This is the sixth entry in the UCCDM Lenten Devotional 2015. This reflection for the Holy Saturday comes to us from Rev.Jeanne Tyler who is  the current Vice Chair of UCCDM. Her bio can be found on the Board of Directors page. 

I grew up in the Episcopal Church in which most every Sunday we said the Apostle’s Creed together. On rare occasions we said the Nicene Creed. I remember saying the words, “crucified and died, descended into hell and rose on the third day. Now, The New Century Hymnal says, “…was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On third third day he rose again;…”.

The Saturday of Holy Week is called Holy Saturday. Like the day of crucifixion is called Good Friday the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is named Holy Saturday. I have come to ponder that the naming reflects the reality of reconciliation and redemption. I have come to treasure Holy Saturday. In our daily lives we experience times of defeat and times of victory; times of death and times of life; times of despair and times of joy. We struggle mightily.

For persons with disability, the struggle is complicated by the devil named normalcy. The devil is in the details of living. The grace with which you walk, the ease with which you talk and are understood, your high or low intellect, wheelchair bound, sight impaired, sugar high or way too low, too depressed to get up, too angry to talk, too manic to sit down, talk to people who are not in the room and perhaps have never been in the room. The devil of normalcy is in our minds; it is in our bodies and there is hell to pay.

Holy Saturday is the time of dead. Jesus arrived in the dead as you and I will bearing the scars of life. It is where our deadness meets the deadness of Jesus and where Jesus experienced the devil of normalcy. Yet this deadness is also the darkness which is also fertile and where all growth begins. I call Holy Saturday a day of fertile darkness.

Holy Saturday is the day we tell our stories of pain and anger and cry and experience the reconciliation and redemption of community that turns our cries of pain and anger to tears of joy. It is because Jesus has been here and is still here in the time of the dead that we are able to face ourselves and one another. Within Holy Saturday there is fertile darkness where the seeds of flowers make their beginning or the community makes the mystery of resurrection known as an act of God’s love for all humanity.

Holy Saturday is the day the devil is paid. We are one another’s friends and the reality of reconciliation and redemption is at hand. We are free to love one another, free to forgive ourselves and one another. We are free to proclaim in the growing dawn that which was beginning in the nighttime, Alleluia Christ is Risen!