Something that I find helpful to do during the Easter week is to think through the processes that those in the story would have gone through. So Friday, for instance, would have been a day of mourning, even though we now know what they didn't - that Jesus rose again on the Sunday. But what about Easter Saturday? What exactly happened then?
A few years ago, I thought a bit about this and reflected on the fact that the original Easter Saturday was the sabbath day. We know that this was significant for at least some in the Easter story because the Pharisees wanted the body taken down before the Sabbath began. Also, we can imagine that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea needed to bury Jesus before the day of rest arrived. And the women who were to embalm his body had to wait until Sunday to do so.
What, I wonder, did Peter do that day? There is a significant silence in his story from Thursday night until Sunday morning, and we can only presume that he wasn't feeling too great, either about Jesus or about himself. I wrote a poem about this topic in 2009, which morphed this year into another one that you can find on my writing blog here. The main thing that struck me as I thought about it was the fact that Easter Saturday would have been a day of inactive waiting. It would have been a difficult, in-between time for all involved.
And isn't much of our life like that? Really, if we let Easter Saturday work on us the way that all days of Holy Week can work on us, we might find it to be quite a powerful day. Think of all the in-betweenness in your life; think of all your shattered hopes and painful disappointments; think of all your waiting. Then remember: God bursts forth from every devastating tomb that binds his people in death. Sometimes we just have to wait.
This is why I am fascinated by what Alain de Botton recently tweeted, even though I can't possibly agree with him: that "Christianity would have been truer and nobler as the record of a tragedy rather than of a miracle". Now, Botton tends to be rational on everything except religion, so it shouldn't be surprising for him to say something decidedly odd like this. However, he does have a point, and this is a point which he makes more often than he is perhaps aware. If we don't grasp that, on Friday and Saturday, it did all seem like a horrible tragedy, then we won't grasp how wonderful and extraordinary Easter Sunday was and is still to this day.
Is this what Botton is talking about inadvertently when he also tweets that religion provides an "outward structure to the inner life"? He says it like it's a bad thing, and has elsewhere commented (I'm not sure where) that organised religion makes people only experience the spiritual on set days of the year, suggesting that, for him, the inner life simply can't be structured outwardly. What Botton doesn't seem to grasp is that outward structures which guide our thinking about the inner life are highly valuable. This is why, for instance, it is good to have a day that reminds us to mourn over what Jesus had to do for our sin, because it is not something that we would necessarily choose to dwell on otherwise. We need liturgy, whether formally or informally, because it helps keep us on the right track in areas where we might otherwise stray into self-satisfied complacency.
And this is also why Easter Saturday is a good day - because, while many shops are open again, the day itself is a day of resting for most. Perhaps, in that time of resting, we can reflect on how resting might have felt without the hope of the Resurrection, and can therefore be thankful that we, unlike them, rest now with hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment