Month: March 2024

Awaiting the resurrection

Few know what to do with this Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Day. ‘Low Saturday’ is a name invented by tradition. On the day, we are lost between the sacrifice and the glory.

This is the one season of the church calendar actually rooted in Scripture. The Western church this year, 2024, calculates Easter to 31st April, while the Greeks and Russians are waiting until 5th May – Passover, which was the first Good Friday, is 23 April. We used to have fights over this sort of thing, in spite of what St Paul told the Romans, warning about ‘doubtful disputations’- ‘One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.  He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it.‘

Every day Christians celebrate the salvation and the resurrection, and it would perfectly accord with Scripture to ignore all calendars and fixed observances – but marking this season puts it in focus.

On Friday was the Crucifixion, on a hill by the city, not a lonely hilltop but a place within the sound and smell of Jerusalem, thronged at its foot with gawping, mocking men-of-the-crowd, at a moment that Jerusalem was filled with the faithful, come from across the Empire for the feast, not realising that the temple sacrifice that year was before them, to serve not Israel for a year, but all people for every generation thereafter.

We shy away from thinking of it, from understanding it.  Inwardly that mocking voice ‘If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him’ is the thought of all the minds of those attuned to how power works. We would not listen to the pain, the sacrifice, and the reflection of ourselves in the mockers were it not for vicars reminding us in the readings year by year. It was for me? Is it truly what I have done that caused the need for such torture? That is a reality we turn from too.

Then the Saturday comes, the body in the tomb in a garden beneath the little hilltop. Odd that – a garden maintained by a gardener to show the glories of God’s creation, next to a scene of such utter horror, but that contrast is a microcosm of the world. The blood and the reek have passed. What are we to do after that trauma as the body lies dead?

On Sunday, Easter Day, we will celebrate the glory of resurrection. Had it come immediately after the Death of God, we might pass it over, but perhaps that time between, the body passing a Sabbath rest in the grave, is needed so that we do not just elide from one to the other. The Crucifixion, the ultimate sacrifice, must be understood, before we pass on to the joy of his rising.

See also

Books

The disconcert orchestra

The concert has not ended, but the audience are walking out. They have been for some time, and the orchestra have noticed.  There is panic amongst the players.

The violinists have started playing fast, loud tunes to win the audience back. The flautists have picked up some popular tunes of the day and are playing them to the audience regardless of what others are doing. The bassists are playing deeper, sobre tunes to sound respectable, while encouraging the cellists to join them. The bassoons are at the back playing Bee-Gees tunes (as they have been all night, if truth be told).

It is not working. Some have just laid their instruments down and are putting their coats on, the old orchestra leader amongst them. One was last seen slipping out to join another orchestra down the road. I think I see a harpist at the back who has silently put down her heavenly strings and is looking curiously at his drum, wondering if she can learn a new instrument before the end of the movement.

There are critics up in the gallery.  Goodness knows what they are thinking, but I can hear what they are hearing and I can guess.

The audience are still leaving, and discussing what is on next door. The orchestra next door is full of Grade 2 students who hate each other almost as much as they despise large parts of the audience, but there is no alternative place to go. That drummer who slipped out isn’t finding an audience either. Audiences are like sheep.

As the concert draws to its close, the conductor may try to draw it out. The players though have stopped watching his baton.  The flutes are getting louder and choosing more crowd-pleasing tunes, they hope, and the violins have started to join them. There is a row of oboes who have found out what pieces the orchestra next door are playing, and are doing the same, but with more vigour. (The lead cellist has been doing that for some time, unaware that the girl who turns the pages for him is working for that other orchestra. No wonder the other strings have been trying to drown him out all through this last movement.)

Still the audience are filing out. They paid a huge sum for their tickets, getting little in return: all the money went on a flock of ushers and their supervisors, all asleep at the back, and contracts for things never delivered.)

What now when the concert is over, and no applause comes?  Will the audience tire of the new company the have gone to see? However, this is an audience for a nation which loves to gripe and grumble, and may enjoy the pleasure of have their eardrums assaulted with cacophony, and keep them playing for piece after piece. It is better to suffer to punish those who did not fulfil their promises, and to give patronage to those who never promised to be anything other that hopeless. If the players blame their own shortcomings on the previous orchestra, it is consistent: they comfort the audience by assuring them that the grating sound torturing their ears is all the fault of the audience in the upper circle.

See also

Books