Holy Saturday in Lockdown. For the first time in most of our lives, we have pause for thought on this Day of Uncertainty.
The disciples, in hiding, because they were afraid.
And not without cause, because the danger was very real.
The authorities had lost their patience.
And never mind about tomorrow, as Jesus had said. Every horizon was blocked by the pain and tensions of today. For us, it’s really difficult to look beyond the virus, for instance to the news of continuing freak weather in the Pacific region.
The easy way to see the events of the Passion is to portray everything destructive as corruption by the powerful snd influential. People have looked for the technicalities that today might get those accused of abusive crimes off the hook, as if the systems of social control and criminal justice etc in the Empire were themselves sound and reliable. Like the ‘good thief’ who imagines that crucifixion is a proper legal response to his own crimes. We note that Jesus, himself on the cross, doesn’t waste time putting him right, but offers the promise of a paradise which sets all that in perspective.
More demanding is to realise that those who acted against Jesus, by and large, seemed to be people under pressure, doing their best. Trying to be faithful to the spirit of their principles when the pips squeak.
And both during and subsequent to our current and utterly acute emergency, we can expect to see more of that, aided and abetted by what has begun to be described as ‘virtuous snooping’ – the repellent tendency to leap to the worst conclusion if one’s neighbour even appears to be transgressing the letter of the precautions, which are, nonetheless necessary. A walk which doesn’t quite look like ‘exercise’ is a long way from a crass mass gathering. The sanctions appropriate to one should not be applied to the other. Grace, forgiveness, and compassion, these most environmental of divine gifts, never stop applying.
The Passion story shows people with and without authority pushed to that stage when the letter of principles seem – rightly, and even responsibly – to be set aside. A pretty terrible burden. Which, as I have noted before, was what I saw in the preaching of the post-war generation when I was growing up. The non-logic of supporting nuclear weapons ‘because of Auschwitz’. Or annoyance at remembering the tragedy of everyone caught up in a war, “Because our own homes were bombed!”
Yes, I have heard all of that, as a grassroots pastor, in churches.
And in the answer of the army chaplain to my question, on a chaplaincy course, about whether they prayed for the Iraqis in that war . “Yes, once they were defeated”.
I hope I will continue to be shocked that the spirit and teaching of Jesus Christ, which come into their own in times of crisis, might be set aside, (whether by me or by others, ) precisely when they are most needed, because, when things were good, we never quite learned how to learn to drive these ‘emergency vehicles’.
The statement of Caiaphas, that it might be right for one person to die for the good of the people is two-edged. For Christianity, whilst crying out against the means and motivation, in some sense has also agreed with the statement.
Yet again, black and white serves us rather poorly. Christianity is born out of the resurrection, which is the divine repurposing of an evil and unjust act.
There’s another deceptively huge step of interpretation. This is in how we read ‘according to the scriptures’. The letter kills but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6). One dramatised Passion I saw this year did not make that saving difference clear, which is necessary if we are to receive, at the end of Easter Sunday: the story of the walk to Emmaus: the poetic and mystical relationship of the Word made Flesh to Scriptures whose origins are in different times and situations, but which, because they can be seen to relate to our Risen Lord, also shed saving light on the struggles of our own day, and the Life of Emergency that still lies before us.
Holy Saturday is cruel. A day of no visible hope. But Sunday does dawn. Not with solutions, but with transformation……. and a challenge of love far greater than the despair of Good Friday.