Holy Saturday

BY Oghosa Iyamu

Scripture Reading: Matthew 27:62-66, Luke 23:54-56, Isaiah 53:8-12

There is something so breath-taking about sunsets. Would you agree? A sunset has the ability to capture the day’s narrative with silky, smokey-sorbet colored lines in the sky. Or maybe you favor sunrises. How darkness gives way to dawn, singing awake every living thing with the promise of God’s magnificent mercies, never failing and always new. 

But do we marvel and consider beautiful the time in-between the sun setting and sun rising? Do we consider it set apart and worth beholding? Not blazing with exquisite colors, but the steady sacredness of mundane, constant, and ordinary—the life in between. 

Life in the in-between is where we find ourselves in today’s reading. It’s Holy Saturday, the shadowy time in between the Son entering the tomb and being raised on Resurrection Sunday. Today’s solemn in-between doesn’t appear beautiful. It doesn’t feel holy and sacred. It’s the day after a gruesome tragedy, quiet with shock, hazy with clouds of grief. The long-awaited, now crucified Messiah lay in a borrowed tomb with a stone rolled over it. 

Imagine for a moment how His followers and disciples must have felt in the raw in-between. From their perspective, everything was dark. They could not see the resurrection hope peaking above the horizon. Fearful and confused, in the grip of grief while holding on to a vague hope, they may have wondered, Was following Jesus worth it? Did I waste these years? What was this for?

And yet, in the midst of their questions and lament, Scripture tells us, 

“The women who had come with him from Galilee followed along and observed the tomb and how his body was placed. Then they returned and prepared spices and perfumes. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment” (Luke 23:55–56).

They rested. They didn’t busy the silence of heartache away, they honored what was sacred in the uncertain in-between. 

What about you and me? Do we rest amid the doubts, the questions, the waiting and uncertainity? Do we rest in the in-between, when we can’t yet see hope rising from the darkness––the anxiety, depression, loss, illness, loneliness––that has set in our lives?

To rest reminds us that the coming light doesn’t rest on us. It’s the invitation of our text today. And it’s an invitation for the confused and fully convinced, for the doubtful and determined, for the wanderer and the wanting. It’s an invitation for you and for me, to fully live in the in-between, even if our hope feels but vague. Because even a vague hope can lead us to rest. 

So as we wait to behold history’s most glorious Son rise tomorrow, I pray we don’t miss the opportunity to marvel in the holy in-between. 

Written by Oghosa Iyamu