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.
Tags: Easter, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, journey, retirement
March 20, 2009 at 6:06 am |
very nice article
April 11, 2009 at 4:07 pm |
I live in a private retirement facility. Most every Friday, I play the piano in the dining room – old and new songs – for the enjoyment of the residents.
Yesterday was “Good Friday.” I was asked to cancel my Friday musical and I did so out of respect for my Christian friends – I am Jewish. After supper, some of the same people who asked me to cancel the afternoon concert went into the Activities Room and played their usual Friday game of BINGO. Apart from the gross insensitivity toward their own regligious beliefs, they managed to intimidate me into participating in their grotesque charade. Apparently, insensitivity to Christians is OK when practiced by other Christians. It is unacceptable only when practiced by non-Christians. I wonder what Jesus would say about this particularly exquisite hypocrisy!
Dr. Marcel Gregoire
20 Summer St., #232
Chelmsford, MA 01824
gregoiremarcel1@mac.com
April 14, 2009 at 1:47 am |
I am saddened by what happened to you – and I personally would react negatively to bingo that night of all nights. What would Jesus say? Maybe something like, This is another nail in my cross, or as on that day long ago, Father, forgive….they know not what they do…. Thank you for your own ministry of music, and I pray that my fellow Christians might grow in the spirit of Jesus. – GB