Words Fail...

It's Friday afternoon. The baby is still asleep in the car seat, where he has been since we returned from a trip to the eye doctor a while ago. Older brother and dad are gone on an outing for the day. There's nothing good on TV at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon. As I look around the room for what to do next--some work on my day off? What else is there to do? I guess I could fold some laundry--I see the blog post I had started to hand write last night. Last night. When what was on my mind was two police shootings of black men in two days. Last night. When the news of 200+ killed in Iraq by ISOL was still rolling around in the back of my mind, trying to make some sense, though it happened days ago. Last night. Before I got up and saw today's news.

Today. What do I write now? I have had blog posts in my head for months now, but never the time to type them up and publish them. And none of them is terribly important, now. Not now. Not with today's news. 11 police officers shot, 5 of them dead, in Dallas. A (black) man found hanged in a public park in Atlanta. 4 people shot, 1 dead, in Bristol, TN--much closer to home. All of that added to the week's other news is a lot of loss. A lot of brokenness. A lot of hurt. Not a lot of sense...

What do I write now? Our heat pump has been repaired. We might actually have functioning air-conditioning for the rest of the summer. The trip to the eye doctor's office was a bust because the contact manufacturer sent contacts with the wrong prescription. The baby is still asleep. He's been asleep for most of the afternoon, except to nurse for a few minutes. What does all this news mean to him, anyway?

 But what about the news? What is there to say? And what will I stand in the pulpit and say on Sunday? I wish I could say that I won't think about it because today is my day off. But what will I say? For now, I will listen. Words fail. I will have to preach on Sunday. It will have to be God's words. I cannot ignore the news any longer, though there's something "safe" in just preaching what I had already planned on. I have to say something, though. Something about this news, about this darkness that has been closing in all week...I will have to do something, too. For now, words fail.

Lord, have mercy on us all. Amen.

Christmas Eve Message 2015

Some thoughts from Christmas Eve...

What if Mary Had Scrapbooked…

Christmas Eve Message 2015

Do you ever wonder if Mary scrapbooked? Sometimes I think we’d all like to see Mary’s baby book for Jesus, and a scrapbook of her engagement, maybe, too. Some selfies of the trip to Bethlehem would answer quite a few questions for us. We’d really like to see a snapshot of the angels—either Gabriel or the whole host of them. I heard a preacher once say that all angels are male, and how that was important for people to understand. I’m not sure why it was so important, but I can say that people have spent a lot of time trying to draw or paint or sculpt what the angels looked like.

And wouldn’t it be nice to know more about the shepherds that showed up? Did they smell as bad as we think they would have? How long did they stay? What did they do with their sheep? What did they do after they left?

Maybe we’d also like to know what the manger actually looked like. I read an article a couple years ago that talked about how there is no way Jesus was born out back in a stable or a cave with no other family around because that is not how the culture would have worked. There may not have been room in the guestroom (which is one translation of the Greek word that’s usually translated as “the inn”), but there would have been space for Mary and Joseph in a common room, where animals also spent the night inside. If Joseph were traveling back to his ancestral home, any distant family member would have been obligated to welcome him, if he could state his lineage. So, where did they stay? Were there really animals in the room with them? And what family members attended to Mary? How did the whole birth go?

The writer of Luke does tell us several interesting details about the birth of Jesus: who was the ruler at the time, why Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem, and who came and visited after Jesus was born—but he seems to tell us just enough to leave us wanting more information. Maybe it’s the scientific nature of our society, or maybe it’s just human nature: we want all the facts and we want to know who is right about them and who is wrong. Just what did Jesus look like? And how old was Mary? We want the facts. Just the facts.

Yet, Luke, or more importantly, God, just doesn’t quite work that way. Luke apparently tells us just as much as we really need to know, though we might think we need to know more. And the writer of John, well he doesn’t satisfy our curiosity about Jesus’ birth at all! “The Word was with God and the Word was God,” and all this other nonsense—what does it all mean?

It’s quite an incredible story. And God had been telling the people for years that something was going to happen—we hear that from Isaiah and all the prophets. Still, for as much as the prophets had nagged and preached for years and years, the people still didn’t understand what God was doing. With as many details as we can gather from Luke, there is still enough mystery about the whole thing that we may very often just miss what is going on here. You see, as incredible of a story as it is, and with as many questions as it leaves us with, what Luke does tell us is meant to be enough. Verse 20 ends with this statement: “Everything happened just as they [the shepherds] had been told.” Though we don’t have all the details here, we have confirmation, and there are witnesses, that the story is true…even if we don’t know how it all looked. And isn’t that what faith is about—that we believe in what we haven’t seen? The writer of Hebrews even defines faith that way, right?

It is mystery, this incarnation, why God would come as a plain old human baby. The real human nature of Jesus is both the greatest gift and the biggest scandal of all. For God to become one just like us means not only that God knows what we’ve been through but also that we can learn to become more like God…if we are willing to. And though we’d like to see some scrapbooks of Jesus’ birth and life, sometimes his being just like us gets a little too close for comfort. You mean that God would be here in our midst? Would come to show us a new way of being? Would expect us to pay attention to such an incredible story? It seems too good to be true…or too difficult to be true, sometimes. We might be a little more comfortable with such a story and such a God if we could keep a safe distance. We might like it if Jesus weren’t quite just like us. If here weren’t really human, then we could give ourselves a break. But one of my friends likes to point out that Jesus was not a superhero whose superpower was dying for our sins. Jesus was a real human, just so that the rest of us humans could be changed forever by his simple birth, his life, his death, and his resurrection.

It is a strange story, indeed. If we are familiar with the “end” of it, then the fact that the beginning is a little mysterious should not surprise us at all. In a few months we will again tell ourselves more of this strange story. We might again wish for some snapshots or actual film footage of what went on. And we will again be left with a whole lot of questions…but God has given us imagination, even without all the details. And better than that, God has given us certainty in the promise of God’s Word and through the living flesh of God’s Son that, indeed, it is true, and we are right to come in praise and celebration, with joy and hope, even in the dark of night, looking for a little baby boy. Jesus. The Christ. Emmanuel. God with us.

Christ is born! Merry Christmas!

2015 Sermon for the Longest Night

I'm a little late posting this, but this was my sermon for my Longest Night of the Year service, on December 21st.

God’s Lifelong Love Letter

Longest Night Service 2015

² But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. ³ Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. ⁴ And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; ⁵ and he shall be the one of peace.

~Micah 5:2-5 NRSV

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ² Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

 ~1 John 3:1-2 NRSV

I made what may ultimately be a mistake when I downloaded what my cell phone calls “Kids Mode.” My son loves to use my phone in Kids Mode. He has developed a certain sense of entitlement about it, that he should be allowed to use Kids Mode when he wants it, at any given moment when I am not actively using my phone…and sometimes when I am using it! Sometimes, I attempt to entice him to use his own Leap Frog tablet, which has a number of similar features and, probably more importantly, is something I never aspire to use for my own purposes.

This may all be fairly irrelevant, except for one thing that is true about both my phone and my son’s tablet: they have video and audio recording capability, which seems to be quite intriguing for him. No matter how often he records himself, though, what he says or sings always has a similar message: how much he loves his mom, and, to a lesser extent, his dad, and anyone or anything else that is on his mind at the time. I must admit that I am not in any way upset to have multiple video and audio clips of my 4-year-old professing his love for me. I only hope that I will somehow be able to retain these clips for the next 20 years, or so, to listen to in times when he won’t be caught dead admitting I am even his mom, much less how much he loves me.

