Then Peter remembered the word of Jesus, how he had said, Before the cock crows, thou wilt thrice disown me; and he went out, and wept bitterly.
~Matthew 26:75 (Knox)
Jesus is going to die, Peter is going to live. Jesus is going to die, Judas is going to live. Jesus is going to die, John and Mary are going to live. Jesus is going to die, Mary Magdalene is going to live. Jesus is going to die… and we are going to live, we are going to survive, we are going to have the guilt, the anger, the shame, the resiliency of survivors.
When I generally talk about my middle school, I am referencing an episcopal preparatory school that lives into everyone’s basic expectation of same. When I am honest about my middle school experience, I am referencing a small room with two teachers along the administrative hallway of a children’s hospital ward. My middle school ‘sleep-overs’ involved going to another patient’s hospital room to play video games and watch movies. My middle school shenanigans involved IV Pole scooter races at high speeds down empty corridors late at night. My middle school nights were filled with fears of waking up to hear the crash carts being put in use and wondering if I would not see a friend at school again, to watch a movie again, to race past the nurses desk at full tilt as their eyes boggled and rolled before they got up to admonish us once again… fears of surviving and being even more isolated in a terminal illness ward as others died.
So many of the patterns we are taking up at the moment resonate back to my middle school years. The expectations of hand washing, social distancing, and isolation… the patterns of living in an environment where terminal illness is an ever-present reality and not an abstract concept far removed from our daily life. It took me a while to realize that I was responding to our current reality as a survivor of trauma, regularly having to process why consistently washing my hands according to the strict guidelines now in place could bring me to tears, needing to name how suddenly being isolated in my apartment put a pressure on my emotions of such dread as to be unnerving. While others were entering into this space of adversity for the first time I was being plunged back into a series of patterns tinged with trauma from my childhood. I realized I needed to reengage all of the tools years of therapy had provided me to process the reality of being a survivor.
When this greater lent we find ourselves in has passed and we are able to gather again as community, to worship together fully, we will want it to be Easter. I hear of many parishes who are promising that when all this is done the first Sunday back together will be brass instruments, drums, and all the festival that we reserve for that morning where we celebrate in full that Christ is Risen Indeed. As a survivor of this type of environment I want us to remember that there is another morning that will come first… that when the rooster crows on the first day when our isolation has ended it will not be Easter but Holy Saturday. We will be waking up to a morning not of the resurrection of Jesus, but one where we are fully aware that Jesus is in the tomb. We will have survived, while family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues will have not. We will be Peter, Judas, John and Mary, and Mary Magdalene on a sabbath when no work may be possible, with a stone placed firmly over the tomb.
We will be Peter, recognizing that there were things that we did not do that we should have done. We will be Judas, realizing that there were things that we did that we should not have done. We will be John and Mary, forming new family amidst grave loss. We will be Mary Magdalene, filled with tears of determination that neither guard nor gardener can abate. We will be survivors realizing that there are those whom we will never see again for school or work, for games and shenanigans. We will need to process death before we process what our new life will be. We are going to have to move through Holy Saturday, perhaps spend quite some time there, before we can enter into a deeply resonate relationship with Easter.
When I finished my years of treatment there was a lot of celebration. I was in full remission from cancer and the threat of a terminal illness was gone. There was a push for me to return to life as a teenager who had not had my experiences, a desire for all of the patterns to go back to where they were expected to be. Instead of processing what I and my immediate community had been through there was a desire to forget as much as we could and move on. There is going to be this same push, from so many arenas in our lives, when this time of isolation and extra health measures has come to an end. The church needs to be the voice in our culture calling for Holy Saturday, calling for a chance to mourn, calling for a chance to repent, calling for a chance to forge new family, calling with tears of resiliency, through any guard or gardener, to reform our society into something better able to protect the vulnerable amidst such crisis when they come again.
We will need our Easter, but first we will need our Holy Saturday. We will need to fully understand what it means to survive when those we loved, those we learned from, those who were always there for us… are gone. We will need to process the guilt, the sadness, the anger, the full emotional turmoil of what their deaths will mean in our lives. We cannot lessen Easter by using it as a means of bypassing all of our pain and suffering but bring our pain and suffering fully and consciously into the Easter Truth.
When this greater lent we find ourselves in has passed and we are able to gather again as community, to worship together fully, we will want it to be Easter. I hear of many parishes who are promising that when all this is done the first Sunday back together will be brass instruments, drums, and all the festival that we reserve for that morning where we celebrate in full that Christ is Risen Indeed. As a survivor of this type of environment I want us to remember that there is another morning that will come first… that when the rooster crows on the first day when our isolation has ended it will not be Easter but Holy Saturday. We will be waking up to a morning not of the resurrection of Jesus, but one where we are fully aware that Jesus is in the tomb. We will have survived, while family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues will have not. We will be Peter, Judas, John and Mary, and Mary Magdalene on a sabbath when no work may be possible, with a stone placed firmly over the tomb.
We will be Peter, recognizing that there were things that we did not do that we should have done. We will be Judas, realizing that there were things that we did that we should not have done. We will be John and Mary, forming new family amidst grave loss. We will be Mary Magdalene, filled with tears of determination that neither guard nor gardener can abate. We will be survivors realizing that there are those whom we will never see again for school or work, for games and shenanigans. We will need to process death before we process what our new life will be. We are going to have to move through Holy Saturday, perhaps spend quite some time there, before we can enter into a deeply resonate relationship with Easter.
When I finished my years of treatment there was a lot of celebration. I was in full remission from cancer and the threat of a terminal illness was gone. There was a push for me to return to life as a teenager who had not had my experiences, a desire for all of the patterns to go back to where they were expected to be. Instead of processing what I and my immediate community had been through there was a desire to forget as much as we could and move on. There is going to be this same push, from so many arenas in our lives, when this time of isolation and extra health measures has come to an end. The church needs to be the voice in our culture calling for Holy Saturday, calling for a chance to mourn, calling for a chance to repent, calling for a chance to forge new family, calling with tears of resiliency, through any guard or gardener, to reform our society into something better able to protect the vulnerable amidst such crisis when they come again.
We will need our Easter, but first we will need our Holy Saturday. We will need to fully understand what it means to survive when those we loved, those we learned from, those who were always there for us… are gone. We will need to process the guilt, the sadness, the anger, the full emotional turmoil of what their deaths will mean in our lives. We cannot lessen Easter by using it as a means of bypassing all of our pain and suffering but bring our pain and suffering fully and consciously into the Easter Truth.
