To Wait Is To Hope
HOLY SATURDAY
Job 14:1-14 • 1 Peter 4:1-8 • Matthew 27:57-66
Death is a natural part of life. The only two things that are sure in life are death and taxes. Or, as Meša Selimović wrote, “Death is a certainty, an inevitable realization, the only thing that we know will befall us. There are no exceptions, no surprises: all paths lead to it.” [1]
It usually takes us a while in this life to walk down that path far enough to appreciate how fragile life is and how final death is. Sometimes parents agonize through an extended adolescence while their offspring test the limits of their mortality and, in effect, that of their parents. But eventually most of us reach an age at which we know that death is unavoidable. Some of us even live long enough to greet death as a welcomed companion.
But what if none of that is true? What if that isn’t the way that things are supposed to be? What if the goodness and love and beauty that we know in this life are actually, in and of themselves, a good of such enduring character that anything less than their eternal existence represents a violent rip within the fabric of creation? What if death is anything but natural—the most unnatural, improper, and artificial terminus of life?
The Christian faith teaches us exactly that—that death is not natural—but how are we supposed to believe it? How on earth are we supposed to believe something that runs contrary to the experience of three and a half billion years of life that has lived and died on this planet? How are we supposed to make sense of something that sounds so illogical, so supernatural, so unintellectual? And, if that is what the Christian faith teaches us, are we supposed believe it before we can call ourselves Christians?
The Old Testament saint Job reminds us that it’s ok if we haven’t found a way to believe that yet. When a tree is cut down, Job proclaims, there is still hope that it will sprout again—that its shoots will not cease. “At the scent of water,” he declares, even a seemingly lifeless stump “will bud and put forth branches like a young plant.” But that is not the case with human beings. “Mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they?” We are not like trees, which lie dormant for years before sprouting forth new life again. We are like a barren lakebed or a dried up river—vessels that cannot spring forth again on their own. “Until the heavens are no more, [mortals] will not awake or be roused out of their sleep.”
Job had experienced the bitterness of death in the loss of all his children—seven sons and three daughters. God had allowed everything to be taken away from him, and Job was as sure of the reality of death as any person who has ever lived. All he knew was loss, yet, in that agonizing darkness, a tiny ray of light shines down. “If mortals die, will they live again?” Job asks. “All the days of my service I would wait until my release should come.”
Job waits. Job waits on God. Without knowing how things could be any different—with no reason to believe in anything except the finality of death—Job waits on God. Job reminds us that we, too, must wait on God. Even when that waiting is devoid of any hope, the sheer act of waiting on God is itself an offering of hope. The hope of empty waiting does not depend on a particular outcome or anticipate the fulfillment of a promise. It is not a waiting we pursue with our minds or even with our hearts. It is simply to sit and wait on God—often because, in our grief, we do not know what else to do.
On this Holy Saturday, we know that the proclamation of Easter is only a few hours away. We know that Mother Church will again remind us that death has been defeated and our true nature has been restored. We will hear those words—that invitation to hold fast to the hope of the gospel. But, even though it will come again, some of us are not ready to receive it. Some of us have not yet found a way to believe that any of that is possible. Some of us are still here, outside the tomb, waiting and weeping in grief.
Today, as is true every day, we are allowed to wait on God even though we may not really know what we are waiting for—even if we do not have confidence in what lies ahead. Even before we know how to formulate for ourselves the hope that seems to come so easily to others, we are invited to sit and wait—to wait with Job and to wait with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. The good news of Holy Saturday is that God’s love for us does not depend upon our ability to anticipate it, receive it, or proclaim it as our own. That love is true for all of us, no matter what we believe or cannot believe.
1. Selimović, Meša. Death and the Dervish. 1966.
© 2024 The Rev. Evan D. Garner
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas