Easter Thoughts on Saturday

The cross is empty.  The tomb is sealed.  It is Saturday.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus tells stories of the lost and found.  Most famous of these is the story of the man with two brothers or, the "Prodigal Son".  This parable is preceded by two shorter parables featuring a lost sheep and a lost coin.

"Two what shall we compare the Kingdom of God?" Jesus asks, rhetorically.

The Kingdom is like yeast hidden in the bread, treasure hidden in the field, a pearl of great price.

Parables of the lost, found, and hidden.

On that Saturday the disciples were surely lost and Jesus was surely hidden.  Where was the Kingdom?

The Kingdom rests between the lost of Friday and the found of Sunday.  The Kingdom is hidden in between.

The uniting theme of the lost, found, and hidden parables is joy.  When the shepherd finds the one lost sheep he celebrates.  When the woman finds the coin she joins in neighbors in joy.  Full of joy the finder buys the field and, although the joy is not explicit, we may safely assume that the one who sells everything to obtain the pearl of great price found joy in doing so.

In order to experience the joy of discovery we must first endure the pain of loss.  In the first set of parables (Luke 15) the pain is very real.  The shepherd is concerned for the sheep.  The woman is frantic over the coin.  And the father is grief stricken over his lost son.

In the second set of parables (Matthew 13) the loss is not as keenly felt, for the motive in selling flows from the joy of finding.  In this case, the one who obtained that of great value was willing to let go of something else of lesser value.  But in each case there is a transaction,  movement, from lost to found.  From letting go to acquiring.

As Jesus lay in a sealed tomb the disciples must have pondered all that they had lost.  Did others have the same thought?  Did anyone meditate upon the madness of allowing the crucifixion of the one who healed the sick, raised the dead, fed the multitude, taught with authority and, above all, simply loved like no other had loved?

Have you ever let someone, or something, go and then sit in despair wondering what on earth you were thinking?  Did you trade your favorite baseball card for a worthless trinket?  Did you trade in the car your loved for the car you thought you loved?

Or perhaps we just suffer a loss beyond our control and the remedy for which seems beyond our control as well?

In the story of the man with two sons, the younger son flees his family believing the joy lies in lascivious and carefree living.  He discovers he is wrong.  The crucial part of the story is the moment the younger brother "comes to himself" or, as the Common English Bible translates it, "comes to his senses", he hatches his plan for return.  Although willing to be a servant, the younger son is received as a son with joy by the father.  What seemed lost for good was suddenly restored with joy.  It was the younger son's Easter.

Madness crucified Jesus.  Pure and simple madness.  There is no other way to describe the death of a man who possessed so much good.  Jesus was not just a good preacher, a beatnik, an activist, or prophet.  He was love itself.  No one else did what he did.  No one else performed the miracles, brought the hope, shared the love like he did.  The Kingdom he brought was good news for everyone.  Even his enemies stood to benefit from the social order Jesus championed.  But, as the scripture so often indicates, they were blind.  The Pharisees were blind.  The disciples were blind.  Here was God incarnate in their midst, asking for nothing but permission to change their lives, and he was rejected.  Madness.

On Friday the sheep was never found.  The coin lost forever.  The treasure hidden eternally in the field.  The pearl of great price languished on the shelf.  The younger son never came to himself, but died in a gutter and decayed amongst the garbage and the flies.

Saturday is the day of regret.  The day of loss.  The day to ponder what could have been and never will be.  Saturday is the day of lost opportunity.


Early Sunday morning the stone is rolled away.  When the women arrive at the tomb they find that it is empty.  Some of the disciples go inside to see for themselves.  Messengers speak of resurrection.  Jesus has gone on ahead of everyone.  At first there is fear, speechlessness.  By Easter evening there is joy.

Sunday is the day of joy.  Not the joy of eternal life or the victory over death, although that joy is hovering.  The immediate joy of Sunday is the joy of the woman finding the lost coin, the shepherd finding the sheep.  Sunday is the joy of the one who buys the field and the pearl.  Sunday is the joy of discovery, the joy that flows from realizing that we are not going to live with the consequences of our bad decisions, our bad choices, our rejection of love and mercy.  Sunday is the joy of the second chance.  Sunday is the birth of a new and stronger motivation to cling to what we thought was gone for good.

Perhaps the stone was not rolled away so that Jesus could get out.  Perhaps the stone was rolled away so we could go in.  And come to our senses.  And enter into the joy of not only finding again what was lost, but of being found ourselves, fully and finally, in joy.