Shayne Looper: Holy Saturday and waiting in the shadow of uncertainty
In his song “Maranatha,” Michael Card sings that “waiting is the most bitter lesson a believing heart has to learn.” I understand the sentiment, but doesn’t it depend on what kind of waiting we are doing? Waiting for the birth of a child, a much-needed vacation, or retirement is one kind of waiting. Waiting for the divorce to be finalized, the foot to be amputated, or a terminally ill spouse to die is altogether different.
In either case, though, we know what we’re waiting for. Whether we are longing for it or dreading it, we know what’s coming. But there is a third kind of waiting, which may be the most bitter of all. The thing for which we are waiting is uncertain. We don’t know what is going to happen or if it will happen at all. We sense that a storm is approaching, but we don’t know how bad it will be. We are waiting in the dark.
Some years ago, social scientists in the Netherlands conducted an experiment in which they told one group of subjects that they would receive 20 strong shocks at routine intervals, over a short period of time. They gave a second group similar information, with these changes: 17 of the shocks would be mild and only three would be strong, but they would not know when the strong shocks were coming. The result? Subjects in the second group sweated more and experienced faster heart rates. They suffered less physical pain but more emotional pain.
Waiting in the dark is hard. We’re not sure we can handle what is coming. People who have been through trauma often suffer in this way. The pain they’ve already experienced is compounded by the pain of not knowing what is coming next.
It must have been this way for Jesus’s first disciples. Five days before the crucifixion, they were exultant. Everything was coming together just as they had hoped. And then Thursday night came, and the world turned upside down. One of their own was a traitor. Jesus was arrested. He was tried that very night. The next day, in a rushed execution, he was put to death.
It was a nightmare. The unthinkable had happened. And now what? The disciples had so aligned themselves and their future with Jesus that, when he died, their identity died with him. Who were they now? They didn’t know. What would happen next? They had no idea.
When the authorities arrested Jesus and, later, when they tried him, they questioned him about his followers. That was ominous. The disciples locked themselves into the upper room, not knowing what was coming. They jumped at every noise. They were so traumatized they could hardly think.
Besides the immediate danger, there was long-term uncertainty. Just days earlier, they had known who they were and what to expect. But who were they now without Jesus? And what would happen next? Would a crack team of soldiers break in the door and kill them all? Would their lives end in one terrifying moment? Or would they return to their villages and the ridicule that awaited them? Would they go back to what would forevermore seem like a hollow existence?
We call the day after the crucifixion, “Holy Saturday.” They would have called it something else. It was a day of grief and dread. In that dark, upstairs room, they could almost feel something surrounding them, nearing them, coming for them.
They did not know it, but it was God who surrounded them, was near them, and was coming for them. They did not see him, but he saw them. And he sees us.
Barbara Brown Taylor wrote: “Between the great dramas of life, there is almost always a time of empty waiting…” Waiting? Yes, indeed. But empty? No. Such waiting is filled with possibilities.
Imagine standing outside the garden tomb on the evening of the first Holy Saturday. The dreams you cherished lie buried. But though you cannot see it, that tomb is filled with indescribable and glorious possibilities that are about to burst into life and change the world forever.
— Shayne Looper is a writer and speaker based in Coldwater, Michigan. Contact him at salooper57@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Shayne Looper: Holy Saturday and waiting in the shadow of uncertainty
