Grief or Gladness: the dilemma of Easter Saturday

I’m always confused about how to behave on the big feast/holy days through the year.

I am unhappy to ‘pretend’ to be an Israelite waiting for their Messiah, or a Shepherd hearing the angel’s good news (Advent and Christmas). We live in the aftermath of Jesus’ incarnation and we are in fact waiting for his return.

But I also appreciate the power of re-enactment. The nativity play somehow keeps the story alive, it reminds us of the cost. Buy also, Nativity plays are quite cute.

So imagine how I feel about Holy Week?!

In an even more profound sense, the faux-mourning and pretend grief get up my nose a bit. Why do we play-act at sadness? We live in the aftermath of Easter…that joyous defeat of death.

Furthermore, the reading from John 2 on Easter Saturday (I do prefer the moniker ‘Holy Saturday’ or ‘Silent Saturday’) drives this point home:

“18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your
authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I
will raise it again in three days.” 20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six
years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But
the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead,
his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and
the words that Jesus had spoken.” (John 2:18-22, NIV)

The disciples had been told there would be a middle day. They just hadn’t remembered. But we do??! We know what follows Saturday.

So shouldn’t we actually be rather more upbeat about all this? Why mope about as though we had been abandoned by Jesus – let down, etc. Once we pass Good Friday shouldn't we get rather more excited - like the anticipation of a long-awaited film, or the return of a long-travelling loved one?

Perhaps; perhaps not.

But in truth I’m rather glad we re-live the grief. For, for in truth, as many commentators suggest, we find solace in Easter Saturday because our own lives are marked by great sorrow and sadness, abandonment and confusion. There is comfort in knowing God is comfortable with silent tears.

I think, however, we must remember Paul’s injunction in 1 Thessalonians to “not grieve as others who have no hope” (1 Thes. 4:13). We grieve with hope.

And this is perhaps why Easter Saturday is the great climax of Lent. The last day we use the Lenten liturgy.

After spending time during Lent meditating on our sin, we find ourselves in Holy Week reading from Lamentations which suggests we should respond in silence (Lam 2:10), penitence (2:10), weeping (v. 11, 18), crying out to God (v.18 – much like the Psalmist in Psalm 142, the morning prayer psalm for Easter Saturday), a sense in which we come and pour our heart out before God (v.19). This is no play acting. And yet is precisely the range of activites we imagine the disciples engaging in. We come on Easter Saturday and sit in our own place. We now know Jesus is resurrected, but this understanding also makes us realise our part in his death – it was not a failed political venture, but a great act of mercy.

I am constantly, throughout Lent, repeating in worship and in private prayer the great cry from Hosea: “Come, let us return to the LORD.”

There is great promise in Hosea – that God will heal, bind up, revive, raise up, but also that he’ll appear and come. (Hosea 6:1-6)

This Easter Saturday – knowing the full extent of God’s mercy – Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again – we may be moved to tears – that he did all this for me. In my sin, my own most grievous sin – he did all this for me. So perhaps my tears aren’t just from grief, but gratitude too.

Passiontide - Day 1

The 5th Sunday of Lent sees a shift in the tone of the season - it grows heavier, darker, deeper, sadder and more focused, almost transfixed to the cross.

Hence the reading, John 12:20-33, which is focused on the cost of the cross. But so many of us miss this...

Holy week is a funny thing you see. We have this dark, contemplative season where in a spirit of introspection and self-examination we seek to walk with Jesus and discern the many and varied ways our walk has become hobbled. Through Lent I realise that my walk is hampered by a limp, by ill-fitting shoes, by a rocky road...and then we hit Palm Sunday, which is all-too-often a joyous celebration. We play act and frankly lose the sheer irony of the day.

Yes - Jesus entered triumphally, but we know how it pans out. Why do we celebrate? Surely the spirit of lenten sadness should move us to weep that so many so quickly deserted Jesus, including his own.

And then we stumble into Easter Day - the high point in our calendar.

Consider this...if you take the four Sundays including Mothering Sunday (4th Sunday in Lent) you can quite easily lose entirely the Lent theme: Mothers' Day, 5th Sunday, Palm Sunday, and Easter Day...the effect is exacerbated if one doesn't go to any church events during Holy Week...one could ignore the agony of the cross entirely!

Therefore - allow me to try and take you on that path of lamentation that Passiontide requires...

In John 12:20-33 we find Jesus in a deeply contemplative mood. "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified". Not quite the response Andrew and Philip expect when informing Jesus he has some guests to entertain. One writer has suggested that the disciples have had to 'find' Jesus as he was withdrawing from public ministry. He is all too aware that his purpose was about to be fulfilled.

But this is not just his purpose - but he teaches us a valuable and essential Christian principle, "unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds"...and He goes on to repeat his thoughts on what discipleship looks like...a choice between life and death.

In our cell group we have been wrestling at length over this issue of following Jesus. In Mark 8 Jesus says you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow. And we began to think the three things are separate...the first is about submission, which requires us to let go of our own agenda and ambition; the third is about obedience. But taking up your cross is not just a euphemism for 'deny yourself'...it speaks directly to what needs to happen to us - we have to die, not just make a decision to serve or submit.

Like Jesus we too have to die. Paul writes about this in Romans 6: "We died to sin" (v.2)

Death...it's not something I seek, but Jesus seems to be saying, "pursue death, run at it, ensure that you have been killed off - you are useless to me as you are - your sinful self will prevent my greater glory, and oddly - will stop you living. You are worth more to me dead than alive - for when your zombie nature is killed, then you can be really alive, for I shall bring resurrection. This shadowland you currently live in is as nothing compared to the bright gloriousness of you as you are truly meant to be..."

....And still...fear remains.

But trust is essential - and obedience. I follow; he leads.

And even Jesus shrank away from the fact of his death. Even he, my Lord and King. Even he said - I am scared of death, but for God's glory, and his known purpose he set his face toward the cross.

And that is passiontide. The fixing of Jesus' face on the cross. It is where our eyes must also turn. We must look upon the horror and glory of the cross...and in our turn, follow.

Lament

Lent is not over until Easter day. There remains time to examine our lives and find God's guidance.

At our cell last night the astute point was made that, for some, Lent is a time of self-reflection and examination, which in turn leads to changes from Easter. Rather than give-up or take something up for Lent should, we not have the approach that Lent is a time to discover, through prayer and Bible study, those things that need permanent change.

The readings for evening prayer yesterday (Tuesday of Holy Week) included the following:

'Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD.
Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven, and say:
"We have sinned and rebelled and you have not forgiven"' (Lamentations 3:40-42)

'My eyes will flow unceasingly, without relief, until the LORD looks down from heaven and sees' (Lam. 3:49-50)

As Jesus draws closer to the cross, and we are confronted with the enormity of His sacrifice, we must consider afresh those sins committed which are placed on Jesus. An unexamined life is not a life at all.

In a world that is so emotion averse, or more specifically, where negative emotions are shunned we must be a people that live close to tears and joy. Jesus, reports Luke, comes to Jerusalem to joyful acclaim (Luke 19:28-40), but is immediately driven to tears when he looks upon the city (Luke 19:41ff). Do we have this attitude? Are our tears heard by God, and seen by demons? Do we weep for our sin, for the sin of our loved ones, and our nation?

Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday. Many of us will be propelled along until Easter is upon us - will we grasp the opportunity to come to the cross, stop, be quiet and resolve to submit our lives to God?