The Awkward Bit of Easter

For years, Holy Saturday was the most awkward day of Passion Week for me. I didn’t really know what to do with it or how it connected to the larger Easter story. Maundy Thursday made sense: foot washing, servanthood, love one another. Good Friday was always rich in meaning: the cross, the blood, redemption. Easter Sunday––well, it’s meaning was beyond clear: resurrection, victory, eternal life. What about Saturday, though? How does it fit, and what is its message?

A few years ago, I picked up an N. T. Wright devotional from a used bookstore, titled Christians at the Cross. It actually inspired this short devotional series as it also walks through each day of Passion Week with suggested reading accompanied by short sermons. For Holy Saturday, he simply entitled the chapter “Waiting.” While reading that, it all became clear.

The great theme of Holy Saturday is simply this: silence.

As difficult as Good Friday was, can you imagine waking up on Saturday? Your eyes open, and in layers of dread, fear, and sadness, you review what happened the day before. Faintly, vainly, you hope it was all a dream, but that hope only makes the grim reality surge in your emotions with greater force. You can’t find comfort in the other disciples huddled in the house. They are on the same roller coaster ride. Wet eyes. Suffocating fear. Singeing anger. And the one, overwhelming question, gnawing at your heart and mind: Where is God?

To say the disciples had lived in a flurry of God-activity is an understatement. From the moment they followed Jesus, it was one miracle after another. In fact, John wrote, “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). What a stark contrast to their experience on Holy Saturday. They had assumed His miracles would crescendo into His crowning as King in Jerusalem. Instead, they abruptly ended on a bloody cross. And now, on Saturday, as the dark sky turned gray before dawn, they awoke to questions without answers.

Had they reviewed the scriptures, they would have found language to express their sorrow. In Psalms such as Psalm 89, they would have found prior examples of disappointment and pain and crying out to a God who seemed utterly silent. The Psalmist recounts God’s promises and then compares them to his circumstances that are completely the opposite. With anguish, he asks, “How long? Where are you? When will you do something, anything?” The Psalmist doesn’t record a response from God.

Have you ever had a Holy Saturday moment? Perhaps you’re living in one right now. Waiting. Listening. Praying. Asking. Believing. But hearing nothing.

The disciples left all to follow Jesus. There was nothing to go back to. There was nothing left to do, but wait. And somehow, some way, hope. Again, if they had reviewed the scriptures, they would have found language for their sorrow, and they would have found something else, too: promise. They would have read Jeremiah write, “It is good the one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:26). Sometimes, it feels foolish to keeping waiting when everything is silent, but Holy Saturday teaches us something different. It brings into reality Lamentations 3:26. When you’re waiting in the silence, quietly, it is good. Because a new day will always dawn.