Silent Saturday

Maybe the best thing we could do on this in-between day is just be silent

I don’t know what to do with the Saturday before Easter.

Not even sure what to call it.

Holy Saturday? Dark Saturday?

Or, should I take a more post-resurrection approach:

Joyous Saturday or Saturday of the Light (as the Copts)?

How about Silent Saturday?

It’s this odd day between Good Friday and Easter.

We tend to put all our eggs in those two baskets,
engaging in somber services on Good Friday and
jubilant--even braggadocios--outbursts on Easter.

But this day?

We’ve got nothing.

Maybe that’s how it should be.

Completely wrung out and undone by Friday’s
procession of confusion, denial, pain and death,
and with no realistic hope of anything beyond,
Jesus’ followers scattered--speechless, witless,

utterly alone.

The more silent this day, the better.

What do deniers and deserters have to say, anyway?

People who’ve mistaken his ministry--be quiet.

Those who think hope is based on coercion and might
in Jesus’ name were dead wrong--

and still are.

Mute, especially, thoughts of resurrection.

That wasn't on the radar screen of the dismayed

when the heavy stone was rolled into place.

Don't take comfort in what you think you know.

Don't count your chickens when you

don't have chickens to count.

Wouldn't it help us all to just shut up for a few hours
and let whatever Grace wants to say or do

sink in

or rise up?


Note: 

I wrote this about 10 years ago and revised it a bit early this morning. 

It seems no one ever instructed or informed me about Holy Saturday (even in seminary). It was just a day to get ready for Easter hype—choir rehearsals, egg painting, basket-filling, clothes readying, lilies buying, sermon writing.

There’s not much to say about Holy Saturday as part of the story of what really happened. There is nothing in the Bible. Not much has been written across millennia.

I’ve tried to put my head and heart into one of Jesus’ earnest followers on that day. Who could bear such disappointment, loss, and self guilt/shame? It was over. Done. Defeat. Finis! And they had denied and deserted and scattered.

It seems to me that going there in our minds and hearts personally is perhaps the only—or at least the best—way to awaken to startling, head-spinning reports on the third day. Resurrection was the last thing the first followers could have expected. Maybe in our imagination we would benefit from going there, too.

There will be a day to celebrate. Silent Saturday is not that day.

John Franklin Hay 
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 
www.johnfranklinhay.blogspot.com
www.twitter.com/indybikehiker 
indybikehiker@gmail.com