So Joseph brought some linen cloth, took the body down, wrapped it in the linen and placed it in a tomb … (Mark 15:46).

What is today, this day that you are reading these words?  

Well, it’s Saturday, April 11, 2020 … a weekend day, Day Number Whatever in our virus-changed world … maybe your birthday, or anniversary … just another day… the day after Good Friday, the day before Easter Sunday …

Today is Holy Saturday, “sit-with” Saturday: on this day we sit with the reality of death.

This day, too, is part of the story, part of this one week on which our four Gospels focus so intensely.  It is not an “off” day, not a wasted day. Nor an unnecessary day.

Jesus died.  In a way, he has lost not only his life, but his name: the disciples remove “the body,” shroud “it” and place “it” in a grave.  

This death occurred on Sabbath eve; the next day in the Jewish calendar, today, is the day of rest.  Not just another day to distract ourselves with busy-ness, with hurry and worry. But not a day to un-see what we have just seen, Christ crucified, dead, and buried.  On this day, we simply sit with the reality of overwhelming loss, crushing sorrow, seemingly complete defeat – we sit with the implacable reality of death.

In these fear-plagued times, this does not mean that we are all going to die from the corona virus, that there is nothing to be done, so we should sit passively and accept our fate.  

But this day does invite us to sit with the reality that the human mortality rate remains stubbornly stuck at 100%.  And that Jesus willingly and fully entered into this reality, assumed our mortality, went before us to where we all will go, whether by disease, injury or old age.

This is not a day to feed fear of what is ahead, but to face what has already come. Today is a day to sit with the realities of loss in your life, and the grief and sorrows that may accompany those losses still.  To sit with the ways in which something has “died” for you, be it the death of a loved one, or the death of a relationship, your health, a business, a dream, a hope. And with Jesus’ death, too, with that death especially.  Maybe we can imaginatively enter in to what the disciples might have been experiencing.

Somehow, in the unfathomable mystery of the triune life of God, God knows what it means to suffer death.  In Jesus the God-become-human, the Living God, the Eternal One, has willingly, personally acquainted himself with our weakness, our vulnerability, our mortality, our suffering – with death.

Yes, “we know” that Easter is coming.  But not today. So today we sit with the ways in which Death has already touched us, touches us now, will touch us again.  But we sit in the company of one who understands, even more deeply than we, exactly where we sit.

Today, why not take some time—15 minutes or so—to quiet yourself before the Lord and name the losses you have suffered, the griefs you may still carry.  As you name each one, picture yourself handing it to Jesus, releasing it to him. You’re not trying to fix, solve or resolve anything: you are simply trying to be present to the One whose still-scarred hands gently receive all that you would give to them.  

And spend a few moments in silence, listening to how He might respond.  A Scripture? Some words from a hymn or worship song? A picture or image in your “mind’s eye?”  A memory?