Between

John 19:38-42

April 2, 2021 (Good Friday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

And so, Jesus was dead. The worst thing the disciples could imagine had happened. Most of them had run away when he was arrested, but a few of them had stayed at the cross until the last minute, until the moment he was taken down. Some, mostly the women, followed the soldiers to the tomb and watched them roll the stone over the entrance. Jesus was dead; there was no doubt. It was over. Roman soldiers were many things, but inefficient at death was not one of them.

I try to picture what that Sabbath was like between the crucifixion and the start of the work week on Sunday. So many of us usually rush to the resurrection. We love the high celebration of Palm Sunday and then we move right to the high celebration of Easter and we miss it. We miss the whole point of both days. The center of our faith is not in the celebrations; it's actually found in the days between. Without the crucifixion, we have nothing to celebrate on Easter, not really. In order for him to be raised, Jesus had to die first. And on what we call Good Friday, Jesus died. He was murdered in the most public and horrific way. He died and he was put into the ground. There’s no getting around it: the Son of God gave up his life and allowed us, humanity, to kill him. After the tomb was sealed, the disciples left his body behind and went back to the last place they had gathered with him. When we leave tonight, we’ll be thinking about and anticipating Easter, but here’s the thing: they did not know Easter was coming. When they left the tomb, they thought all that lay ahead of them was a long, endless future without Jesus. It was, in reality, the day between.

We gather here on this Good Friday having been through a hard year. Some of us have said goodbye to people we loved in the last year. Others of us have been deeply affected by the virus, by the riots, by the injustice, by the divisions all around us. Some families have fractured, many friendships have been ruined. Yes, sometimes we’ve stoked the fires and sometimes we’ve calmed them, but all of us gather here tonight as people who have been hurting in one way or another. And many of us have wondered, though probably not out loud, but we’ve wondered where God has been in all of this. I know I’ve shared several times about my prayers during this last year. Sometimes I’ve prayed, “Lord, heal our land.” And other times I’ve prayed, “Come, Lord Jesus.” And yet, it often has seemed like God has been silent. It seems like God has not answered—or if he has, we missed it. Like those disciples on that Saturday, we have lived for the last year in the between time. It’s not Good Friday and it’s not yet Easter. How do we live in the between time?

When Jesus went to the cross, he left behind three signs that are meant, I think, to remind us that even when it seems God is silent, he has not left us. They were left for the disciples on that Saturday, but if we have eyes to see, I believe they’re meant for us, too. The first sign is the meal. We have no record of what the disciples did on that Saturday between, but knowing that they were good, faithful Jews, and that this was the high, holy season of Passover, we can assume they went to the synagogue service on Saturday morning. Now, I doubt that their hearts were in it; it would be hard to listen to anything a religious leader had to say after the brutal events of Friday, but sometimes religious obligation overrides our feelings. After worship, as many of us do, they would have gathered for a meal, and the Sabbath meal would begin with bread and wine. Can you imagine what that did to their hearts? It was just Thursday night when Jesus had eaten bread and drank wine with them and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” In remembrance? Who could forget, especially after what they witnessed on Friday? I believe that’s why he used bread and wine for what we have come to call communion or the eucharist—because they were common elements of every meal, every gathering, every celebration. And every time these disciples ate, every time they sat down at table, every time they had bread or wine, they would indeed remember. And they would wonder: maybe Jesus had known more about what was going to happen on Friday than they thought he did. Maybe Jesus’ life wasn’t actually taken from him; maybe he gave it up. Maybe he was up to something in all of this, and maybe even the horror of Friday could be redeemed. The bread and the wine, his body and his blood—as they ate and drank (if they could on that silent Saturday), they remembered Jesus and began to feel a faint flicker of hope stirring in their souls (cf. Greig, God on Mute, pgs. 182-183).

I’ve known people who gave up on God because they couldn’t answer “the big questions” in life. They believed God was silent and they determined that until he answered them, they wouldn’t believe. Of course, if you don’t believe in God, how are you going to get answers? And then I’ve known others who cling desperately to God, who continue to take part in communion and worship, even when it seems like God has gone away for good, when there don’t seem to be any good answers in sight for what has happened. Here’s my confession for tonight: there are times I don’t “feel” like reading my Bible, or worshipping, or praying. There are times in my life, and I’m guessing yours too, where God seems to be silent, where it seems to be Saturday all the time. And do you know what I do in those times when I don’t “feel” it? I read my Bible, I worship, and I pray. I keep doing what I know brings me closer to him even if I don’t feel close to him. Because it’s not about my feelings. My life is given to God whether I “feel” him or not, whether I have all my questions answered or not. And I find I have a better chance of drawing near to God once again when I do those things than when I don’t. Guess what? God is no obligated to explain himself to me or to you. Our calling is to remain faithful, and hope breaks through the silence of the between time when I am faithful to the God who is always faithful to me. Sign one: a meal, an ordinary act.