All this is to say that I have begun to wonder if much of our life experiences and our faith experiences are not God’s seemingly repetitive recordings of one completely life-altering truth: how much God loves us. Now, I’ll be honest: the prophet Micah does not just talk about God’s love. And scripture does not tell us only of God’s love. There is much more to God than that. But even in the midst of some pretty scary stuff, Micah looks ahead to a day when a promised leader will come and bring peace to the people…that one we believe is Jesus…who came from a small backwoods town that no one would have thought twice about. But when it came to where and when and how it would all happen, there was God, saying as God had so many times before, “I love you a lot…enough to come and walk right along with you, to make things right again…”

So much of our lives does not feel like a message of love from God. Perhaps the problem is that we are not always interested in how much God loves us. We find many other shiny things to chase after, and we become weighed down with so many burdens that love for us from others, especially from God, seems terribly unlikely. How can God love us, when we are sometimes grumpy? When we are sometimes so pitiful and unhappy and petty? How can God love us, when we keep making the same mistakes, over and over again?

More than this, though, we are often plagued by a seeming certainty that God, indeed, does not love us. The job didn’t work out the way we thought it would. The diagnosis was not what we had hoped for. The mail came, and there were no seasonal greetings, but bills we know we can’t quite pay. No, perhaps God does not love us. After all, things seem so bleak all around us. People are killing other people. People are living without basic needs being met. Cash flow seems to be drying up for all but a privileged few. There is fear…uncertainty…anxiety…a certain sense of darkness and gloom that seems to settle over everything. Does God love us? Really?

And then, from the midst of the trials and conflicts and persecution of the early church, the writer of 1 John, speaks: “This is the message that we have heard from him and announce to you: ‘God is light and there is no darkness in him at all.’” And later on he reminds us, “See what love the Father has given us [lavished upon us, one translation says], that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

That is what we are. And God loves us so much…

A couple of years ago there was a popular love song called “I Choose You,” by Sara Bareilles, which I really liked. Part of it goes like this:

There was a time when I would have believed them
If they told me that you could not come true
Just love's illusion
But then you found me
And everything changed
And I believe in something again

My whole heart
Will be yours forever
This is a beautiful start
To a lifelong love letter

Have you seen any of God’s lifelong love letter for you recently? It’s hard, this time of year. There’s a lot else going on. We are pulled in many directions. We seem to live from emotion to emotion, from party to party…or maybe just from day to day, holding on as tightly as we can. Sometimes, the love of God does seem like an illusion.

But some guy came from some backwater town, a long time ago, after being born in a crowded house without a guestroom for his mom and dad to stay in…and he was God. And he came to show us love in person. Because the only thing that’s better than a letter is a face-to-face visit…and God came and did that because a love letter was just not quite enough…

It’s dark outside. I have to admit, the darkness feels like it’s been winning a bit, lately. Some days have been kind of rough, too busy, emotions a little too raw, sleep a little too scarce, the news a little too painful. Two funerals in Advent is plenty.

But that writer of 1 John tells me this:

⁹ God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

~1 John 4:9-12 NRSV

“We love because he first loved us.” God does love us. The Bible—that love letter—tells us so. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Expecting

Recently, an acquaintance mentioned that another mutual acquaintance had asked him if I am "expecting," to which he replied that he did not know because, well, we're acquaintances and don't run into each other that often. I assured him that I am, and we had the normal "Congratulations...how does your son feel about it...etc., etc., etc..." kind of conversation. Nothing about it struck me as very interesting, until just now, as I was thinking about what I might write for this blog, having not posted in 6 months, and as I was thinking that I will soon need to buckle down and write my portion of my church's Advent devotional booklet. In the midst of that thought process, the word "expecting" came to mind, and it just struck me as, well, kind of odd. I realize it's one of those colloquialisms that we all understand, but I thought I'd consider it literally for a moment...

