Watching, waiting, waking… into a dream: A meditation for Holy Saturday

 

“…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12.24)

     It’s a dark day.  Jesus is dead.  The disciples are numb with shock, dazed and confused, scared for their lives.  As the tomb was sealed, the sun had descended below the horizon and darkness had shrouded the city of Jerusalem, providing a mixed blessing – it was dark enough to hide the apostles, but too dark for them to dare to dream.  Psalm 130 serves, I believe, to capture the disciples’ mood at this time:

Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
    Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
    to the voice of my supplications!

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
    Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
    so that you may be revered.

I wait for the Lord; my soul waits,
    and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
    more than those who watch for the morning,
    more than those who watch for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
    For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
    and with him is great power to redeem.
It is he who will redeem Israel
    from all its iniquities.

“Out of the depths”: this expression often carries the connotation of death in the Hebrew Scriptures (cf. Jonah 2.1-3).  The sea is often used in the OT as a symbol of chaos and evil, of the cosmos in its un-created form (cf. Gn. 1.1-2, Noah’s flood).  Even in the depths, however, the psalmist believes that the Creator can hear their voice.  The psalmist rests in the fact that their God is a God who forgives.

“I wait for the LORD”: the image here is that of someone standing guard on the wall of an ancient city, waiting for sunrise and the security and warmth that it will bring.  As they compose this psalm, the poet is in the dark depths, but they are waiting and watching for the morning, for the moment when God will rescue them from all their troubles.  The LORD is a God of faithful covenant love, and he is absolutely committed to his people, his covenant-partner.

This is a psalm that we can imagine Jesus uttering on Holy Saturday, as he “descended to the dead”, as the Creed tells us he did.  Jesus went into the darkest depths of both our human nature and our fallen and estranged world, to the lowest possible point in order to proclaim his victory over death to those who had seemed to be forever locked in its iron grip.  You may have seen icons of the “harrowing of hell” which express this idea, found in a few New Testament texts (cf. 1 Peter 3.18-20; 4.6), of Jesus liberating all the dead since Adam and Eve and transferring them from “the grave” to “paradise” (cf. Lk. 23.43).

In the spiritual realm, there was a lot going on during Holy Saturday.  In one sense, Jesus was taking his sabbath rest in the tomb, but in another sense, he was hard at work.  During his ministry, Jesus had often been berated for healing people on the sabbath.  However, Jesus’ reply was “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (John 5.17).  Now matter how dark things may appear, know that the Creator is hard at work, preparing to reveal a new creation… (cf. Gn. 1.1-2; 2 Cor. 4.6).

Are you in the depths at the moment?  Wait for the Lord, he loves you, he hears you, he sees you, he is on the way to save you.  Those periods of darkness that envelop us now and again often feel like they will last forever.  However, the night will end and the “Son” will rise!  Psalm 126 captures the mood of one for whom the night has finally ended and the dawn has finally broken over their despair:

Psalm 126

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
    we were like those who dream.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter
    and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
   “The Lord has done great things for them.”

The Lord has done great things for us,
    and we rejoiced.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
    like the watercourses in the Negeb.

May those who sow in tears
    reap with shouts of joy.

Those who go out weeping,
    bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
    carrying their sheaves.

Have you ever woken up into a dream?  That’s the feeling expressed in this psalm.  Perhaps it refers to the return of the people of God from exile in Babylon.  The understanding was that the exile had been the result of the people’s sin (cf. Is. 40.1-2).  Have you ever been so happy that all you could do was laugh?  God had restored the fortunes of his people in a totally unexpected way.  The appropriate response was to shout for joy!  The dreamer of this psalm is laughing and cheering, and probably crying.  God came through!

Perhaps you feel like you’re “sowing in tears”.  Perhaps you don’t see any results from your efforts and maybe you don’t see any hope of your situation improving or producing a favourable outcome.  Perhaps you feel that “the seed has died” but you’re still waiting to see evidence of some fruit.  Always remember, “Weeping lasts for a night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30.5).

Perhaps Holy Saturday was a time when the disciples wondered if there was any hope for the people of God.  Once again, as Jesus had predicted they would, God’s people had rejected and killed the messenger sent to them to summon them back to covenant-faithfulness to Yahweh, their God.  Had God’s calling of Abraham all those centuries before been a mistake?  Would their story ever turn the corner?  Today we rest with Jesus, knowing that tomorrow, we shall arise into the waking dream of a new world in which death no longer has the final word and where all things are truly possible (cf. Mk. 10.27)…one more sleep!