When I lived in the Netherlands, my Dutch friends introduced me to the naming of Easter Saturday as ‘Silent Saturday’. This comes, I think, from the experience of the women who first mourned the death of Jesus: his mother, his close friends; those who had travelled with him. From Friday into Saturday they know only one thing: the man they have loved is dead. Luke 23:49 tells us that they watched him die. Luke 23:55 adds, for good measure, that they saw him buried.
These are not people who don’t know what has taken place. Nobody is searching for a black box to find out what happened. Their son, their friend and Rabbi, their Messiah is dead. Worse still, God has nothing to say about it. The heavens are mute.
We know, as omniscient readers of the story, that resurrection is coming: it’s always darkest before the dawn, victory will be snatched from the jaws of defeat. They know none of this. Their darkness feels as if it might go on forever. They have only loss and a thunderous silence to contend with.
Silent Saturday is important because it is where so many people live. To jump straight from the agony of Calvary to the joy-burst of the garden tomb, is to invalidate the experience of millions of God’s followers. As Pete Greig’s book God on Mute reminds us, there are times when our only sense of God is his silence.
Why not pray today for those whose deepest experience of God is of waiting; who long for breakthrough but right now have only silence to contend with?
'Even in our darkness you are present, God. Even in silence you are love. Comfort those who wait with weary hearts for resurrection. May we who have your hope be strong for them.'
