Silent Saturday
What to do when "Day 2" hits
Last night, our church gathered for a time of prayer on Good Friday. 90% of it was Scripture that we read and prayed and sang. Good Friday, with all its grief and weight and uncertainty, is meant to be shared with others.
And so is Easter. Resurrection morning is a cause for joyful celebration and family gatherings (church and biological).
But what about Saturday? What about that day in-between the days? What do we do with a day that, by virtue of what it represents, can feel so isolating?
What must it have been like to have been one of Jesus’ disciples? On that first Saturday, it was now painfully clear to them: Jesus wasn’t who they thought he was, and he obviously didn’t take them where they thought he would. He was dead.
What must they have been feeling? Sorrow, for sure. But also fear (Rome usually didn’t let you off the hook if you followed someone Rome had deemed insurrectionary), uncertainty (what now?), and doubt (but he seemed so clearly to be the One we awaited). Is it possible they were even questioning their very faith, and whether God was still God? On that Silent Saturday, I think all questions were fair game; all doubts were top-of-mind.
Walter Wangerin, in his 40-day Lenten devotional based on the Gospel of Mark, points out that the day after Jesus died, was the Sabbath. Beginning at sundown on Good Friday, with Jesus barely dead & buried, the disciples faced a Sabbath unlike any other. They were tired and defeated, but nonetheless, it was still the Sabbath — the holiest day of the week.
So, they had a choice to make. Honor the ritual the anchored the week’s holiest day? Or chuck it all? Do they remember God on that day of rest, or disregard the tradition because, well … Why? Who knew what God was up to? Who knew what to pray for anymore, or what to expect? In other words, go on with the life of faith, or let it slide — at least for one day?
No doubt, you have faced your own Silent Saturday. The day your marriage ends. The day the storm rolls through. The season you feel empty and abandoned. The moment you walk out of the doctor’s office wondering what you’re going to do next. The day you lose someone you love. The day — any day — you wonder: Where do I go from here?
You live long enough, and you’ll face your version of a Silent Saturday. Likely many of them. It’s then that I believe you have 2 key choices:
Let go
Hold on
Perhaps letting go makes the most sense; letting go of God, or tradition, or church, or others, or hope. When God or church or people disappoint you, it might make the most sense to give up. I mean, when things fall apart, why stick with something that obviously doesn’t work?
C.S. Lewis describes two men who need to cross a dangerous bridge. Both believe in God, and both attempt to cross. The first man is convinced that the bridge will hold. The other says, “Whether it breaks or holds, whether I die here or somewhere else, I am equally in God’s good hands.” The bridge breaks, plunging both men to their deaths. The first man’s faith is disappointed; the second’s is not.
Putting our faith in God doesn’t mean we won’t be disappointed, or even devastated. But putting our faith in God is not the same thing as putting our faith in the bridges we have to cross. For some bridges in life are uncertain, even deadly. And the disciple of Jesus is not immune from their collapse. But like the second man in Lewis’s story, when our faith is in God, we continue to trust him — even in the most difficult times of our lives.
Which brings us back to Silent Saturday. The followers of Jesus had a decision to make: would they honor God and remember the Sabbath, even though the one they believed to be the Messiah had been dishonored, and his God had seemed to forget them? Or would they hold on to faith, even when the bridge they had been walking on had completely collapsed?
What about you? When you face your Silent Saturdays, what choice do you make? Let go? Or continue to hold onto God, however empty and uncertain you feel?
Holding on doesn’t mean that we don’t still feel anger, or doubt, or fear, or rage. But holding on means we bring all that to God.
Holding on might look like reading the Bible even though it may feel dry & meaningless.
Holding on looks like praying, even it’s mostly tears, lament, and questions.
Holding on can mean that you continue to gather with other believers for worship, even when you struggle to sing the words.
It means you continue to give space to faithful friends to hold onto God with you, when you can’t do that yourself.
Holding on means you choose to trust that the silence will not last forever.
Silent Saturday, of course, is the middle day of the 3 days that changed history. In the Bible, there are a number of key moments that happen in 3 days:
Joseph tells the cupbearer & the baker that their fate will be realized in 3 days (Genesis 40).
Darkness covers Egypt for 3 days (Exodus 10.22).
The Israelites have different periods where they wait for 3 days for what’s next (Exodus 15.22, Number 10.33, Joshua 1.11).
As do Ezra & Nehemiah as they rebuild Jerusalem (Ezra 8.15, 32; 10.9; Nehemiah 2.11).
There’s a 3 day fast in Esther 4.
Saul is blind for 3 days after encountering Jesus on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9.9).
And of course, there’s Jonah in the belly of the fish for 3 days, which Jesus uses as a foreshadowing for his own destiny (Matthew 12.40).
Maybe there’s something to that. Maybe 3 days is both a metaphor and a reality that a much of life is waiting. In silence. A silence that can be a despair, or a silence that can be a hope.
In the metaphor of 3 days, there’s always Day 1 (when things happen), and Day 3 (when they get resolved) — but there’s also Day 2 (the waiting, the uncertainty, the doubt, the grief, the great unknown). And in our Silent Saturdays, in every Day 2, we have a choice: Trust God? Or let go?
Or maybe it’s actually more accurate to say that, when Day 2 hits, and for however long it lasts, you really only have 1 choice: to hold on. For the truth is: as long as Day 2 lasts, you’re going to hold on to something. The question is simply: What are you going to hold on to? Grief and pain and doubt only?
Or, in the midst of all the silences and uncertainties, are you going to choose to continue to hold onto God? Believing, hoping, trusting — even when you can’t see it — that Resurrection Day is coming.
An earlier version of this appeared at my original blog.