Today, we wait.
It is Holy Saturday, and in my tradition, that’s what we do. We wait.
According to our story, the Carpenter that I follow had been murdered. Executed the day before by those in power, he died a criminal’s death. Even though he had done no wrong other than to speak truth to power, he was nailed to a cross and left to die. As night began to fall his body was gathered up by a friend, wrapped for burial, and placed in a hastily prepared tomb. A cave with a stone rolled over the entrance, two women who had loved and followed him sat outside the cave, and waited. There was nothing else to do. Leave it to a woman to sit in the darkness with her sadness and grief when all others have left.
There was no guarantee of what the morning would bring. Rumors of the Carpenter’s return to life circulated, but who knew what that meant. So much of what he had said didn’t make much sense. And yet he was their friend, they had loved him, and now he was gone, and their hearts were broken.
As the story goes, their waiting came to an end the following day. The stone was rolled away, the tomb was empty, and no body remained. On their way to spread the mysterious news they were met by the Carpenter himself. In the flesh. It was him. He was alive. Somehow, in a way they could never understand, in a way that can never be proven or explained, he was alive again, and their time of waiting was over.
It is a universal pattern. Death gives way to new life. When loss and sorrow and disappointment overtake us, there is nothing to do but wait outside the cave where whatever or whoever it is that we’ve lost is hidden away behind a stone. We wait, and sit with it, and then we wait some more. We let it wash over and through us. We let it have its way with us, until finally, a new day arrives bringing with it the unimaginable. New life. New love. New hope.
But that is tomorrow.
For today, we wait.
