The Glory of Chaos: A Black Saturday Reflection
Photo by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash
I grew up in a highly liturgical tradition. Holy Week was a sacred time of reflection, fasting, and lots of church attendance. Maundy Thursday found us at church commemorating the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Good Friday was spent following the Stations of the Cross and ended with the Tenebrae candlelight service with the final light being dramatically extinguished as quiet parishioners shuffled out in silence into the darkness. And Sunday was always sunrise service followed by a joyous Easter celebration, and an afternoon of family, friends, and a few Easter eggs as well.
Even in this strongly liturgical tradition, the day that was left out was Saturday. Between the darkness and solemnity of a Good Friday evening and the joy of an Easter sunrise, Saturday was relegated to dying Easter eggs, preparing the ham and scalloped potatoes, and making sure all the kid’s Easter best clothes were pressed and ready to go. It seemed oddly out of place in what had been such a solemn procession from Palm Sunday to the empty tomb.
I believe we are missing a deep truth as we pass by what is called Easter Saturday, Holy Saturday, or Black Saturday. Instead of a pause in the process, I believe it needs to become an important part of our Holy Week journey to the resurrection.
If there is one word that marks the milieu of Black Saturday, it is the word chaos. Webster defines chaos as a state of utter confusion. By this definition chaos does not always denote frenetic activity. We often think of chaos as a lot of people running around frantically. True chaos, however, is a state of mind and heart. It is, as a definition says, utter confusion. On Black Saturday, we find this type of chaos everywhere. Let’s look at four places where chaos reigned on that extraordinary Saturday.
The first place is the Roman leadership and guards. Pilate, having not listened to his wife and instead condemning an innocent man to death, feels the earthquake as the sun gets low in the sky on Good Friday. He hears that some of his soldiers have actually declared that the man he crucified with the Son of God. He fears the body will be stolen so he sets a guard to watch the tomb of a dead man. Surely his soul was an agony as he pondered the temporal and eternal consequences of what he had done. And he hoped that the revolt would die down lest he face the wrath yet again of Rome for another failed leadership post. The soldiers, too, were in confusion. Some of them had proclaimed their faith at the cross. Others were bewildered as to why they were guarding a dead man’s tomb. Rumors were all about regarding who this man was, what he had done, and even some who claimed that he had promised to rise from the dead. Throughout the Roman leadership and soldiery, there was confusion, chaos.
Then there is the Sanhedrin. The Jewish leaders, who passionately protected and venerated the inner sanctum of the temple in Jerusalem, wept and cried out in anguish at the site of the Holy of Holies thrown open for all eyes to see. This most hallowed chamber that contained God himself, only to be entered once a year by the great high priest, now lay fully exposed. Perhaps the great earthquake cracked stones and toppled lampstands, bowls, and sensors. The place was chaotic, and the mood was frenzied. How do they explain a curtain torn top to bottom, clearly done by the hand of God? What do they do now with the temple ritual turned inside out? And how many of them were wondering if maybe, just maybe they actually did crucify the Messiah they’ve been waiting for for thousands of years? Chaos, confusion.
The third group is the followers of Jesus. Disciples huddled together in fear, depression, bewilderment. They’d left everything to follow Jesus, pledged their life to him, believed that the Messiah had come and the new kingdom was about to be ushered in. They expected by now to be sitting on thrones around Jesus as he ruled over his new kingdom. How did they begin to make sense of what just happened? Peter can’t even look in the eyes of his colleagues having verbally denied Jesus three times. All the others turned and ran at Jesus’ greatest hour of need. Grief, regret, sorrow, shame. And beyond all this, no idea of what comes next. Do they abandon the entire enterprise? Do they try to forget the whole thing happened? Do they just go back to their old jobs and wonder how three years of their life could’ve been wasted so? Chaos, confusion.
And if we zoom out, we will have to include the entire cosmos in this blackest moment in history. For the one “in whom, by whom, and for whom all things were made” now lay dead in a tomb. The author of life was lifeless. The Alpha and Omega now appears to have actually had an end. The one in whom “all things hold together” was not there to hold anything together. Surely the entire cosmos was in a state of suspended shock. What would happen next? Included in this zoom out we must finally add the depths of hell itself. While we can surmise that the enemy had his moments of delight, witnessing the death of the one who would save the world, surely there was uneasiness that mixed with demonic pleasure. Was it really over? Had Satan really been victorious? Did his plan really succeed to this ultimate extent? Did his persuading of the masses to change from ‘hosanna in the highest’ to ‘crucify him’ really work? Did he succeed in stirring up such fear and envy in the hearts of the Sanhedrin that they called for his death? Did he triumph in his temptation of Pilate to put personal preservation over justice? Did all of it really end in such a glorious way? Or was there more to come? What was stirring in the hearts of the denizens of hell on this Black Saturday? Confusion. Chaos.
The reason all of this confusion and chaos is so glorious is that it all contributed to the background and context that gives a fully orbed sense of glory and majesty to Easter Sunday. I don’t believe we can fully appreciate the magnitude of Jesus’ emerging alive from the tomb on Easter Sunday without reflecting on the chaos that surrounded that moment. The resurrection turned everything, and everyone upside down. The Romans had no way to describe it. The Jewish leaders would now have an even greater threat to contend with. The disciples we’re astonished. The cosmos surely rang out with hallelujahs. And deep in the bowels of hell, the enemy knew that his days were numbered, that he had been defeated, that his reign was coming to an inglorious end.
I encourage us to think on these things on Black Saturday and not miss this day to enter into the confusion and the chaos that surrounded Jesus on every side from the heavens above to hell below and everything in between. For if we can associate ourselves with that sense of chaos, and in the world in which we’re living that should be an easy thing to do, then we, too, just might capture a deeper understanding and richer experience of the full glory of Easter. Happy Black Saturday.
