EASTER EVE
Waiting with Patience
After Jesus is dead his followers do not realize that they
are waiting. After all, what else is there to wait for? Perhaps they feel that
they are waiting for their own pain to diminish, their own sense of loss and
bereavement. Only time can do that, but the leaden hours go so slowly to the
recently bereaved. Jesus’ followers are sharing that experience with all who have
lost loved ones.
What exactly is Jesus doing in this strange twilight time
between Friday afternoon and resurrection day on Sunday? What is happening in
the cool darkness of the tomb? What is the point of this strange lull? Why does
God not raise Jesus from the dead at once, in immediate repudiation of the
power of death to hold on to the beloved Son of God?
This waiting between Good Friday and Easter Day confirms the
reality of Jesus’ death. He does not temporarily faint, and revive, a few hours
later. He genuinely lies in the grave, dead. Whatever they thought he was
doing, with their help, is over. In the days after the crucifixion, they go
over and over in their heads all that they have seen and heard of Jesus, trying
to make sense of it. By the time they meet the risen Jesus, they no longer
expect the wild revolutionary excitement of the years of Jesus’ early ministry.
They know that they have got it wrong before, and they wait this time to hear
what Jesus has to tell them. They wait to get their instructions. The disciples
who meet the risen Jesus seem a much quieter, more sober group of people.
Waiting has taught them patience.
They had thought that they were vital to Jesus’ enterprise,
but now they suspect that, since they don’t actually have a clue what is going
on, they can’t be as important as they originally thought. Conversations
between Jesus and the disciples before the crucifixion are generally
characterised by a great deal of baffled questioning, but after the
resurrection, the disciples are much more silent and awed. God has done
something extraordinary, without any help from them at all. Perhaps they are no
longer necessary.
Waiting is one of the most difficult tasks we have to face,
because it makes us feel so helpless. In most areas of our lives, we are used
to being able to make decisions and choices that will make things happen for
us. Our day-to-day lives are so full of things to be done, that we imagine it
would be lovely to have a period of waiting, where things are ta ken out of our
hands and there is nothing we can do.
But when we are actually presented with a situation where
the only thig we can do is wait, we find it intensely difficult. When we, or
someone we love is ill, there is a lot of waiting – in hospital rooms, waiting
for test results, waiting to see if treatment works. This kind of waiting is
almost unvearable, because all our choice is taken away. We cannot make things
happen by our energy or force of will. This painful waiting is a hard lesson in
reality. Facing what cannot be changed is part of the world. Sometimes we
wriggle or negotiate things round the way we want them to be, and then to stand
and wait is indeed the only service we can give. It is a service to reality and
so to ourselves.
In the early days of the Christian Church, St. Paul gets
quite cross with the people who think they know everything about the faith, and
are not prepared to wait and learn and be fed by the experience of others. He
says they are like babies, still only capable of digesting milk. They have to
be patient. (1 Corinthians 3:1-3)
__________
By Jane Williams
Taken from – The Little Book of Lent compiled by Canon
Arthur Howells
