In the In-Between: A Reflection for Holy Saturday 2025

I have to admit that I generally struggle writing my Good Friday posts. I always find them a little awkward, not because there isn’t ‘good content’ there — there’s a whole Gospel worth of content there — but because, as a Christian, it’s very hard for me to talk about death without talking about resurrection. And as much as some traditions may try to pretend like we don’t know how the story goes, we do. We are an Easter people after all, not a Good Friday people. And so I thought that today, Holy Saturday, was the perfect time to think through this theological tension of life in the ‘in-between’.

Unlike us, the disciples did not know that Jesus’ story wasn’t over as they either fled from the crucifixion or, like Mary and John, stood by until the end, watching their hopes for the future die. The Gospels don’t tell us much about what they did that Friday evening and Saturday — a Sabbath they’d never forget to be sure. Aside from some discussion of the practicalities of what to do with Jesus’ body, the closest we have is the description from John’s Gospel of the disciples huddled together in the upper room in fear. Would the plot that took down Jesus come for them too? Would the Romans see them as rebels and put them on the cross? Would that mob that had been screaming for Barabbas to be freed instead of Jesus come knocking on their door? (Of course, the women disciples of Jesus are said to go out and arrange the anointing of his body, because fear be damned, the courage of love is strong!) Add to these deeply practical concerns the profound uncertainty of what comes next. They’d given up their whole lives to follow Jesus. They’d heard him preach countless messages about the Kingdom of God that was ‘at hand’ and had witnessed miraculous confirmations that something big was happening — healings, mass feedings, the weather calmed, and even the dead raised. How could it have all ended like this, with their friend, teacher, and master nailed to a cross? When the message of the resurrection comes to them, they are at first skeptical (as is only reasonable). The myrrh-bearing women mistake him for the gardener, and, famously, Thomas doesn’t believe it until he can touch the wounds on the risen Jesus’ body. In times of grief, loss, and sorrow, it’s hard to see what might come next.

We are in a rather different position when it comes to Holy Week. We know what tomorrow will bring. We’re sitting not in the unknown, but in the in-between. We know the resurrection is coming, but today we’re still stuck in the sadness and consequences of the cross. In some ways it’s a strange feeling. It doesn’t feel right for it to be business as usual. Neither can we do nothing. Life must be lived. But in this way, Holy Saturday is a microcosm of the whole Christian experience. After all, we belong to a Kingdom that is not of this world — a Kingdom of generosity, grace, and rooted in faithful love — yet are still subject to the vicissitudes and whims of the faithless kingdoms of this world, in all their stinginess, desire for control, and rapacious greed that would destroy the whole world for an extra dollar. The in-between of Holy Saturday encapsulates the now-but-not-yet of our entire existence, as we pray, “Lord Jesus, come soon!”

So as we sit today in the tension between the sorrow of the cross and the joy of the resurrection, where grief and sorrow sit hand in hand with expectation and hope, may we bring this same feeling into the rest of the year. It’s so easy to get bogged down by the weight of the world and all the ways it feels like it’s getting worse and yet we’re completely incapable of stopping any of it. But getting bogged down won’t get us anywhere. So let’s feel our sorrow and grief, channel that into doing what needs to be done in the world around us, truly loving our neighbour as ourselves, and rest confident in the hope that new life is awaiting us around the bend.