Holy Saturday: The Twist

In the first Holy Saturday blog post, I wrote about the despair of the disciples while Jesus was in the grave. We thought a bit about how the day represents, at least in part, the worst of the death of the church – when it’s members mourn the decline of the church while looking out to the world who wander by, unaffected. When the question is, ‘Why don’t they come in?’ instead of ‘Why am I not talking about Jesus?’

But Holy Saturday is not the spiritual dearth we think it is.

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all time, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit;  in which He also went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison, who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him.

….

For the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as people, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God.

As a Christian, I believe in a realm beyond the physical. This is not the time nor the place to go into why, as my reasons are far greater than just ‘the bible says so’. But it is my belief that while Jesus was dead, he indeed as the creeds say, ‘descended to the dead’. This is what the earliest Christians believed, it makes sense in my mind, and is consistent with my own theological and philosophical views.

Why does this matter?

It matters because when in this physical plane we see nothing happening, there may be wars being waged in the spiritual. When our bodies experience nothing but despair and misery, Jesus is not bound by this. Jesus’ earliest followers did not understand what was happening in the realm beyond the physical, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening.

When hope on earth was dead, hope was in the place of the dead, what we often refer to as ‘hell’ or ‘hades’. The good news, that through following Jesus you can be reconciled to God, was not, and indeed is not, restricted merely to those living earthly lives.

The grave could not hold him. Jesus didn’t need a nap, nor did he take one. On Saturday he descended, and he rescued. Silence for the disciples, but salvation for the dead.

On Sunday…

Final part coming tomorrow…

Holy Saturday – The Day of Despair: When The World Continues

On Holy Saturday, hope lies dead.

For some of them.

The disciples in confusion. Sad. Missing their rabbi. Despairing at the death of their messiah. What were they to do? The person they have been following is gone, and they have nothing left now. But for thousands of others, their lives are no different. The world continues. Taxes are paid, babies are born, pancakes are eaten and wars are fought.

It can feel like this sometimes, that one experiences such deep loss but the rest of the world just doesn’t seem to care. They should, or at least you want them to, but you know deep down they really have no reason to. I wonder if this is how Jesus’ earliest followers felt. Their world had been turned upside down, but for everyone else, well they hadn’t been following him particularly seriously, so why should theirs? In any case, it was an interesting three years, but clearly this Jesus fella wasn’t really who he claimed to be. He is dead!

I wonder how many churchgoing Christians experience this on Holy Saturday? Caught between knowing the importance of this weekend for them but as they look at their non-Christian neighbours just enjoying a long bank holiday, feeling that they really have no reason to care; why would they, they don’t believe in Jesus.

Is this right?

Is this what we should think?

Do Facebook posts saying ‘He is risen!’ on Easter Sunday demonstrate a genuine desire to see friends, family, and neighbours meet Jesus, or do they merely fulfil some internal church social obligation?

In my last post I wrote about the death of Jesus as the death of hope itself.

I believe that Holy Saturday represents the death of the church in the worst sense. When the followers of Jesus don’t know what to do, when they are stuck looking into themselves, scared of what is happening to them and how they’re going to carry on, they have a choice. Do they sigh and, allowing the world to continue walking past outside, hug each other and wait for death?

If that’s what you want to do, I understand. I think the disciples would understand on Holy Saturday.

But what comes next should change absolutely everything.

Good Friday: Hope’s End

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The final shout of a failed messiah. A pathetic sight, body broken, a far cry from the hopes and dreams of driving out the oppressive and occupying forces of Rome. This line in the bible has always had a lasting impact on me. Possibly because I’ve read and heard it so many times that I’ve dramatised it every which way in my head. Perhaps it’s like that Shakespeare line, ‘To be or not to be? That is the question.’ wherein much meaning must be found by either making it your own or intensely psychoanalysing the author so that the reader may most purely understand their motives. One can ask theological questions like, ‘When he says “My God”, what does he mean? Is he talking to himself? Is this some kind of trinitarian statement?’ or , ‘If Jesus is forsaken by God, does this mean that the Holy Trinity is broken? How can this be if God is unchanging?’

Or one could make existential observations like ‘Jesus experiences absolute loss here, making the death of God a reality.’ and ‘The cry of Jesus on the cross exposes his full humanity, reminding us that he takes on all of our suffering and our sin for our sake, leading to the rending in two of the Godhead itself.’

