Living through Holy Saturday

     

The next Holy Saturday is April 11. The day between Good Friday and Easter. As a pastor I always felt that Holy Saturday was a very different, strange, in fact. A little bit like being on a journey and then getting lost. You know where you’ve been but you can’t go back. And where are you going? Well, you don’t know what it’s going to be, but it’ll be different, like nothing you’ve seen before. Unknown.

 

When I was a pastor, I’d put the finishing touches to my Easter sermon on Saturday morning, maybe even do the heart of my preparations. I seemed to need to go through Good Friday and it’s death-of-Jesus-drama to take this step. Then I could go to the blank sheet of paper or computer screen. But only then – Saturday – this odd  time between, the past gone, the future not yet.

 

In baptism, it’s the time of being plunged into the water, deep into it, drowning, being suspended there and not coming up. The old is ending, or ended, and the future is what? So much we don’t know. And yet for all the unknowns, we are there with Christ. That is the certainty.

 

I’ve found myself thinking these first days and weeks of my retirement are another version of Holy Saturday. All those years, nearly 38 of them, I’ve been a pastor. Who I was, what I’d do, how I’d spend my days – well, that was all pretty clear. Now it’s not, not the same at all. A key part of my identity is impacted, as it is for many people who retire. Work has been such a major component of our lives. Who am I now? Who will I be? The answer will come.

 

So I visit our adult children and help them on projects. I go to the games of grandkids. I do things at home. I read a few more books. I begin to look at some writing projects on my list. I get hints of what will be, but it still feels like unfamiliar territory. Like driving home from a few days helping a son, and thinking I had to be “on the job” the next morning…. Then realizing, No, I’m retired. I’ll get used to it, and it’s okay. Even better than that.

 

But there is something of the character of Holy Saturday, and the time must be lived through. No skipping it. A milestone moment. But there still is Christ who is with me in it all. And I am never just what I am giving up or losing. I am who I am in Christ, beloved, a child of God, a brother to so many others – and one who moves into the world of a new and different future.

 

A Ministry to Mark Milestones

In my last post I said would tell about an important ministry in the church designed about marking milestones in people’s lives.

Remember: milestones are those occasions in our lives where something important happens, often meaning a real “before” and “after.” These milestones might include events celebrated in the home; others in the congregation (or community as well). The Christian ministry of milestones takes place in the recognition and the ritual, keeping close the Christ connection: that we are “in Christ” even as we leave behind the old and face the new.

Who among us doesn’t recognize the importance of getting a driver’s license? It’s a teenager’s dream! Of course my beloved aunt found it pretty exciting at 65 years as well. Here’s a definite before and after. A real milestone filled with promise and responsibility. A Milestones Ministry recognizes this – deliberately.

If anyone that deserves credit for lifting up this element of baptismal spirituality, it’s The Youth and Family Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are at the center of exciting work to pass on the Christian faith especially within families and congregations. Check them out. They say:

A faith milestone is a marker along life’s journey that says, “This is something important and God is here, tool!” It’s time to pause, to share the joys and sorrows, to give and receive support.

As you might guess, some milestones are very public, such as high school graduation, and others more private, such as parents sending their child off to school for the very first time. So they may call for different kinds of celebrations, more public in the congregation or more private in the home. The Youth and Family Institute recognizes the differences, and it works with congregations to find their own pathway into this local ministry.

The opportunities to mark milestones are many. I know a congregation that for many years has given handmade quilts to its high school graduates on a special Sunday. I just served a congregation, Holmen Lutheran, that has been presenting the baptized with faithchests® to keep important mementoes and items for growing in faith through the years. Then there’s my personal experience: when I retired recently, my congregation celebrated, remembered, and did a Ritual for the Closure of a Ministry.

With Milestone Ministry, there’s a real sense of “before” and “after,” as I said, but in the words and the rituals, we realize there God is here too. Over the expanse of time, we truly we grow in faith and experience belonging to God.