So, to be silly, here are a few things I'm expecting:
1. I'm expecting that between now and April 20th (or thereabouts), someone I don't know well will think it appropriate to touch my stomach...and I will be tempted to punch that someone...
2. I'm expecting that in the next 5 months, I will have at least one more conversation with someone regarding considering a VBAC instead of a second C-section.
3. I'm expecting that the Duke Men's Basketball team will fare well again this year.
4. I'm expecting that I will preach several sermons without my shoes on this winter, for comfort's sake.
5. I'm expecting that I will recover enough from a recent back injury that I can once again take my dogs out for a walk...until the aforementioned C-section sets me back for 6 weeks again...
6. I'm expecting that I will get involved in some Facebook discussions I will regret.

But in all seriousness, here are a few things I wasn't expecting, in the process of getting pregnant:
1. I never expected it would take more than a year.
2. I never expected the depth of disappointment of negative pregnancy tests, again and again (and let's not talk about chemical pregnancies...).
3. I never expected to experience hot flashes at the age of 36, due to fertility-related drugs.
4. I never expected to be able to empathize even just a little bit with those I already knew who have struggled so much to have children of their own. (Which is not to say I fully understand their struggles!)
5. I never expected to feel so frustrated at what were most likely innocent comments, like, "Oh, when will Benjamin have a sibling?!"

Life is seldom anything that we expect, in case you hadn't recently noticed. I guess that's why that word is so interesting to me today. I expect certain things from certain people or events because that's how my life experience has gone or that's what I want to happen. Isn't is so difficult to realize quite what all we're expecting, sometimes?

When I was young, I believed that everyone went to church--literally, everyone. My family went to church--didn't all families go to church? It's a silly example, but it makes me think about things like perspective and frame of reference. It calls to mind the limitations that we have in our own individual experiences--we can only ever be one person and experience life from one person's point of view. That's always been disappointing to me. I'd like to know what it's like to grow up in a big city, in a neighborhood, in a house that has multiple stories--with a bedroom with a window seat (well, that's what I wanted when I was much younger). I'd like to be able to fully understand what life feels like for people who look different from me, for people who don't have the same advantages I have had, and maybe even for people who have more advantages. How often do I realize that what I expect from others is inherently related to my own life experience?

Sometimes I do realize that, and I might feel shame or frustration. I can't not be who I am...but how can I be so narrow-minded sometimes, so demanding, so unaware? At those moments, I probably expect more of myself than I am truly able to manage. But I guess that's where some other expectations that I have come in:
*I expect that God is showing me the grace to understand others more, day by day.
*I expect that God is at work, redeeming the crap in the world that I see and can't understand...and even the yucky stuff that I don't see and/or tacitly participate in...
*I expect that by continuing to be part of the church, broken though it may be, I will be a vessel for God to change the world.
*I expect that through the Holy Spirit's work in my life I will grow to have more compassion and grace toward all other people, that they might know God's love through me.
*I expect that I am moving toward Christian perfection and may be made perfect in this life (by God's grace, of course!). (Hey, I said it on stage before I got ordained, so I might as well mention it here!)

I could go on, but maybe you get the point. There are lots of things in this world that I know I am expecting and lots of things that I don't even realize I am expecting...but more importantly, there are those things I expect by faith--that I hope for, more than anything. Yep. I hope for those things. I don't just expect them. And that is much more important than what Duke's basketball team does this season. And that makes me think of Advent, too. We wait. We expect. Most of all, we hope.

Yep, I'm expecting. But I'm hoping for so much more.

My Grandma

I've been thinking about my grandmother recently. Maybe it started because last week one day, I decided I wanted to wear a ring that had been hers (which took some time to find…), but maybe I'd been thinking about her before that, too. So here's kind of a belated Mother's Day tribute to my grandma...

My grandmother died in October 2003, during my second year of studying for an M.A. in English at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her decline was long and gradual. At first, we thought she was just goofy sometimes, assuming the UFOs she claimed to see were planes landing at CVG, not too far from the retirement home where my grandparents lived. That was in the midst of watching the man she had loved since she was 8 years old lose a long, painful battle with cancer. Her grip on reality gradually loosened after that. The family laughed about it, most days.

