Dear One’s of St. C’s, 

As much as I hated to leave Lent during this time in our world’s ongoing desert I have found it good and right to be in Holy Week with you all as we move towards the cross together.  Tonight we will be together to once again hear the story of Jesus being betrayed by his closest friends and handed over to death on a cross.  Then we will sit with the empty cross, as Joseph and Nicodemus take the body of Jesus and wrap it with the spices in linen cloth.  I will find myself questioning this violence that is at the center of my faith and I will wonder if there was another way. And I will once again conclude, as I always do, that this is the most powerful, heart wrenching, beautiful, thing our God could have done to show us who we are and invite us to be something new.  

And then Holy Saturday will come.  In some ways the hardest day of all.  You have heard me say and you will hear me say again - this story of our God and our church year, is a story that is meant to show us how to live near God.  We live this out each year to come closer to God and who Jesus is and to find ourselves more in God’s likeness.  So, do we as humans need to experience and understand Holy Saturday?  Why did Jesus have to wait three excruciating days?  Why not just a few hours?  I believe we need to practice Holy Saturday because life is filled with them.  The days our hope is lost.  We must sit with Holy Saturday, the vastness of all that is lost on this day, because someday, if not today, we will find ourselves hopeless and scared.   We must not rush to Easter.  We must not rush to hope.  In many ways this time of COVID-19 is like a long Holy Saturday.  We are waiting for good news. 

How do you do Holy Saturday?  Literally and figuratively?  Who do you go to when you feel hopeless?  What do you do when you are overwhelmed by the challenges of life? How do you cope?  I encourage you to allow yourself to just feel the darkness of this world on Holy Saturday.   Allow yourself to reckon with all that has been lost this month, all the people you are worried about, and all the times you have feared death for yourself or a loved one.  It is hard to stay in Holy Saturday for too long.  If you choose to enter it, be aware of your own needs and mental health, do not stay in it longer than is good for you.  But I think it is important that we learn how to let Holy Saturday be what it is.  On Holy Saturday Jesus is dead in a tomb.  Joseph and Nicodemus are tending to his stiff body and Mary Magdalene and Mary are there with them waiting.  Hope is not gone, it’s just questioned.  Let’s not run from this questioning of hope, but honor it.  Honor your fear.  Honor what your body is trying to tell you about this pandemic.  Let’s learn how to sit in Holy Saturday.  Just do not forget to get up early the next day and go to the tomb, for you may have a chance to see that darkness has been overcome by the light and love of God.

with hope and peace, 

Meghan