The Day God Was Not

Holy Saturday & Christian Fear of Sorrow

Zach Ephron’s Kevin Von Erich, tearfully watches his sons playing football at the end of The Iron Claw — a film about the tragedies that befall the Von Erich wrestling promotion and family in the 1980’s. Why? Because all of David Von Erich’s brothers die, most by suicide. In the aftermath of death after death, watching the boys play, his sons ask David why he’s crying. His response: “I used to be a brother, and now I’m not a brother anymore.” Being one of two brothers, and having mine unexpectedly die this past summer, I was paralyzed by those closing lines.

I know plenty of people have felt paralyzed by the sting of death. It’s an unreal feeling— minutes turn to moments which turn into days when shadows fall and nothing feels real or right. That feeling is the space created when a loved one is lost. There is this unfulfilled, and delirious, hope that there was somehow a glitch in the matrix and what happened didn’t actually happen and the person you loved and lost will somehow come walking through the front door. Maybe, we hope, it’ll be like those dreams we all have where life falls apart and you awake with a start, realizing that you were only dreaming the whole time and you thank God or the stars or Oprah or Taylor Swift or whoever you pray to that what you thought happened didn’t. In grief, though, the door never opens. The dream never ends. We don’t wake up. The deities turn mute. Everything has changed and nothing is going to change that.

I’ve cried a lot of tears this Lenten season. I didn’t give anything up for Lent. I felt like I’d given enough up. My mom and dad have given up a lot. My sister-in-law has given up a lot. Each of them has given up a lot more than me. It’s plenty. It’s enough. There is an emptiness that no happy talk, no praise chorus, no smiley preacher, can fill. There are no pastel colored glasses.

Today is Holy Saturday. It’s the day the church, following in the footsteps of Jesus’ disciples, sit in silence and grief over the death of their teacher and Lord. Holy Saturday is sometimes called “Silent Saturday,” because in the shiver and shake of grief there is simply nothing to say. For months, after my brother died, friends and church members genuinely inquired about providing “whatever I can do.” What I couldn’t tell them was that I appreciated their care, but there was nothing to do because there was nothing to be done:“I used to be a brother, and now I’m not a brother anymore.”

A wise woman once told me, “Sean, there are some pains you just have to sit in.” She was right. Holy Saturday is about sitting in the pain. On this side of the cross, we are so eager to celebrate the resurrection that some large churches started their “Easter services” days before the historical church recognizes the crucifixion. We — American Christians, in particular — are so eager for celebration and power that we, as Dallas Willard said, have become vampire Christians who want Jesus for his blood and little else. We want the party. We want the empty tomb. American churches have become party people in the place to be, which robs the cross of its power, marginalizes the disciples’ experience, and turns us into the kind of people who cannot sit in life’s pain.

In reality, there was a day when God was not.

On Holy Saturday, the disciples did not have our perspective. For them, Jesus was just gone. Dead. Grief was real. Their loss was legitimate. And Jesus allowed them to have their pain. Jesus never rebukes heartache. Jesus makes space for sorrow. You and I leverage our position in order to not suffer and not have those we love suffer. We work to captain our own ships and be in control, but God chooses to not leverage being God. Jesus is a God who chooses not to be God, at least to not be God in the ways many of us would choose to be God. He chooses to not be God. He chooses to suffer. He chooses to allow those closest to him to suffer, too. Suffering and grief, it turns out, is just part of loving. And, more than anything, Jesus wants us to be people who love. To love well is to grieve. As a symbol of power, the cross always fails. It creates space for hucksters and con-men to make a quick buck on those consumed with grievance and desirous of power. The cross is a symbol of shame and suffering and grief, no matter what brand we want to slap on it to fool the willingly foolish.

Too many Christians and churches empty Easter of its meaning with their dogged resistance to grief. Because we can’t be silent, we reach for the silly — begging people to come to vapid, bunny-eared, bounce-house, chocolate-filled Easter services promising a glitzy show which entertains and doesn’t even pretend to form. Denying death, we refuse to be real.

It is a denial of our humanity to skip Holy Saturday. For the disciples, and for us, someone loved and important has died, and all those lost someones are worthy of our tears. When Christians, and churches, leapfrog Holy Saturday, we rob one another of our grief.

Grief is the last gift of the deceased. Our tears are tangible memories that the deceased mattered. Their laughter, joys, heartaches, failures, dashed hopes, successes, and unrealized dreams meant something in the real world to real people.

How dare any church look anyone in the face and tell them that what is real and what is lost, even in hope, should be painted over. Yes, we live in the space between now and not yet. But this is what Holy Saturday is for. This is why we ache. What we long for is “not yet,” and allowing space for that “not yet,” is why jumping to Easter betrays those we say we love and serve.