In the silence

It’s Easter Saturday, the day between Jesus’ crucifixion and Jesus’ rising. I have a number of friends who have already put up their colourful Easter wreaths, who have already started wishing others “Happy Easter”, even my t-shirt says ‘Spoiler alert! The tomb was empty!’

None of these are bad things – we live in a world where Jesus has risen, where we know the end of the chapter. But as we read the story in the bible, Jesus dies on the cross and is buried, and then we skip a day and it’s the day after the Sabbath. One gospel says on that middle day the Romas posted guards so that no one could tamper with the body. Another says that because it was the Sabbath, Mary and the other women rested. So Easter Saturday is quick to jump over.

And in life, it’s easy to overlook ‘Easter Saturdays’. We want to do something, fix something, jump to the next good thing. Some would say we have a culture of impatience.

But, reading between the lines, Easter Saturday is hugely important. We hear how the disciples couldn’t stay up and pray with Jesus, maybe not understanding what Jesus was trying to tell them or realising the significance of what we now call the ‘Last Supper’. We hear of them resisting Jesus’ arrest but then running scared. We hear of Peter’s denial, of John and the women standing near the cross weeping. We hear of Roman soldiers jeering then one changing his mind about who Jesus was.

And we hear that Jesus died quickly. Not quickly enough to avoid suffering – I’m not downplaying what Jesus went through – but crucifixion was a slow painful suffocation and victims would push themselves up on their feet to enable themselves to breath only for the pain to get too much (if they were nailed) or their strength to give out and they would slump once more and struggle to breath, this drawing out the end as they naturally fought to stay alive. The others crucified with Jesus had to have their legs broken to hasten the end. But Jesus was already dead. I haven’t studied this in great detail, but to me that suggests that Jesus didn’t fight the inevitable, he didn’t try to prolong his life. He accepted it, as he did in the Garden when praying, as he did when he didn’t resist arrest, as he did when he didn’t defend himself on trial.

But then we are quick to jump to ‘the disciples rose early and found the tomb empty’ skipping over a day of waiting, a day of silence. I would guess it was a day of disappointment, of lost hope, of seemingly broken promises as the one who was sent to save now lay dead on a tomb. A day of heartbreak and uncertainty as a man they had loved and trusted was now gone. It’s an uncomfortable day, a day of silence and waiting, a real test of faith, a day when negative emotions may have surfaces – paralysing fear, overwhelming guilt, unimaginable sorrow.

We are blessed to know the next bit, but Jesus’ followers at the time didn’t. They didn’t have anything to distract them – they couldn’t work on the Sabbath, they didn’t have TV or games, they just had each other in the grief. Can you imagine it? Everything you had pinned your hopes on torn away as you watched helpless?

Let’s not skip over the day of waiting, keen as we are to celebrate Easter. Let’s join the disciples waiting in silence. And as we wait, try thinking about what Jesus did, willingly and lovingly. I imagine it’s not easy to face that sort of death with the courage to that Jesus did, to be in such pain and still find the strength to cry ‘Father forgive!’ But that indicated the strength of his love for us.

In the silence, think about that.