Our liturgical year unfolds graciously as it always does and it always will, despite all the panic and anguish and fear going on in our world and in our land and in our homes at this season. This Passion-tide it is a great sorrow to be unable to gather as we long to do, but we are still God’s people. We are still – together – the apple of his eye, and nothing can take this away from us, or us away from him.
Holy Saturday always has a particular kind of spaciousness to it. It is an in-between time, filled with a kind of heart-broken peace. As the people of God we have lamented the torture and death of our Lord on the cross, but his suffering is now over. In our spirits we are all cried out and we are now waiting, because what else can we do? Yet in this emptiness we feel ultimately safe, because we already know how the story ends. We know the hope and the joy that comes in the morning – Easter morning – when death is defeated.
Grief came to our own household several weeks ago, when my gentle, kind father-in-law died in hospital of the virus and other conditions. It is a cruel time to die, and perhaps an even crueller time to be bereaved. My mother-in-law grieves alone, valiantly, in her desolation and isolation. We cannot be with her and she cannot be with us. There are no words for this kind of loneliness.
Yet we are blessed as Christians because our lives of faith down the years have trained us for times such as these. This formation has been through our worship and sacraments, through our loving commitment to each other, through our culture of concern for those most vulnerable, through our engagement with that ancient collection of books which is our Holy Bible.
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Together we have attempted to train ourselves to be courageous at those very times when we feel most afraid. To be content, whether we have plenty or whether we have nothing. To not fear evil, even at those times when we may find ourselves walking right through the valley of the shadow of death, perhaps through the door of death itself. To remember that nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
During Holy Week we have accompanied Jesus as he knowingly entered into increasing powerlessness and vulnerability for love of our broken world, offering his fear and anxiety and confusion to God moment by moment. As we follow him in our hearts here and now in 21st-century Europe, we ourselves have been gifted a greater insight into the vulnerability of being alive.
We, who are often tempted to make an idol of choice, have had many of our choices removed. In this, we have been granted a tiny, unwanted glimpse into what so many people across the world navigate every day, living and dying without agency in the midst of wars, famines, disasters and exploitation. At this time when we are unable to properly honour the bodies of our dead or to hold each other in our grief, as we long to do, we are reminded of all those who die unheeded and unmourned and unreported, victims of poverty and violence and corruption which has become normalised.
This small solidarity is a gift from God, a kind of collateral blessing. Let us receive this gift with thanks, despite our bitter sorrow, and offer it to God. Nothing can be wasted that is offered to God! Jesus has gone ahead of us into the darkness and we know that joy comes in the morning. The glorious hope of Easter will find us when our lamenting and our waiting are over.