dead. And they were grieving.
Women busied themselves preparing spices for his body. Men were mourning and weeping.
Their teacher, their lord was gone. Love remained, but hope was shattered. They only had one another to comfort their broken hearts.
Everything they’d left their past lives for, everything they’d believed to be true was questionable. Those questions and their doubts went unanswered.
They’d put all their hopes in one man, and with his death forgot that he was always pointing them to the Father: Pray. I imagine they never thought to pray, for prayer is hope.
Darkness had permeated the earth, and a thick blanket of grief hung in the air. There was no waiting; there was only the finality of death.
I cling to my grief It’s all I know to do No prayerful pleas Just death’s residue I cling to my grief Dark is my view What did I believe? My hope was in you ~ “Disciples’ Lament,” R. Gilbert
Well said
Yes. Death. Was. Final. Saturday had not hope to offer. As the psalmist said at the conclusion of this dark, melancholy psalm of lament, “darkness was their constant companion.” As Walter Brueggemann, my favorite teacher, wrote: “The lament psalm is a painful, anguished articulation of a move into disarray and dislocation…. That dismantling move is a characteristically Jewish move, one that evokes robust resistance and one that does not doubt that even the experience of disorientation has to do with God and must be vigorously addressed to God.” Nothing else really will do during our own painful Saturdays. Thanks, Rebekah, for these compelling words.