Holy Saturday: Silent Vigil

Most people will celebrate today as Easter Saturday. The holiday weekend is well under way and the stash of chocolate has been opened and the sun is shining. The supermarkets ran out of essentials by mid morning. There was a small crisis in Morrison’s earlier as all their Mary Poppins Returns DVDs had sold out - it’s a good job I got mine on Thursday!

If we are doing the drama of Holy Week properly this is not Easter Saturday but Holy Saturday. Jesus has died and has been placed in a tomb. The Jesus project is over and we have come away from witnessing brutality and annihilation in shock and in grief. We now wait to see what on earth life holds for us next. 

This morning, I was glad to be at an 8am Tenebrae Service in church. Various honest and heartfelt readings were shared, and after each one a candle was extinguished. The darkness of grief after any death is real. One of the readings was Hezekiah’s prayer. He’s been having a rough time! Life feels hard. Here’s a bit of it: 

Isaiah 38: 10 - 13

10 I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave:

I am deprived of the residue of my years.

11I said, I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living:

I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.

12Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent:

I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness:

From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

13I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones:

From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

The order of service told us the service would end with the collect then a loud noise before we left in silence. The collect was shared then everyone stamped their feet! I had to look up what this was all about. Apparently it is to remember the terror and shock of the crucifixion and the earthquake before the resurrection. The world is shaken by these events. I’m learning a lot from a different tradition this week. I’m singing in the choir tomorrow (how did that happen?) I gather it gets me a seat as the church will be bursting at the seams. A lot come here to do Easter Sunday.

After the service I went to walk by the harbour in silence. Today is a day to ponder, to wait in between events, to yearn for news, to take time to contemplate the things that have happened. We rush people on after grief too quickly to move on, to get over it, to feel better. We need time to mourn before healing can come. 

But our vigil is that healing will come. And later tonight we gather in the darkness on Cuthberts beach to see what might come to pass. This Saturday experience spiritually is painful but in the waiting and the reflecting we hold on to the belief that God isn’t finished with the story yet...