Easter is the single most important time in the life of the church; I don’t think any follower of Jesus would disagree! Yet, while Easter returns each year to remind us of our hope, identity, and call as disciples, I believe we can overlook a central truth it highlights: the silence and uncertainty of Holy Saturday reflect our our journeys of faith in a broken world. As we move from Palm Sunday to the joy of the empty tomb on Easter morning, it is easy to celebrate and then forget the reality of Easter’s message—the path to resurrection is defined by messiness, waiting, and mutedness that speak deeply into how we live and believe.

1. Easter and the Messiness of the Road

Something that has hit me this week, as I have passed through the Week before the cross, is how easily the whole story translates to our lives and living, regardless of the time or place we live in. Chaos marks the road to the Cross and transitions that feel as a plan jumping into turbulence, and how often does our life feel the same way? That we go from the supposed Joy of Palm Sunday (with the undercurrent in the crowds of betrayal and scheming), to the loneliness of the Garden, to the abandonment of the disciples and friends, to the mockery of Christ’s trial, and then the suffering and hardship of Good Friday. The week of all weeks perfectly sums up the human experience, and life in this world—regardless of whether we walk by faith or not. Holy Week is brutally honest about our life in this world in a way that helps us process it. As we transition from this chaos, let us pause to consider the often-overlooked role of silence.

2 The Silence of Holy Saturday

One of the things that I have always struggled with is the silence of Holy Saturday, especially as a minister in the church who has grown up in a Christian tradition that does Easter well – the silence of Easter Saturday has always challenged me, confused me, and caused me to ponder.  It seems to be one of the most important days in the history of humanity, when Jesus defeated death, yet scripture is silent about it.  Then it hit me: maybe that is the point.  Holy Week speaks the truth of life and helps us to see the work of God in our everyday lives; and the silence of Holy Saturday is no different, in fact, it is the pinnacle of it.

3 When Silence Becomes Familiar

We live in a culture that is obsessed with knowing and understanding. We Google things, we look up things, and we try to make sense of things even when they make no sense.  Even now, we ask LLMs questions and hope that their access to great knowledge and ability to process information will help us see in a way that makes sense, even when silence haunts us.  Yet, even with all our technological and cultural advancements, there are still places in life where silence speaks the loudest and haunts us.  Even if we are people of faith and turnt to Scripture, there are areas in our lives, decisions to be made, prayers to offer in hope, and dark valleys to go through where the silence seems heavier, and the scripture does not speak directly to us.  They are our lived Holy Saturdays, where, if we are being honest, it seems like God is absent and Christ is in the tomb.  It is in those places that we know what the disciples felt; they can be seasons of life we go through. Or perhaps, if we are willing to be honest, they are even parts of our life that we have still to give over to God, and allow Christ to touch by faith – the Spirit to work in.

4 Holy Saturday and the Normal Christian Life

Holy Week beautifully represents all the seasons of life, whether we walk with Christ or not.  Holy Saturday for me represents the norm of our faith perfectly: the struggle as we walk the road that God has set before us, trying to figure out where God is in it, where he is leading us, and whether he is even there.  It is normal that there is no difference between us, whether we are ministers, preachers, evangelists, shop workers, university students, or anything else. Holy Saturday and its silence speak to each of us and challenge us to consider our life with God and before God, and the quietness that haunts us.  Perhaps to even consider the parts of our life that are still dead before him, that we refuse to let the Spirit of God make Grace alive in; the parts that feel like the empty tomb.

5 Waiting, Trust, and the Challenge of Silence

Holy Saturday is our lived reality of faith; it is our normal, and it challenges us to think about our lives, our faith, our struggles, our hopes, and, above all, the areas of our own faith that can feel like the tomb. Holy Saturday asks us to think about our life because silence is the norm in a culture that wants us to think we can know everything and achieve anything; it demands us to be honest about our struggles in a world that tells us that to admit weakness is folly; it tests our hope, because the silence of Saturday makes the power of the Cross all the more real; and it demands us to be a people who seek to bring life into all the areas of our lives that are still like the tomb because we are afraid to let Grace in. These thoughts on challenge and waiting lead us to a conclusion in which the muteness itself becomes both teacher and comforter.

Holy Saturday then is the place where our faith is policed, a place where we learn again what it means to wait; a place that permits us to be honest about our struggles, our sins, and our doubts.  A place to know that in all those things God can work, and God will work. Holy Saturday is not only the place where we learn to wait, but also to trust and to know the joy of certain hope (in an uncertain world) when nothing seems clear, and the tomb feels firmly shut, because we know Sunday is coming. One of the things that interests me about this form of persecution of a minister is how scripture is silent, but scripture still speaks.  The lectionary that the Church of Ireland follows chooses passages for today that speak to the struggle of today’s reality as a lived experience. Thus, it is here that the words of Psalm 31 begin to make sense: “My times are in your hand.” Because it is not just our bright days, but all our days that are in the Lord’s hands: the silent times and the confusing times, the bitter times and the waiting times, the times when our soul is bowed down within us, and we struggle to see what God is doing at all. And yet Holy Saturday leaves us in that very place, not to pretend that sorrow is unreal, but to learn the strange defiance of faith again: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.”

Hope not because the silence itself is easy, not because the tomb is any less real, not because the darkness does not press in, but because “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” This, then, is both the challenge and the comfort of this day, this Holy Day.  The silence communicates in a way that jointly challenges us to consider and comforts us with what is to come; these days help us sit inside the silence, but do not leave us sitting there, as we are called to act and share the truth about its burden. That we – in Christ – believe that even here the mercy of God has not run dry, the faithfulness of God has not failed, and the dawn of resurrection is nearer than we think.

O God, creator of heaven and earth: mercifully grant that as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath so we may await with him the dawning of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
– The Collect of the Word for Holy Saturday from the Church of Ireland