Many folks share important life lessons they learned from their grandparents. The lessons I remember my grandma teaching my sisters and me seem perhaps less deep and inspired than lots of people's, but no less important. My grandma taught us how to play cards and cross stitch. And how to do everything properly. Everything. One summer, while we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa for an extended period of time, Grandma read Emily Post's Miss Manners to us every night before we went to sleep. We slept impressively well that summer...We joke about how Grandma always wanted things "as nice as they possibly can be," but I don't believe for a minute that we've ever stopped trying to make that happen!

I don't know what Grandma Betz would think if she learned I'm a pastor now. We never talked about such things, that I recall. I knew her political leanings--most people who knew her knew that! I knew about her prejudices and could tell you how much she was a product of her era. Despite being a whiz at math, she never held aspirations of a career that would put her brainpower to the kind of use we'd expect of a woman today. That was not what women did. She asked me one time if my sorority encouraged its members to diet--that was a fun conversation...

I wish I could say I knew much about her faith. I don't know exactly what she believed, except that she hated the hymn "Amazing Grace": apparently, she did not appreciate calling herself "a wretch." I do know what she did, though--how she practiced her faith. She went to church. She and Grandpa were always active in church, no matter where they lived. They sang in the choir. They participated in many ways. I remember attending some VBS during a summer when we stayed with them for a while. I can still picture the table my twin sister and I sat at, can vaguely see the face of the woman--a close friend of Grandma's--who taught us to memorize the 23rd psalm. I know Grandma and Grandpa prayed The Lord's Prayer every night before going to sleep. Did they recite the 23rd psalm, too? I can't remember. Maybe sometimes going to church was just the proper thing to do for them, but I know I don't think of my grandparents without also knowing how important church was to them.

I don’t recall many other life lessons my grandmother taught me on purpose. What I did learn from her, as I watched her grow older, as I saw her struggle with losing her health and her loved ones, as I heard about my uncle carefully watching over her and helping her narrowly miss being scammed by mail solicitations and telemarketers, as I saw her memory slip away from her, is how to be a pastor to people who are dying. I was never her pastor. I didn't even admit I was called to ministry until shortly before her death. What I learned from her, from how my family cared for her, from how she left us over a period of years, was what it is to watch life and death happening at the same time. There was grace in the way she handled herself, even when things were the most difficult. There was love from family and friends, even when she was most difficult. And there was laughter, even when "memories" were hard to find.

I'm rounding out 6 years of pastoral ministry now. I feel like I've watched my grandmother die again at least a dozen times, in the faces of older church members, some of whom I've gotten to know a little bit, and some of whom I arrived a little too late on the scene to really develop a relationship with. Here is the time of sitting with, of asking questions, of hearing stories, of appreciating reminiscences of lifetimes and struggles and victories I can hardly imagine. Here is the going along with whatever crazy stories come up this day, no matter how little reality is part of them. Here is the repeating a dozen times in 30 minutes who I am, vital information about me, why I'm here. And here is the waiting, the gradual slipping away, the transition so long in coming (most of which I actually missed with my grandma, as she was in Cincinnati and I was in Knoxville--phone calls from my mom sufficed for that part of the journey).

When I was in divinity school, during my summer internship, a man told me he didn't want me to go sit with his mother while she was dying because I was too young to have to deal with that sort of thing. He was so heartbroken that he couldn't bear to go there, himself. When I got to the nursing home, she had already passed. It wouldn't have been too hard for me...it was the part of my grandma's passing I hadn't been there for--the actual end of it. This woman was a lovely woman--I knew that after only 8 weeks of being an intern there; I wish I had been there, but I know it must have been a beautiful moment when she reached the end of this earthly journey. I never really thought I'd deal with that sort of thing so much when I started the process to be ordained, but I have. A lot. Counting the words I shared about that woman who died during my summer internship, I've officiated at or participated as clergy in 37 funeral services. I know my grandma never planned to teach me anything about dealing with people who were dying, but I am so thankful that she did. I wasn’t there for much of the “heavy lifting” with her, but I experienced it through my older sister, my mom, and my dad, in the stories they shared. I learned how to deal with the dying while my grandma lived, and I am so thankful. She was a little bit kooky, sometimes. She wore way too much perfume (she had lost her sense of smell), and she talked to every inanimate object, it seemed. And she was proper—so very proper. And she loved us all, in her own proper way. And we loved her, too.

