In-Between, A Saturday Reflection

April 3

Saturday - the day in-between - between death and life, between despair and hope, between sorrow and joy. 

Saturday - the Sabbath, the Jewish Holy day.  What were Jesus closest friends , doing?  Luke tells us that the women, after having prepared fragrant spices and fragrant oils on Friday, resting on the Sabbath, in keeping with the commandment. (Luke 23:56).  No mention is made in any gospel of what the men were doing. We imagine them holed up in the “upper room,” confused, fearful, wondering if they would be next.  

Don’t we sometimes  find ourselves in between death and life, in between the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

My brother-in-law died yesterday morning.  He was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, more than four years ago.  He defied the odds by living so long, and relatively well until a few weeks ago.  Anna, and his children and grandchildren are at that in between place, between the shock of death and the figuring out how to live without their beloved in the world. 

The rituals around death are meant to help move us through that in between time. So the women had made their preparations for preparing the body for final burial. Perhaps the men were discussing where they go next. Would they return to their homes and families, take up their previous occupations?

Perhaps they were remembering the long conversations of the week leading to this moment in time. Jesus’s discourse with them during the last supper is recounted in John’s gospel, chapters 13-15.  Perhaps they were speculating about why Jesus had allowed himself to be taken and to be killed. He surely could have avoided it. If he was the Son of God, then why?  

Even on the morning of the first day, when the women came with amazing news, they weren’t sure what to think. I find myself in that place all too often - not sure what to make of this incredible news. But today, as I write, it is still Saturday.  Confusion and sorrow reign. I still cry Why, O God?  

I will leave you with words from Fr. Rohr’s Good Friday message and celebrate with you tomorrow. 

Copied from the Center for Action and Contemplation

The Saving Power of the Cross

Friday, April 2, 2021

Good Friday

Today the primary human problem is both revealed and resolved. It is indeed a “good” Friday. What is revealed is our human inclination to kill others, in any multitude of ways, instead of dying to ourselves—to our own illusions, pretenses, narcissism, and self-defeating behaviors. Jesus dies “for” us not in the sense of “a substitute for us” but “in solidarity with” the suffering of all humanity since the beginning of time! The first is merely a heavenly transaction of sorts; the second is a transformation of our very soul and the trajectory of history. My dear friend James Alison is a brilliant theologian and a primary teacher of the work of René Girard. [1] Here he writes about the true power of the cross:

[Jesus] went to death as a victim. . . .  And the reason that this is important is that it catches us at our worst, as it were. The space of the victim is the kind of place none of us at all ever wants to occupy, and if we find ourselves occupying it, it is kicking and screaming. More to the point, we spend a great deal of time pointing fingers and making sure that other people get to occupy that space, not us.

Now by Jesus going into, and occupying that space [of the victim], deliberately, without any attraction to it, he is not only proving that we needn’t be afraid of death, but also we needn’t be afraid of shame, disgrace, or of the fact that we have treated others to shame and disgrace. It is as if he were saying “Yes, you did this to me, as you do it to each other, and here I am undergoing this, occupying the space of it happening, but I’m doing so without being embittered or resentful. In fact, I was keen to occupy this space so as to try to get across to you that I am not only utterly alive, but that I am utterly loving. There is nothing you can do, no amount of evil that you can do to each other, that will be able to stop my loving you, nothing you can do to separate yourselves from me. The moment you perceive me, just here, on the cross, occupying this space for you and detoxifying it, the moment you perceive that, then you know that I am determined to show you that I love you, and am in your midst as your forgiving victim. This is how I prove my love to you: by taking you at your very lowest and worst point and saying “Yes, you do this to me, but I’m not concerned about that, let’s see whether we can’t learn a new way of being together.” [2]

On the cross, the veil between the Holy and the unholy is torn and the “curtain of his body” becomes a “living opening” (Hebrews 10:20). We all can enter the Holy of Holies, which is the very heart of God. Nothing changed in heaven on Good Friday, but everything potentially changed on earth!

References:
[1] I highly recommend James Alison’s exploration of René Girard’s work, particularly Alison’s four-part study series Jesus the Forgiving Victim: Listening for the Unheard Voice (DOERS Publishing: 2013).

[2] James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim: Listening for the Unheard Voice, book 3, The Difference Jesus Makes (DOERS Publishing: 2013), essay 5, part 7