Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday Meditation

Saturday…the day Jesus lay dead in a borrowed tomb.  For those who had followed Him,

Everything was dark.

It was completely and utterly over. 

The worst had happened.

Death had won. 

Hopes were dashed.

Dreams were squashed.

Betrayal had overtaken love. 

Fear proved stronger than friendship.

The humiliation and torture of a crucifixion had upended all they thought they knew.

All that had been built over three years was reduced to rubble.

There was nothing left.

Nothing but a promise, that is.

There was this one thing Jesus had mentioned a few times to His followers.  Sometimes, He worked the message through in a parable; other times He spoke it plainly.  He said He would rise again on the third day.

Resurrection

That promise seemed farther from their minds than outer space.  Survival was the name of the game.  Deep grief, anguish and survival consumed their hearts.

Yet, the promise of resurrection defied the current loss.  It created a brand new, restored, better-than-before reality:

What was dead would resurrect. 

What was taken would be given back.

What was lost was about to be restored.

Jesus had once given His followers a glimpse of this hope through referencing a seed’s journey to new life which begins when it goes into the ground.  “Unless a kernel of wheat is planted in soil and dies, it remains alone.  But, its death will produce many new kernels- a plentiful harvest of new lives.” John 12:24

A seed can never transform unless it goes into the depths, into the dark, until it stops being a seed and springs up through the earth into something entirely new.  It moves from one state of being to another.  And it takes the dark burial to enact transformation.

Holy Saturday…Nothing but a promise to hold on to.

Sunday is coming.  But, for now, Saturday is here and it is real and it is not to be rushed through.  We cannot skip Saturday to get to Sunday.  The only way out is through.

What no one could see was that in the depths of Jesus’ tomb, death was being so fully entered into from within that it would forever be defeated when Jesus came up out of it.  Something very, very holy was happening in the depths. 

The same is true for us in our Saturdays, in our losses and in our anguish. 

Holy Saturday is here.  Let us be here with Him.  It is not the end.