Alternatively one could simply say, “Nice service vicar.” then skulk off to the hot cross buns while muttering about bank holidays, rubbish weather, and dwindling congregation numbers at church services.

The message of the cross is one of radical self sacrifice and love. Laying down your own life, innocent of all charges, in an act of monumental love is the stuff of mythology. But how many myths do you know which started revolutions? This is the message of the cross – ‘WELCOME TO THE REVOLUTION.’

When Jesus declares that God has forsaken him, did he have in mind Psalm 22? I don’t know, but this is what it says:

‭My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my help are the words of my groaning. My God, I cry out by day, but You do not answer; And by night, but I have no rest. Yet You are holy, You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel. In You our fathers trusted; They trusted and You rescued them. To You they cried out and they fled to safety; In You they trusted and were not disappointed.

A God who has forsaken him, yet is still holy. A God who is far from his help yet is trusted. A Father who seems to have abandoned his child to death on a cross, yet still is faithful. These are the kind of existential paradoxes which bring such angst. They trigger our justice reflex. Oh, how I wish I could shrug my shoulders and say ‘But the Bible says it so it’s true,’ but there is some deep longing within me to understand this emotionally. I believe that the ways in which one speaks of God tends to betray the nature of our relationship with God. There are the radical examples. The enemy-lovers. The victims of war relentlessly pursuing reconciliation. The parents of murdered teenagers speaking of forgiveness and peace.

And then there are the ‘day-to-dayers’. Someone who wants God to dethrone or destroy the unjust, I often wonder what injustice has happened to draw out this aspect of God’s character for a person? Or perhaps one speaks of a God who comforts those who are sick and lonely – where is this particular focus coming from right now? Is the naming of some aspect of God’s character coming from seeing the dethroning of injustice, or is it coming from not seeing it but wanting to?

I try to speak of God as a God of hope. For me, I see glimmers of hope in the world but not as many as I would like or frankly as many as I think the world needs. But I still speak of a God of hope. Why?

Because on Good Friday, hope died, and released hope to the people.

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. (Matthew 27: 50-51a)

The symbolism of the temple curtain being torn in two has been written and spoken about at length, particularly its meaning giving all people, not just the high priests, full access to God through the death of Jesus. And this is the hope that Good Friday gives each of us. This paradoxical hope, that through the death of Jesus all people have full access to God. It is a hope which I have become more enamoured with the more I have lost people. Not because it makes emotional sense, but almost because it doesn’t. I have experienced hopelessness in the tragic death of a close friend, yet simultaneously never felt more hopeful. I have grieved and mourned, sworn and shouted at God at the injustice of a situation. Yet I have, in the midst of what feels like absolute lack, trusted God in a way which both looks and feels foolish.

But isn’t this what hope is? That when all is lost, hope remains? I believe that it is precisely when hope itself dies, that hope is the only thing which remains.

However, the death of hope is not the end.

To be continued.

Forward Thinking

Christmas is the climax of this season, at least that’s what you’d think if you hung around most churches this time of year. Everything leads up to it… Advent candles, decorations, nativity services, carols, community events, midnight Mass, a Christmas Day celebration and then… A small gathering, if any, the following week. A slow easing into the New Year, with plenty of rest over the holiday.

I’ve done this over the years, and I’m not about to suggest we shouldn’t celebrate Christmas nor that we shouldn’t spend time with those we love either – but I do think we’ve got Christmas a bit wrong.

When Jesus was born it was a fairly mundane affair, at least in the eyes of the world. A baby, big whoop. But that day was the start of something, the start of a life which would go on to change the course of human history through their work, speech, death, and resurrection. How often, for us, is Christmas the start of something rather than the conclusion? We tend to leave that to the New Year Resolutions – and even then they tend to be dismissed as sanctimonious twaddle these days.

So as we head towards Christmas Day (at least according to some strands of Christianity) instead of looking back to the year that was, buck the trend and look ahead to what might be. What are you going to take more seriously? What are you going to sack off? How is following Jesus going to affect your every waking moment?

Christmas is about celebrating God come to earth – born into the life, pain, and dirty nappies (sort of) that we’ve all gone through. So as we remember that, let’s live in such a way that those around us see God in action. But let’s not just do it at Christmas, instead let’s use Christmas as a springboard for increasingly living in such a way.

