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Holy Saturday.

The day with no liturgy. The day with almost no reference in scripture. The day of Sabbath, of waiting.

This day is bookended by the presence of the women. Different tellings give us different women - Mary Magdelene, "the other Mary," Mary the mother of James and Joseph, Salome, Joanna. These women were there for his burial, and they were there early in the morning after the Sabbath, while it was still dark. These faithful women were the last to see him buried and the first to see him risen.

But in between, there was nothing. In between there was only death.

We don't like to sit in death. We're a little better about sitting with the dying. Dying - it's active, and it makes us feel like there's still something we can do. Keep vigil. Watch and pray.

We can even handle death when it comes, the moment that life leaves the body. There's something about a person who has just died, something about how they look and feel that doesn't feel foreign to us - it's still our loved one, it's still the same person we were sitting with just moments ago. It is finished.

But after. After, things change. After, the body gets cold. The person who was just there a few a hours ago is gone. And all that is left is the shell - the lifeless, pale, breath-less, circulation-less body. The person, our loved one who was just there isn't there any longer. Instead, it's just death.

I still don't know how to sit in that death. After the hospice nurse came, I went and sat in the living room with my family. We waited for the people from the funeral home to come and get her. And we didn't see her body again after that. We had her cremated, like she wanted - but also like we wanted. I don't think any of us wanted to see her body again, not even if it had been made up to look alive by the mortician. It still wouldn't have been her, it would have just been her body, her dead body, her lifeless body. It would have been too much death.

It took 3 months, 22 days, 12 hours and 30 minutes for her death to be real for me. For me to know that she was gone and she wasn't coming back. For me to be able to sit in her death.

But on Holy Saturday that's what we're called to. On Holy Saturday we're asked to sit in the death of Jesus. Not his dying, not his rising, not his foot washing, praying, betrayal, arrest, crucifixion. His death. His body, lifeless, pale, breath-less, circulation-less, laying in a tomb.

I read this reflection by Barbara Brown Taylor on Holy Saturday of 2014:

I had been to Jerusalem, so I knew how tombs looked in those days: low holes in rock walls, with narrow bunks inside to hold the dead bodies until the flesh on them was gone and the bones could be gathered up for safe-keeping. 

That was where Jesus spent Holy Saturday: in a dark hole in the ground, doing absolutely nothing. It was the Sabbath, after all. His friends had worked hard to make sure he was laid to rest before the sun went down. Then they went home to rest too, because that was what they did on Saturdays. Once it was clear that there was nothing they could do to secure their own lives or the lives of those they loved, they rested in the presence of the Maker of All Life and waited to see what would happen next. 

Though Christians speak of "witnesses to the resurrection," there were no witnesses. Everyone who saw Jesus alive again saw him after. As many years as I have been listening to Easter sermons, I have never heard anyone talk about that part. Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light. But it did not happen that way. Whatever happened to Jesus between Saturday and Sunday, it happened in the dark, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air. It happened where no one but him could talk about it later, and he did not talk about it -- at least not so anyone could explain it to anyone else.

On Holy Saturday we sit in Jesus' death, as his body lies in a dark hole in the ground, doing nothing. It's dank, it's dark, it's morbid and it's not where we like to be. But in that darkness, in that the hole in the ground, in the smell of damp stone and dug earth, life came. We have to sit in the death so we can know the life.

And so I sit and wait this Holy Saturday. I sit in my mom's death, and I sit in the death of Jesus. I look down into the dark hole and hope that I witness that small, still moment, shrouded in darkness, where death is swallowed up by life.