The Next Right Thing.

Holy Saturday is a day that, for the most part, Christians and the Church ignore. Nothing appears to happen on Saturday. Good Friday is tragic and dramatic. Easter Sunday is dramatic and joyful. Holy Saturday is… full of uncomfortable emotions.

The terrible thing has happened. Jesus, the one who was to liberate Israel, is dead. Jesus, the Messiah, is dead. Jesus, the one who would usher in the glorious reign of God, is dead. Everyone knows, a dead Messiah is a failed Messiah. The disciples had invested years of their lives. They had sacrificed much. They had hoped for much. And now, Jesus is dead.

The unthinkable has happened. The unimaginable has happened. All they had hoped for, all they had dreamed of, prayed for, all of it is dead. All of it dies with Jesus.

What do they do now? What do they do without Jesus? That they are, well, were Jesus’ disciples was well known. They may not be safe. They may be in danger of being crucified. What should they do tomorrow? And the next day? And the day after that? The future they thought was coming, isn’t.

We can imagine the tangle of emotions. Sorrow. Grief. Anxiety. Fear. Anger. Dread. Powerlessness. Uncertainty. Feelings of betrayal. Uncertainty about the trustworthiness of the other disciples. Horror. Terror. Weariness. They have lost their teacher, their friend, their Messiah, their future. The unimaginable has happened.

You may have had the unimaginable happen to you¹. Many of us have had the unimaginable happen. The future we were anticipating, may have vanished. All through life, things happen that leave us feeling like the disciples did. Bereft. Hopeless. Afraid. Angry. This is a hard place to be. Often we want to move on quickly. We want to move past this uncomfortable and frightening place.

Some of us cope by declaring that everything is fine. We’re fine. The world is fine. It’s all fine. Some of us cope through anger. We may, metaphorically or physically, shake our fists at God. Some of us are too bewildered to do much of anything. All we can do is go through the motions. Go about our regular tasks and ignore, as best we can, the terribleness.

We are in the unimaginable, terrible place as a nation too. The list of terrible and frightening things is too long to list here. We wonder, as the disciples must have wondered, what happened? Where is God in all this? And why, oh why, doesn’t God fix this?

The unimaginable, terrible things are not things we can easily or individually fix. And so, what do we do?

We can start by remembering that Holy Saturday is not the end of the story. Easter is coming. It may be hard to believe that Easter is coming. When it does come, it may not feel much like Easter to us. What can we do?

We do what the disciples did. We do the next right thing that is ours to do. The Biblical texts don’t explicitly tell us what the disciples did, but we can infer. Saturday was their Sabbath. They observed the Sabbath. I don’t imagine they felt like doing so, but they did. Because it was the next right thing to do.

And after the Sabbath? What then, was the next right thing? Some of them gathered, prudently, behind locked doors. They had to regroup, reconnect after being betrayed by one of their own. They had to discern what the next right thing to do could be. Some apparently start heading home. Presumably to try to pick up the pieces of their interrupted lives. Some of the disciples, the women, believed their care for Jesus was not finished and they went to the tomb to complete their work of Jesus’ burial. All these are reasonable and good things to do. These are sensible steps. Each of them does what seems best for them to do. They don’t all feel called to do the same things.

Then comes the unexpected event: Easter.

Jesus is risen. He is risen in an unexpected way. If we weren’t so familiar with the story, we might find it an odd story. If we didn’t know the story, we might expect the resurrected Christ to appear in the Temple. Or in Herod’s palace. Or even in the Emperor’s palace in Rome. Or to appear in the sky with the heavenly host. But the risen Lord doesn’t do that.

He is himself, the person the disciples knew. He goes and he finds his disciples. Notice that Jesus finds all of them, no matter where they are- locked room, on the road home, or in the cemetery. As they all go about the next thing- whatever that is for them- Jesus finds them.

The risen Christ doesn’t return enthroned and expect his disciples to come to him. He doesn’t demand they come to him. He goes to his disciples. He goes where they are. The risen Lord is the same Jesus the disciples knew and loved.

Friends, on this Holy Saturday, in all the sorrow, pain and despair that we feel for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our nation, may this be an encouragement, and a word of hope for us. In these bewildering and frightening times. Do the next right thing. Do what is yours to do. And do it, knowing that you will find Jesus there, wherever you are. Because Jesus is looking for you.

1. Shelly Rambo’s book Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining, has been helpful and insightful for me as I think about trauma and faith. ↩︎