We are all of blood and bones.

Merry Christmas.

Farewell, Lone Wolf

It was Easter Sunday 2017. I had a brilliant idea for an alternative stations of the cross service and had called it ‘Walk’. It was a journey from Good Friday to the resurrection of Jesus using a single canvas to represent the various stations. They were eventually all torn as Jesus, through the resurrection, destroyed death.

Rewind about 6 weeks and I had excitedly outlined my idea in a staff meeting. At the time we had a large team, something I wasn’t used to. Because my idea was just in the developmental stages I didn’t feel I needed any help, I was also hyper-aware of how busy everyone else was and would have struggled to articulate my vision.

Time went on and as the day grew closer I began to panic.

I wasn’t ready.

But I fully believed I was able to pull it together, after all this was my idea and something I had a very clear picture of…

Sunday evening rolled around. There was a lot to do. I was virtually alone. Rushing round the church trying to get everything set up I began to wish I’d accepted the help that had been offered numerous times leading up to the event.

I managed to muddle through it. The service went ok, but I was absolutely spent.

After we finished and were packing up, Jean and Ian (vicar and associate vicar at the time respectively) pulled me to one side for a chat. They were honest. It felt like a shotgun blast to my efforts.

“That was OK, but you clearly should have asked for help. It would have been much better. We kept offering but you didn’t accept it, you can’t keep trying to do everything by yourself.

You need to learn to be part of a team.”

By this point I knew what they meant. I had assumed that being part of a team meant helping others whilst ‘not burdening’ them. However my understanding of the latter was, in reality, just refusing help. Under the assumption I was being helpful I was infact damaging the team. My failure to accept help was not strong, it was not focussed, it was not generous, it was blinkered and arrogant.

The subsequent couple of years were full of lessons learned. I had to rethink my understanding of humility, particularly regarding letting people in to my developing ideas and thought processes. I realised that it was ok to ask for feedback on what I considered half baked ideas or grand plans which I wanted to develop into reality. What surprised me was the grace with which these ideas were received and how a second, third, even fourth pair of eyes brought fresh perspectives. I don’t know why it should have done, I always sought to respond to others’ ideas in the way mine were received.

I was growing slowly to understand what teamwork really is.

It is now December 2019 and the landscape has changed significantly. We are now a full time team of 3 rather than the 7 when the ‘Walk’ incident occurred. I am, strangely, part of the inherited memory when it comes to the staff/leadership team. My responsibilities and vision have shifted as we continue to seek God’s heart for our community; especially over the last few months since my friend, boss, and mentor, Ian Mountford, has sadly been away from work battling cancer, passing away on Dec 7th. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t felt lost.

Ian was someone I connected deeply with. An older, wiser mentor I trusted with everything. He had been helping me figure out this whole team thing as well as a load of other things I was working on spiritually, vocationally, and personally. And all of a sudden I had offered to oversee our annual carol service without my usual ‘go-to’ people for support.

I was running it. I wasn’t part of a team running it. I wasn’t subject to someone else’s decisions. It was something I had never experienced to that degree before.

I have never forgotten that ‘Walk’ conversation. So I made sure that at the earliest possible moment I ran my ‘big idea’ past someone who I knew would get it. Together we came up with a rough plan. I put together a list of people who I needed in order to pull it off.

The plan became simpler and more realistic.

I asked more people to help.

They pitched in with their ideas and thoughts, all of which offered valuable insight and contributed a fresh pair of eyes with a different skill set to the service.

Then, when it came to it, I spoke from the front just four times: a brief welcome, a short prayer, a farewell and blessing, and a request for donations.

It was a beautiful evening. Everyone pulled together and found/expressed their voice. The difference for me between ‘Walk’ and Carols by Candlelight 2019 is night and day. It represented the transformation we are all capable of. Never think you are too far gone, you are always capable of change. Do not write yourself or others off just because of previous experiences.

I am so grateful to Ian and Jean for the challenges they posed, the encouragement they gave and the honesty with which they taught. I was a pain in the butt, however it is so humbling and exciting to see the seeds that were sown starting from that conversation in 2019 start to bear fruit now, just 2 years on.

I definitely didn’t get it all right leading up to the Carol service, far from it, but I did experience something most profoundly…

Leadership is not a monologue.

We are all of blood and bones.

Ben x