Saturday

When I was in seminary, I did a chaplaincy internship at a hospital in Chicago. The hours I covered were
on weekends and overnight... times when the staff chaplains - the people who actually, yʼknow, knew
what they were doing - were doing whatever it was they did with their time off.

A hospital at night is a very still place. The families of most patients have gone home, the lights are a little
lower, people are sleeping, nurses go about their duties in a calm busy-ness. It is peaceful: the hum of
fluorescent lights and the rhythms of patient care punctuated only in case of emergencies which were, on
my rounds at least, usually blessfully absent.

On the night before Thanksgiving, though, that calmness and quietness becomes quite another thing.
Before holidays, everything that could be done to ensure that patients could go home and spend time with
their families was done. Those who remained were severely ill... many just holding on until the holiday
was over. After Thanksgiving there would be a lot for the chaplains on duty to do. On Thanksgiving Eve,
though, there was virtually nothing. I wandered the halls.

In my wandering, I meandered into a wing of the ICU that was absolutely dark. The rooms - with their big
sliding glass doors - were shrouded in night, their machines silent. The corridor lights were off. The
nurses station - normally the hub of activity - was empty, the computers off... only the gentle glow of
standby lights. In that wing was the sensation of being absolutely, completely alone. If you need a setting
for a horror movie, the absolute best one you can choose, the scariest thing you can show on film is an
abandoned amusement park... the second best is a silent hospital: silent dark wilderness may be
terrifying; but silent dark sterility, the only sound that of your footsteps on the tiles, a million places where
a monster could hide... well, we all need alone time, but one can be a bit too alone.

Now, I know thereʼs a sense in which we are never really alone:

If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand
shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the
darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to
you. (Psalm 139: 8-12)

But I must admit, there are times when loneliness is real: in the dark corridor of a hospital on the eve of a
holiday, in an abandoned amusement park, in the loss of a loved one or when friends are simply far away,
in the loss of a job or a home... at three in the morning in that long dark night of the soul. We can so easily
feel that the prayers of our lips and the meditations of our hearts are words thrown into an abyss and
thoughts trapped inside our own heads. It is... Saturday.

I donʼt mean that loneliness is literally found on Saturday, of course. I quite like Saturdays: sleep in, watch
some television, take a nap... theyʼre restful. But in thinking about prayer when God seems absent, I
couldnʼt help but be drawn to a part of the Bible that isnʼt exactly there: there are curious absences in the
text. Iʼve talked about this before, of course: those moments when Jesus performs some miracle in an
everyday way - the feeding of the four thousand recounted by Mark is a simple affair, Jesus saying “get
up and walk” is ordinary. The fanfare of the miracle is absent in these passages: their glory is almost
obscured by the banality of their performance.

The absence I want to speak of today, though, is Saturday. Oh, we get robust descriptions of a certain
Friday in the gospels. Itʼs enough that there are entire Good Friday traditions that revolve around
reenacting Jesusʼ path to the cross. And Easter Sunday gets plenty of space. But Saturday, the day when
God is in the grave - a day that Iʼve long thought should be commemorated with churches simply being
closed and doing no business at all - gets hardly a mention.
Saturday

Only Matthew brings it up, and that seems simply to get some soldiers in front of the tomb. Itʼs a little
weird, right? Itʼs a little bit like a magic trick. Matthew knows that Jesus is going to rise from the dead and
come out of the tomb, but he also knows that the audience has a theory for how thatʼs done: the tomb is
empty, that means the body must have been stolen. So Matthew shows us the lock, right? He shows us
the guards. Like a magician he says: “I know you think your know how the trick is done... let me show you
that it is absolutely impossible to do it that way.” Thatʼs all we get of Saturday.

What must that Saturday have been like for the disciples? What must it have been like the day after
witnessing the death of their friend and teacher? What must it have been like to see their messianic
hopes - the restoration of their nation - slaughtered on a cross by a powerful empire? What must they
have gone through thinking that their lives following this man around Israel had been for nothing? Or,
worse, had this not been a man, but God? Had the Romans managed to send the Most High to the
grave?

We might be able to be a little smug in our answers to these questions: “Just wait until Sunday,” we might
say, “itʼll all turn around, itʼs not over yet.” But for them Sunday isnʼt today... for them, Sunday is a long,
long way off, even if it is just around the corner.