Thanks, Grandma. I miss you.

An Easter Sermon

“Surprise!”

Easter 2015

John 20:1-18

April 5, 2015

Do you like surprises? I wonder if Mary Magdalene liked surprises. I imagine her journey to the tomb in the pre-dawn darkness was not really that exciting. She could not have been expecting anything good to happen in that garden, least of all any surprises. It’s unclear why she was going to the grave, at least as John tells it, but the last thing she probably expected was to find it empty. She knew the situation—how much the religious leaders had hated Jesus, how they would go to any length to get rid of him. So when she found that the stone had been rolled away, her first thought was that this was one horrible surprise. Not only did those people have to stir things up to get Jesus killed, now they (or someone else) had broken into his tomb and taken the body. Where was the justice? How could this happen and make this horrible day even worse?

She raced back to tell the men. Surely, they would be mortified by this surprise, too. But they were not, it seems. They did run to look at the tomb, and their more thorough inspection than Mary’s showed them a grave that did not look robbed. They looked inside, and then they left. It’s kind of a strange story. We never quite get to know what they may have understood, or not. They didn’t even seem all that surprised by this strange surprise.

But Mary was. Whatever the men may have decided to go and do next, Mary remained in the garden, surprised and saddened by what she did not understand. And then, what she least expected to happen, did. And we don’t expect it, either, I suppose, if we really admit it. We pride ourselves on being reasonable people. We know how life and death work. What dies stays dead. Once the heart stops, it’s over. Once the lungs give out, it’s done. That is how living and dying work. No negotiating. No surprises. This is what we know.

This is what Mary knew, standing there, in the middle of a garden. Then, a man approached. She didn’t recognize him. [The narrator lets us know who it is—a surprise for us, but at least we’re informed!] She spoke to him; all she wanted was to know where she could find her Lord. She did not want any more surprises.

But then, what do you know?! Surprise! It wasn’t the gardener Mary was talking to, after all. And there was nowhere to look for her Lord, except right in front of her! There he was! Surprise! The one she had thought was gone forever was standing right there! Surprise!

The surprise was almost too wonderful to be believed! She had scarcely imagined this could happen! What was dead was supposed to stay dead, but oh how she had wished that he was not dead! She had left on Friday thinking this could not be possible—things could not end this way…and now, she knew things had not ended that way! Surprise!

Does Easter surprise us? Does it catch us off-guard? Are we so intent on looking for a Jesus we thought was dead and gone that we miss him standing right in front of us? This is the good news Mary experienced in the garden that day, that Jesus was right there with her, had not left her and the others alone after all, and was not overcome by the evil and sin of those in power. And this is the good news that we celebrate on Easter—not only that death is overcome, and not only that God does indeed reign over all things, but that we are claimed by resurrection, too. We are part of this story. We see the empty tomb. We see the risen Savior. Our names are called and we are invited to share the same news that Mary does: “I have seen the Lord!” What looks like the end is not the end, any more! Surprise!

Surprise! This is our story! This is the end of the story that we have been waiting for, for two days…for a week…for a lifetime! The ending is not what we had expected, perhaps. It doesn’t make sense, by the standards of science and biology that we know. Life doesn’t end with death, now. The dead doesn’t stay dead, now. The stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty. Surprise! Is this what you were looking for when you showed up? Maybe not…

Much of life actually does surprise us. Things don’t work out the way we want or expect. Life takes us by surprise. Death takes us by surprise. God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want them answered. Sometimes, things fall apart. Sometimes, things hang together when we think it’s all over. Surprise! Often, we are reminded of how little we actually control, despite our best efforts to control it all! Surprise!

