first whispers of a word of hope in a world of ache

This series of postings  are a series of reflections that originally appeared here, on the Diocese of Dunedin website "worship" page.

Holy Saturday

April 11th

READING: There are no Eucharistic readings on this day ... until the Great Vigil.  Let's pause, this day, with the stillness of a dark, sealed tomb

 …  John 19: 38-44

After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

REFLECTION

This is the day of timid, tentative desire for belief. Joseph, the secret fear-filled Jesus-follower, and Nicodemus whose tentative puzzlements have gradually brought him closer to Jesus-belief during the course of the Fourth Gospel: these are the unsung heroes of this trembling, sorrow-filled day. Later the women will seize the initiative, but that’s later, and we’ll leave them for now with their grief immeasurable.

One of the most profound theological works I have read is a much undervalued study named Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday. Lewis wrote the book while suffering from terminal cancer, and died during the publication process. 

He is adamant, in this completion of his life’s work, that the death Jesus dies is utterly complete: no clairvoyant or even divinely prescient expectation of resurrection (despite sayings in the gospel narratives, written so much later, that hint at this knowledge). As Lewis says, “He is dead and gone, convicted as a sinner, a rebel and blasphemer, who has paid the price of tragic failure. He simply died, and his cause died with him, quite falsified and finished” (45).  He dies like the whisky priest of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. There is no rescue on the horizon.  

Very dead, utterly dead.

Lewis’ harsh emphasis then gives us permission to sit with the finality of death for 36 hours. Covid-19 hurts. Failure hurts. When Donald Trumps and Dominic Raabs of this world tell us that Boris Johnson will bounce back because he is a fighter they are generating ear-space in which those who die of Covid-19 or anything else are in some way failures (and actually the doctors and nurses: they are the fighters). We failed to fight or fight well enough, and so we die. Cancer? Depression? Life? We fail, they suggest, and so we die.

Mortality hurts. Death and taxes. The news is not rosy. Both are inevitable, and the former offers no rebate. Mortality hurts.

When we are hurting we long for comfort. For many, normally, that will be a touch of a hand, or a hug … Covid-19 of course takes even that away from the dying and the bereaved.

On Holy Saturday we sit with harsh reality. When we die, when our loved ones die, it hurts. You may have sat through those days between the death of a loved one and the rites of farewell. Days of aching stillness, interspersed by bustle and hustle because there is much to be done. Even funeral rites still leave us in the aching void of loss … though they whisper a word of hope. Resurrection rites are a Holy Saturday. 

They are first whispers of a word of hope in a world of ache.

We remain this side of the Parousia (the End, whatever shape that takes). We are caught between The Already and the Not Yet (as Oscar Cullmann put it). But tomorrow will be another day and a new hope will seize us, and amplify our whispers of timid belief, our Joseph and Nicodemus tremors, and grief-filled women will timid-trumpet new hope, and a mad, frenzied dance will begin.