The crucifixion is a crisis, a breaking of the world, a dark night of the soul: “It was now about the sixth
hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining.” (Luke
23:44-45) The sun may have started shining in the world by the ninth hour, but I doubt it started shining in
the disciplesʼ hearts until a while later.

I, admittedly, have not been through the death of, yʼknow, a messiah - well, in a literal sense. But I think I
can get inside the head of the disciples... just a little bit. Not long after I graduated from college, a friend of
mine - Dave - was killed in a car accident. A van coming the other way on the highway hit a patch of black
ice and his little car was no match for it. It was no oneʼs fault. There was no big bad empire, no
execution... just one of those things.

And I remember going with friends to the pub and having drinks and I remember getting together with
friends and watching movies and I remember being with friends and feeling absolutely alone. The world
had, in some small way, broken. The world did not make sense. Darkness did not come over the whole
land, but it came over a corner of it.

And I remember going over to the college and going into a practice room and playing a tune that I had
always played when I sat in with Daveʼs quartet. If you know jazz tunes, they can go on for a while as the
musicians solo over even a simple form, building up and breaking down themes, tossing in little ideas,
showing off. I donʼt know how long I played, but I do know that in that time I was not so alone. Playing that
tune, the crack in the world was filled just a little. And in the years that have gone by that crack has been
filled more and more. Thereʼs still a scratch in the world... and many more have been added as the years
have passed, but the world is, in some way, back together again.

Iʼm not unique, of course. Nor are the disciples. Weʼve all been there. Weʼve all seen Saturday. If youʼre
one of the fortunate ones who somehow hasnʼt... well, Iʼm sorry, but you will. Itʼs part of the human
condition.

So what did the disciples do? Well... they got to Sunday morning: “On the first day of the week, Mary
Magdalene (or Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, or Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James
and Salome, or just ʻthe womenʼ, it depends on the gospel) went to the tomb.” (John 20:1) This is no small
thing. They went to the sign of their hopelessness: if God lay dead, then God lay dead in this tomb.

But they had faith. It is easy to forget that the resurrection was never for Christ alone. Every disciple
would have believed that, one day, the resurrection would happen and Jesus would be among those
raised. They just didnʼt expect it to happen, for him, that day.
Saturday

This is the nature of faith: we trust that creation bends towards justice, we trust that the long road of time
leads to mercy. That is the eschatological hope of Christianity: that in the end, God will see all that was
made and it will be very good. We also know that along the way there are millions of crucifixions and
disappointments, and millions of surprising resurrections.

This is prayer in the absence of God - whether that absence is real or simply felt (and whoʼs to say that
what is felt is not real enough?): we go to the tomb, we play the tune, we whisper into the abyss, we walk
the dark corridor not in the knowledge that the world will be healed, but in the hope - in the faith - that all
shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. We donʼt pray for anything other
than the presence of God, firm in our knowledge that we are neither the first nor the last to do so and
hopeful in our faith that when we ask we shall be given to, when we seek we shall find, and when we
knock the door will be opened.

This can be a hard prayer to pray. It is hard to go to that tomb. It is hard to play that piece. It is hard to
look into the abyss. It is hard to walk that corridor. It is through grace that we are able to do so. It is
through grace that we have been provided with prayers to pray. We ask and seek and knock with our
ancestors in faith.

So I ask you now to pray with me. I ask you to pray with me especially if you are walking down that dark
corridor, if you cannot feel Godʼs presence, if for you it is Saturday. I ask you to pray that we might go
down to the tomb together and find that our savior is risen indeed. Let us assume an attitude of prayer:

As a deer longs for flowing streams,

   so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
   for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
   the face of God?
My tears have been my food
   day and night,
while people say to me continually,
   ʻWhere is your God?ʼ

These things I remember,

   as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
   and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
   a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
   and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
   my help and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;

   therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
   from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
   at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
   have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
Saturday

   and at night his song is with me,

   a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God, my rock,

   ʻWhy have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
   because the enemy oppresses me?ʼ
As with a deadly wound in my body,
   my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
   ʻWhere is your God?ʼ

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

   and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
   my help and my God. (Psalm 42)

Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause

   against an ungodly people;
from those who are deceitful and unjust
   deliver me!
For you are the God in whom I take refuge;
   why have you cast me off?
Why must I walk about mournfully
   because of the oppression of the enemy?

O send out your light and your truth;

   let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
   and to your dwelling.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
   to God my exceeding joy;
and I will praise you with the harp,
   O God, my God.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

   and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
   my help and my God. (Psalm 43)

And the people of God say: Amen.