It's still Saturday...
{ a love letter to the ones who aren't quite ready for Easter Sunday }
A bit of context for my non-Christian readers: In many Christian denominations, this week marks the end of Lent, and the annual commemoration of the end of the earthly life of Jesus. Good Friday remembers Jesus’ state-sponsored execution by crucifixion, Holy Saturday is the “in between” day when Jesus is dead & buried, and Easter Sunday celebrates the resurrection. Loudly.
If the thought of a happy-clappy resurrection sermon grates on your very last nerve this Easter, beloved, I see you.
I see you, spirit-sister whose brother just died.
I see you, momma and daddy with a stillborn baby.
I see you, sweet teenager who feels unsafe in your own skin.
I see you, dear one struggling to know your worth and way forward.
I see you, tender heart grieving the violence across the world.
I see you, rainbow soul in exile, wondering if you’ll ever find community again.
I see you, because I AM SO WITH YOU.
So much has died around me and within me in this Lenten season:
I have lost a dear person, and a precious relationship, and a way of relating to myself. I have lost so many dreams for what the future might hold, not to mention my faith in institutions and my hope that humanity will ever be capable of peace. Please don’t even get me started on the dead bodies in Bucha; I cannot bear it.
I am painfully aware of the death toll within me and within those I love, and everywhere else. I am immersed in grief, and I am entirely unprepared to walk into an Easter morning church service and shout hallelujah.
Oh sure, the calendar may say that it’s Sunday, but inside of me? It will still be Holy Saturday. It will still be the dark, sacred, stunned-silent space between the death and the new life that I trust is to come. And if I’m honest, it might be Saturday inside of me for a month or two or six… or who knows how long?
Maybe next year I’ll come back around to being one of the smiling, enthusiastic “Easter People” again, but this year I’m flying the flag for the Saturday People: we’re the ones who aren’t finished processing our grief yet. We’re the ones for whom Easter Sunday suddenly feels superficial and strange.
If you know, you know.
We’re not quite ready for resurrection yet, are we?
The Easter season, emblematic of American culture, drives us so quickly through the death and loss and sadness — it careens from the horrors of Good Friday right smack into the Easter Sunday anthems and lilies, and serves up a solid case of emotional whiplash in the process. Can we just admit that the Christian calendar is bad at math? Shouldn’t we have more space to catch our breath between the crucifixion and the celebration? Weren’t there three days from grave to glory, and not just one?
Can the Saturday People just get a little more time before you ask us to stand and sing?
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Our collective discomfort with remaining present to death and loss — and the related desire to skip over the holy silence and rush on to the promise of new, exciting things to numb our pain — is just one symptom of a larger, toxic cultural issue: our inability to honor the value of so-called “negative” emotions, and the related propensity to communicate to hurting, grieving people that their hard feelings are unwelcome, because it’s making everyone else uncomfortable.
I have a theory about that.
I think many of us — perhaps most of us — are holding a hidden tomb of grief within us that we believe we cannot possibly enter, and watching other people share their pain in public threatens to crack our sealed tombs wide open.
Our families, our “positivity culture”, and especially our churches have trained us up to believe that the good life is about PAIN AVOIDANCE.
This is corroborated within the Christian church by two terrible, related lies: first, that a personal relationship with Jesus is the answer to all of our pain and problems, and second (go with me here), God’s chosen people are good Christians, and chosen people are anointed people, and anointed people are successful people, and successful people are happy people. Conclusion: good Christians are happy people. Thanks, John Calvin. #sarcasm
Therefore, or so the faulty logic goes, if you experience pain and problems, there *might* be something wrong with your relationship with Jesus, and if you’re unhappy or unsuccessful, then you *might* not be special to God anymore. And either way, it’s YOUR FAULT — and you stand to lose your public standing as a good Christian.
Who wants to admit to being a tender Saturday Person in a culture like that?
Many of us have spent our lifetimes caching our losses, our grief, and our disappointments in the dark, warehousing a thousand small deaths, to the point that we are terrified to face what’s inside of the tombs we’ve built.
We simply don’t know what might happen to us if we allowed our accumulated grief to speak to us for longer than 2.7 seconds. So it feels easier to ignore the deep pain, stuff the anger, fight down the frustration, and pretend that we’ve “dealt with that and moved on”, rather than acknowledge that the tomb is beginning to stink.
The invitation to pause and be entirely present in the space between death and resurrection feels extraordinarily, personally risky.
So we delude ourselves into believing that it is easier to keep our tombs sealed tight, hold our noses, and tell ourselves, “…but Sunday is coming!”, rather than give ourselves permission to truly enter into the loss and pain that comes from being fully human, and — here’s the kicker — actually discover that the Divine is already there, inside the tomb, sitting in the stink of our warehoused grief, waiting to welcome us into our own eventual resurrection.
What happens if we never go inside the tomb?
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This is the gift, and the wisdom, of being Saturday People…
We learn that the resurrection we need *comes to us* when we sit inside the tomb and let death be real and let the sucky things suck, without trying to pep talk ourselves out of it or fight to stay positive or put off the “good Christian” vibes.
After all… Jesus didn’t fight his way out of the tomb.
He waited in the dark until it was time for Love to rise, whenever that time might be.
To my fellow Saturday People, and to anyone else listening in: you are not less spiritual or less Christian or somehow outside of the redemptive presence of the Divine if you feel wholly unprepared for a noisy celebration of new life this Easter. You can linger here in the silence, and tend to your grief. We can pretend it’s still Saturday, and trust that Love will rise when it’s ready.
Let us recall that God did not leave the building on Good Friday, skip Holy Saturday because it was awkward, and re-enter the world with fanfare on Easter Sunday.
The Holy was also — and is ALWAYS — fully present inside of the death and the grief, and inside the tomb, and inside of you.
It’s okay if you aren’t ready to shout hallelujah, beloved. Wait for Love to rise.
Amen.
Join the conversation around the Table: What grief do you tend this Easter? Where do you hope for Love to rise?
Oof. Thank you for this. I’ve been in the process of unpacking deep grief and trauma since 2018, and the world does not relent. It is quite hard to keep that tender spot open to air when pandemic, politics, war, and loss continually slam into it over these past 2+ years...and the common American Christian refrains only sharpen the pain. I appreciated your words this am, this cloudy Sunday am that feels somehow to understand where I am. Hopeful to know I’m not the only one.
Thank you so much for this. Like a lot of people, I have been struggling to see where I belong. So much grief and loss this pandemic. Your words reached clear down into my soul and gave me hope. More than that, acceptance and recognition of the feelings that others see as failure. I had been trying to figure out how to express what I am feeling, and you have done that. It's hard to tell you just how much impact your words, "I see you" had on me the first time I read them, and every time since. Throughout much of Lent, I just was not been ready for Easter Sunday. Fortunately, because I was sick, I could not attend church on Easter Sunday. For once, I was grateful for being unwell. You are definitely a blessing.