Holy Saturday



Burial Eliza Sewap, Pelican Narrows

Daily Office 

Liminal

We began Lent with sin and death and we end there as well. We read today that the unclean cannot be clean and that mortals die.  We deny ourselves the reality and grief of sin and death and thereby rob ourselves of the assurance and joy of forgiveness and life.

There is an awkward silence to this day.  I am not sure what to feel. Relief, that Christ’s agony is over?  Sorrow, as I recall my complicity in this and all injustice and hatred and lies? Despair, as his most good and beautiful life and teaching, ministry and example, work and love have come to a dead end?  Gratitude, as I rest in his finished work?  Hope, as even his death was full of signs of hidden victory?

The first time I heard someone use the word “liminal” (from the latin limen, threshold, referring to a transitional space or time), I recoiled. The word sounded pretentious and educated.  Yet here I am to claim that Holy Saturday is Liminal.  We are somewhere between the piercing grief, the total eclipse of Good Friday and the blazing light, the overflowing joy of Easter.  And we are invited to rest and wait in the quiet confusion of this Sabbath.  

The Lord Jesus rested on the Sabbath day. Easter is the end of the Sabbath.  The Sabbath of Creation gives way to the Lord’s Day of Recreation.  The day of rest, which once celebrated the finished work of creation, now celebrates the finished work of salvation as well.  The Sabbath was given that people might know the gift of creation, the generosity of the Creator, not something earned or bought or sold or deserved, so the Sabbath of salvation is given that people might know the gift of salvation, not something earned or bought or sold or deserved, the grace of our Redeemer.  

Easter begins at the edge of dawn, in the shadow of guilt and grief, fear and failure, darkness and death, and Easter’s dawn is a long one from early that morning and for forty days until the Ascension, and even the illumination of the Holy Spirit and even now in your life and mine.  

Twenty five years ago a very wise priest gave me Psalm 31 v. 18a as penance after a long and agonising confession.  I went back to a pew in the Church and read what he thought I needed to pray, “My times are in your hand.”   He sent me away with a prescription for quiet, hopeful submission.  There is a sense of both reverent recognition and resignation to that phrase.  It is a prayer for liminal times in this season of the Church and in your life and mine.  My times are in the hand of Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever, the beginning and the end,  Alpha and Omega,  all time belongs to him and all the ages,  to him be glory and power through every age for ever. Amen.

May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds, our lives and world.  

The Rt. Rev. Michael Hawkins




Redemption   Johnny Cash

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