Waiting and Watching

“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison…”

I Peter 3:18-19

I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,

and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried;

he descended into hell;

the third day he rose again from the dead;

he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;

from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the one holy universal Christian Church,

the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Growing up, we always recited the Apostles’ Creed in worship every Sunday. I grew to love the cadences of the old King James English phrases, and they remain deeply etched in my soul. One line in the creed always puzzled me, however; after recalling the crucifixion, we affirmed that Christ “descended into hell.” Some people translate that as “he descended to the dead,” but either way, it always left me a little uncertain. I never really learned much about that doctrine growing up, but over time I’ve come to understand just how profound that affirmation can be. On this Wednesday of Holy Week, we are in that in-between moment, one that will be even more pronounced come Saturday, when we’ve told the story of Jesus’ passion again, but we haven’t yet arrived at the joy of resurrection and new life. Holy Saturday is an underappreciated part of Holy Week, I think—and one that holds much wisdom for our own spiritual journeys.

On Holy Saturday, Jesus lay in his tomb; it’s the day when all hope seemed to be lost and the Movement that Jesus started seemed to have come to a screeching halt. It’s that in-between day, the quiet time between the violence and pain of Good Friday and the unexpected joy of Easter. In other words, it’s where we spend most of our lives. And I think maybe that’s why it gets so little attention—it can make us uncomfortable. That may be why we tend to skip right over this day, rushing from cross to empty tomb without spending much time dwelling in that silence and quiet and uncertainty. On Holy Saturday, nothing much is happening; just the waiting. The followers of Jesus were left waiting on that Sabbath day, what was supposed to be a day of rest. They had managed to retrieve his body from the cross and have it quickly buried before sundown and the beginning of the Sabbath, and for now nothing more could be done. They would anoint it after the Sabbath was over—or should I say, the women would anoint him—the men would be hiding. But in any case, it seems to all be over. All over, but the waiting. That’s not unlike some of our experiences following the death of a loved one today. After it’s all said and done, after the funeral is over, the loved ones have gone home, the casseroles have stopped coming, we’re now left to figure out what to do next. It’s a time that can be disorienting as we try to make our way in what is for us a new world. All over, but the waiting.

As Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor writes so eloquently, “That is what Holy Saturday has taught me about being Christian. Between the great dramas of life, there is almost always a time of empty waiting — with nothing to do and no church service to help — a time when it is necessary to come up with your own words and see how they sound with no other sounds to cover them up. If you are willing to rest in this Sabbath, where you cannot see your hand in front of your face and none of your self-protective labors can do you one bit of good, then you may come as close to the Christ as you will ever get — there in that quiet cave where you wait to see how the Maker of All Life will choose to come to you in the dark.”

On this day of in-betweenness, in this Holy Week of joy and sorrow, uncertainty and pain, hope against hope, may you find the place of rest where the Maker of Heaven and Earth will come to you once again and work miracles of new life. May it be so.