Holy Saturday and Heavenly Interruptions

The following post was the first edition of The Middle. I had no intentions of writing an “Easter” e-mail that would be sent to people’s inboxes, but these were the words that came. May they encourage you today, one year later.

Holy Saturday. That’s what today is called.

And despite my desire for this not to be an “Easter” e-mail (more on that later), I think it’s pretty fitting that this first edition of The Middle is falling on this day, for it is the in-betweenest of in-between days.

Perhaps, even, it is one of the most dark and confusing days of all.

For those unfamiliar with the Christian tradition, Holy Saturday is the day between Jesus’ crucifixion and his resurrection. It’s the day where his disciples and loved ones locked themselves away in fearful anguish, hiding from the Jewish leaders who had just killed their Messiah, their friend.

Scripture doesn’t tell us much about what happened on this day, but I think it’s safe to say this day was painful. I imagine the disciples sitting on the floor, the atmosphere tense and heavy. I imagine their bodies trembling and shaking as the trauma of the previous days events ran its natural bodily course. I imagine the intense anger, the sort of fury that can only arise in the face of grave injustice - injustice that put their saviour in a grave. I imagine the overwhelming confusion, as they tried to make sense of what-the-heck just happened. The man they saw raise the dead and heal blindness and turn water into wine didn’t save himself? Why? I imagine the immense grief, as they faced the loss of the man they loved, and the loss of the saviour they thought he was.

And I imagine too, perhaps, a brash hope. Some glimmer of belief that God would work this out somehow, a small notion to cling to no matter how illogical it might have seemed.

Of course, this side of Sunday, we know the story. We know Jesus rises. We know he visits his disciples and loved ones. We know he commissions them, returns to Heaven, and leaves his Spirit to guide us as we await his return.

And we know this leaves us in a broken-but-redeemed world, living in the middle of a finished story. We’ve got an idea of the last chapter, but we’re catching up on the pages in between as we live our daily lives. As far as we know it and experience it, this story is still being written. It’s a weird life, where we know Jesus reigns and things will one day be different, but for now? We live in the in-between.

Like I said, I didn’t want this to be an Easter e-mail. I sat here looking at the calendar, evaluating if I could maybe send it out on Monday instead of Saturday or you know, just put this whole idea off until May. That idea was tempting. I don’t have a good excuse or reason, only that writing is vulnerable and I wasn’t sure the words I could carve out on this page would serve Easter weekend well. But now that these words are being chiseled out as I clack on my keyboard (loudly, as my roommate likes to make fun of me for), I can’t help but think we’re supposed to start here.

Here’s why: today is known as Holy Saturday. It is considered holy, not for the pain or the grief or the uncertainty that waged war in the disciples’ spirits, but because of what came next - Jesus’ resurrection.

It was never about their pain, but about the person who redeemed it.

So it is holy.

I think it follows that our painful, in-between moments are holy, too, or at least have the potential to be. In the light of the gospel, our hurts are not a death-sentence. They are but a symptom of our humanity. Our painful places are a redemptive ground, a sacred place where heaven meets earth through the grace of God and where we are humbled, and transformed, and made new. And made new. And made new.

Over, and over, and over again, for this side of heaven we will never accomplish a long-standing feeling of completion, an “I made it” sort of triumph. We are in process, in the middle, here and not there, awaiting Christ’s return and the promise of eternity. And this waiting? It’s where we are supposed to be.

There’s a line in a song by Ben Potter that goes like this:

“See the battle in between the now and not yet
Interrupted by the presence of Heaven”

These lyrics pretty much sum up all of my thoughts and hopes for this mid-monthly newsletter. I hope, together, we will find the presence of heaven interrupts our uncomfortable, in-process moments, much like it interrupted one very dark Saturday a few thousand years ago, and made it holy.

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