The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment” (Luke 23:55–56).
Six or so years ago, I became a birder. Now, wherever I go, I am always on the lookout for birds. We birders like to keep lists—birds we’ve seen, birds we’d like to see, and birds that frequent our backyards or parks or beaches. The birding community uses apps and websites to communicate with one another, and I’m always proud to be the first to see a rarity and then invite others to view it too.
Professional ornithologists often use these lists for their research and planning. It’s useful to know just how many house finches or pin-tailed whydahs were in a local park, and since ornithologists can’t be everywhere, they rely on citizen scientists like myself to help gather information. But here’s something fun that I learned recently: They don’t just need lists of birds. They also want data on when we’ve seen no birds.
While overflowing lists of birds are by far the most fun, it turns out that not seeing any birds can teach us too. Absence is a clue. Perhaps pollution or predators have driven the birds away. Maybe foul weather has them quiet and hunkering down. It might be that migration has started early or late due to a change in the weather. Silence is its own type of information.
Holy Saturday is a time of silence. Jesus Christ has been crucified and laid in the tomb. All hope is lost. Between the despair and finality of death and the impossibility and miracle of the Resurrection lies one very long day.
It is significant that Jesus doesn’t die and then rise again moments later, like a divine jack-in-the-box. He has work to do, of course—the harrowing of hell and the defeat of death—but then, God can work outside of time. Time exists for us.
So why are we given this day? Why this macabre, lonely Holy Saturday when we are invited to linger in what has been lost and commune with the disciples in their uncertainty, grief, and despair? Why must we exist within the pain of this pause?
Maybe it is because this pause is where we live our entire lives. Christ has died, and Christ will come again, but right now we exist in the ache—of war and cancer, discord and misinformation, violence and brutality and loneliness. We watch God’s good creation wear out like a garment, sped along by our own lack of stewardship and care. We live between the “now and the not yet,” as N. T. Wright puts it—between being known fully and knowing fully.
T. S. Eliot put it this way in his poem “The Hollow Men”:
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom.
God invites us to linger in the ache of Holy Saturday. To sit beside the women who yesterday saw the dead body of their Lord and went home to prepare spices and perfumes for him. The women who today kept their Sabbath, refraining from work and waiting for the sun to rise on Sunday when they could once again attend to the broken body of their Savior. To watch the tomb that is not yet empty, the world that is not yet healed and whole. To acknowledge the deep, deep pain we feel and face, offering one another the tenderest possible care.
Together we trust that the light will dawn because God promises that it will be so, even if all is still darkness here.
May we live in light of this cosmic truth: that even when all is silent, the birds have flown away, and no hope is visible to us, the deep work of God goes on beneath and through and above it all.
And that same God will hold us fast.
Courtney Ellis is a pastor at Presbyterian Church of the Master in Mission Viejo, California, and the author of six books, most recently Weathering Change: Seeking Peace Amid Life’s Tough Transitions. She also hosts The Thing with Feathers podcast, all about birds and hope. She and her husband, Daryl, have three children.