Sign two: a torn curtain. The ordinary fishermen from Galilee who were Jesus’ disciples might have been able to hide out in the crowd, or even skip synagogue worship if they wanted. But prominent disciples, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, would have been expected to worship at the Temple on this high, holy Saturday. Their position in society would mean they had to show up. And what would they have seen there? Mark tells us: “The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (15:38). Most likely, this was the curtain that hung between the outside court and the Holy Place, between where the ordinary people gathered for worship and where only the priests were allowed to go. Now, when you hear it called a curtain, doesn’t it bring up images of the things we hang over our windows in our homes? This was not that. It was ninety feet tall, higher than a four-story building, made of linen and decorated with four bright colors that represented the elements of the universe: fire, earth, air and water. One historian of the time describes it as a “panorama of the heavens.” It was beautiful. And it was torn, Mark tells us, from top to bottom. This was not natural. This was not something the priests had done. This was God breaking the barrier between the so-called holy and the ordinary. Suddenly, the “holy” space was open so everyone could see in. Picture worship taking place with that opening as the backdrop. My guess is no one heard the sermon that day; they were too busy looking into the place they had never been allowed to go, the place it was said God lived (cf. Greig 183-185).

The torn curtain is a reminder of one of the messages of Jesus’ life: God is with us. He is not far off, he is not distant, he is present in the midst of our between-time Saturdays. I’ve had many times when God used some event or something to remind me of his presence. For me, it’s often music. A couple of years ago, I was bone tired and I went to a conference that I really didn’t want to go to. It was a long drive and I would have rather stayed home in bed! But I went because I had paid the money (and because I’m one of those people who feels obligations deeply). And in the very first session, they said, “Let’s stand to sing.” I didn’t want to stand and sing, but again, obligations. We sang a song that I had not heard before: “The Goodness of God.” Usually when it’s a new song I find myself frustrated because I don’t know the words and the music and how they go together, and so I’ll just listen the first time through, but this song grabbed my spirit right away. I quickly found myself singing: “And all my life You have been faithful / And all my life You have been so, so good / With every breath that I am able / Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God.” In the midst of those lyrics, you might say the curtain was torn. God reminded me that he was there with me, in the midst of my weariness, in the midst of my brokenness, in the midst of my between time. The holy place is open; God is with us, always. Sign one: a meal. Sign two: a torn curtain.

Sign three: the body of Christ. Not the literal body, but the gathered community that Paul will later call “the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27). The literal body of Christ was in the tomb on Saturday, but his followers were gathered together. We know from all the Gospels they were still together in the upper room on Sunday morning. They spent the between time together, likely encouraging and helping one another, talking about their time with Jesus, figuring out what they should do next. The important part was “together.”

Of all the things we’ve learned from this pandemic, maybe the most important one is this: we need each other. And not on Zoom meetings or just watching worship online with no involvement. Those things are useful in the interim, but we need each other in the here and now, in person, in the flesh. We need our small group and our Sunday School class and we need our friends if we are going to make it through the times of pain and hardship. Probably the worst part of this pandemic have been all the restrictions and regulations, especially the ones that have caused patients in the hospital to have to face sickness and even death alone. We were not made for solitude; we were made for community. Research has shown that the presence of even just one other person enables us to endure twice as much pain as we think we can (cf. Greig 188). The body of Christ, the community of faith, strengthened those first disciples to be able to get through Saturday, and it does the same for us.

Jesus was nailed to a cross and laid in a tomb. He really did face everything—and worse—that we have and will. And he did all that to remind us he is with us in the midst of it, in the between times. Desmond Tutu once told the story of a Jewish man in a concentration camp who was assigned to clean the toilets. As the man knelt, his hands immersed in the filth, a Nazi guard tried to humiliate him even more, much like the soldiers did to Jesus. The guard sneered at him: “Where is your God now?” And without looking up or removing his hands from the toilet, the man simply said, “He is right here with me in the muck” (Greig 191). In your pain, in your brokenness, in your aloneness, in your desperation, in your muck—where is God? Where is the one who hung on the cross? He is right there, he is right here, with us, with you. As he promised, he will never leave you or forsake you (cf. Hebrews 13:8), and the good work he has begun in you, he will bring to completion (cf. Philippians 1:6). Saturday is not the end. It’s the between. It’s the pause between Friday and Sunday. There is always hope in the between.