Easter is about surprises. The story is one big “Surprise!” right here at the end of it. Maybe it doesn’t take us by surprise any more—we’ve read and heard it for so long. Maybe it seems like it’s just another old, old story. And well it should be. Because it is the reason for our hope, the surprise that we depend on happening, the unexpected that makes all our endings less final. Death does not win. Evil does not prevail. Sin is not the victor. Surprise! Resurrection is possible! And we are resurrection people—we receive the promise of resurrection, even when we have “good Friday” days in our lives. Even when we stand looking into the grave, we are resurrection people. Surprise! The promise is ours, too, because we are claimed by Christ, the resurrected Christ, and we look forward to what life is like in resurrection, not death and dark tombs.

“I have seen the Lord!” Really? What are you talking about? That can’t be! But it is! Surprise! “I have seen the Lord!”

You have come to meet him here today…and surprise! He has come to meet you, too! Now, you go and tell others, “I have seen the Lord!” and don’t keep this surprise to yourself!

Daily Lenten Post, Holy Saturday

No one knows what happened during that one full day that Jesus laid in the tomb. Christian tradition states that he "descended to the dead" (though some of us leave that out of our version of the Apostles' Creed). Otherwise known as the harrowing of hell, this is when Jesus went to the realm of the dead and retrieved the souls of the righteous who had died since the beginning of time. This idea is based on verses from 1 Peter 3:

18 Christ himself suffered on account of sins, once for all, the righteous one on behalf of the unrighteous. He did this in order to bring you into the presence of God. Christ was put to death as a human, but made alive by the Spirit. 19 And it was by the Spirit that he went to preach to the spirits in prison. 20 In the past, these spirits were disobedient—when God patiently waited during the time of Noah. Noah built an ark in which a few (that is, eight) lives were rescued through water.

Maybe you've taken time to wonder what, exactly, happened on that dark day so long ago. Maybe you've never really thought about it before. There's so little in scripture that suggests anything that happened on that particular Sabbath day that it's highly debated if the harrowing of hell may have occurred. Perhaps it's one of those questions we will just have to wait to have answered.

Whatever Jesus may have been doing in the tomb, those who had loved him surely spent that Sabbath day wrapped in the numbness and disbelief of those who grieve, having watched their beloved teacher wrapped in the clothes of death and laid in a borrowed tomb the evening before. We may feel their pain today, as we grieve something in our own lives. We may feel the frustration they had, of having to wait to finish the job of preparing and burying him properly. What do we feel is left undone this day? What are we waiting for, that we just want to get over with, but we can't do it right now?

Maybe Holy Saturday hasn't been part of your spiritual journey thus far. Making cinnamon rolls for the church's Easter breakfasts, practicing for sunrise services, and shopping for Easter dresses characterized most of the Holy Saturdays of my growing up years, once I was too old for Easter egg hunts. As far as I knew, Good Friday was over and all was about to be great, once Sunday came. Saturday just felt like the day in between. And I guess that's really just what it is. Holy Saturday: the day in between...but not a day to be ignored or skipped or rushed through for me, any more.

Presently, I'm sitting my church's sanctuary. Yesterday afternoon, a church member died. Tomorrow, we will baptize a baby. Today, I sit and wait. I have offered my congregation a space and time to make Holy Saturday part of their Holy Week observance. Several have come by. Some have shed tears as they walked through the Stations of the Cross that I taped up on the walls for today. Some have sat in quiet contemplation. (I wonder if the music I cued on my iPod was distracting to any of them...) I am thankful for this time. It is not wasted. If anything, it is spent in solidarity with the one who spent a whole day in the tomb, and with all who find themselves in tombs of any kind today. May we find that when tomorrow dawns, we may be surprised by grace once again, despite what today has held for us.