Saturday: Waiting

Last night was much about waiting in the Emergency Room for a diagnosis of my friend – it was very difficult.  But one of the things we did to pass the time was talk about when he lived in Israel and experiencing Easter there.

The big thing in Jerusalem is not Good Friday, nor is it Easter Sunday. It’s Holy Saturday.

Holy what?

Exactly – here in the west we don’t celebrate Holy Saturday…because what would you do on this day? Nothing. Jesus didn’t die, nor did he rise again.

Which is exactly what those in Jerusalem are doing (or did) right now.  They gather together and await the flame to be passed from person to person to person and then walk out together.  It’s their belief that the Spirit came on this day and arose Jesus from the dead on Sunday.  The fire represents the Spirit.

But really, I think this day typifies what it means to be a Christian.  Philip Yancey, one of the most influential authors in my life, ends his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, with this profound truth:

The other two days have earned names on the church calendar: Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Yet in areal sense we live on Saturday, the day with no name. What the disciples experienced in small scale – three days, in grief over one man who had died on the cross – we now live through on cosmic scale. Human history grinds on, between the time of promise and fulfillment.  Can we trust that God can make something holy and beautiful out of a world that includes Bosnia and Rwanda, and inner-city ghettos and jammed prisons in the richest nation on earth? It’s Saturday on planet Earth; will Sunday ever come?

That dark, Golgothan Friday can only be called Good because of what happened on Easter Sunday, a day which gives a tantalizing clue to the riddle of the universe. Easter opened up a crack in a universe winding down toward entropy and decay, sealing the promise that someday God will enlarge the miracle of Easter to cosmic scale.

It’s a good thing to remember in the cosmic drama, we live out our days on Saturday, the in-between day with no name. I know a woman whose grandmother lies buried under 150-year-ld live oak trees in the cemetery of an Episcopal church in rural Louisiana.  In accordance with the grandmother’s instructions, only one word is carved on the tombstone: “Waiting.”

Waiting is hard for me, but I’m learning. I’m learning to believe in hope, and to perservere that hope is certain and Resurrection Sunday is comin’.  That the not-yet of the Kingdom will be now, and that someday all sad things will be made untrue.

I’m waiting.

Unexpected Goodness: Good Friday

I’m blogging from the emergency room.  My housemate is feeling some severe abdominal pain, and we both think it’s appendicitis.  We’ll see what the diagnosis brings.  But it was certainly unexpected, to say the least.

So was the last ad on the waiting room television: “Viva Viagra.”  Is it me, or is that just weird to see in an emergency room?  Or the Hannah Montana film preview?  Unexepected, to say the least.

Good Friday is my favorite church holiday of the year.  It seems appropriate that something unexpected happened on the day – because it’s unexpected that we could ever call this day good.

Think about it for any length of time – why do we call this day good?  It is only seen as good in retrospect – but I wonder what it would have been called by those who experienced it as it happened.

I never celebrated Good Friday growing up – Maundy Thursday was great because it was when the Lord’s Supper was instituted, and we would arise early for the sunrise service for Easter Sunday (complete with a great potluck afterwards)

My church celebrates Good Friday in a very solemn way – with a Tenebrae service of darkness.  The service is at dusk, and the last sunlight is softened by the blue stained glass as darkness comes. The seven last words of Christ are read, with seven sets of seven candles lit throughout the sanctuary, With each word that is read, one of each candle set is darkened until complete silence and darkness sets in.  Through sad, mourning songs, my soul opens up in pain and I truly feel deep sorrow.

Kinda like my housemate right now – who is in a lot of pain.

I’m hoping that it isn’t appendicitis – but if it is, the pain led to a deeper understanding of the weight of what was real.

I wonder if the pain that was felt on the first Good Friday (when we didn’t know yet it was good) by Jesus was more about the physical suffering or about being abandoned by his Heavenly Father.  How could goodness be found in such tragedy?  The weight of what was real was Jesus screaming on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For the first time in all time, the Son of God became God-forsaken.

There dying as a criminal between two thieves, bloodied and humiliated, was the God of the universe, who endured pain and shame until he committed himself into the hands of his loving Father.

How could this Friday be good? Because, as Jurgen Moltmann sais, “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.”  The older I get, the closer I hope that day is.