John 19:40-42
They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Holy Saturday
The in between day..
When we cannot return to the way things were
Nor move forward to how they might be
But must, somehow, live in the vacuum
The vacuum of an in between day
A vacuum whose silence confronts us
with questions of complicity and culpability
and with the realisation that even our love is not enough.
Stripped of all our resources
in which we’d normally find comfort
Laid bare
Just like the altars waiting to be dressed again
At the end of ourselves
We teeter on the brink of God
the only one who might bear us over this chasm
of the now and not yet.
And we cannot fast forward
but are forced to wait
to dwell in this in between day
as in all the in between moments
we have experienced.
We are forced to wait
in the knowledge
that the worst has happened
and we do not know what’s next.
We are forced to wait
when even hope deserts us.
And Good Friday
cannot give way
to Easter Sunday
unless we wait
unless we dwell
in the in between day.
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