I had to go searching for this today because it's that day again. I had posted it in my notes on Facebook I guess four years ago. The day between "Good Friday" and "Resurrection Sunday". In the various denominational liturgical traditions of the Church I've never known it to have a specific name separated from Passover.
No-name Saturday.
For those of us who have adapted the formerly pagan holiday of Easter and transformed it to into an entire season of contemplative focus on what the only true God did in sending His only begotten son to atone for our sin and restore us to unhindered fellowship with Him and each other - we find ourselves and our thoughts as scatter...ed as the 11 apostles who did believe. Having left Christ’s plainly revealing conversations of Thursday’s last supper, I find it easy to place myself as an apostle scattered in terror at the horror of the events of ‘Good Friday’, where all that we hoped would be different was killed – and wondering ‘what now?’ on this no-name Saturday. I mean really – what now? What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to live? I thought I understood, but man it seems wrong today somehow… Have I wasted the last three years traipsing around the countryside with this amazing Rabbi only to end up back where I started? What about the miracles – I mean even we did them in His name and power… what now? John and the women were the only ones of us who had the guts to watch Him die. He’s really dead… and buried… the afternoon before this Passover Sabbath… Nicodemus and Joseph ritually unclean and unable to even participate… shouldn’t it have been us who laid Him to rest? Jesus raised Lazurus, but do any of us have the faith, the power to raise Jesus? WHAT NOW?
Now in fairness we have the next pages that tell us Sunday is on the way… but do we live like it? Or do we still spend most of our days indecisively questioning ourselves, our lives, our minute-by-minute decisions with variations of ‘what now?’ Do we stand dazed contemplating how we thought things were supposed to turn out, inwardly cringing and hiding at a vantage point which allows us to see trouble coming – knowing they’ll be here for me next.
On our best days I’d like to say we live like Sunday Christians in a Good Friday world – I have seen it and been a part of it on many occasions. But I think that even the most devout among us find ourselves standing around on occasion contemplatively dazed and watching with paranoia for the next foot to drop as if we were trapped in the confusion and moral inventory of a no-name Saturday. Perhaps we intuitively sense the Angel of Death passing over at these moments, knowing the Blood has been applied to the door-posts of our life but things will never be the same after this night. Or perhaps the joy of the Resurrection is only to be faced after this dark night of our souls.
Just my rambling contemplations on this no-name Saturday.
“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Ps 30:5b
