Disorientation is a good word for how the disciples must have felt after the death of Jesus. The one they thought was the long-anticipated Messiah was now dead. Their hope was extinguished. What did this mean, where did they go from here?
Holy Saturday found them in the middle of a liminal space. Liminality in anthropology is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle of a rite of passage, at the threshold of a new status.
The disciples could no longer be who they were before walking with Jesus. Their time following Jesus had irrevocably changed them. And yet, nothing seemed to really be changed. The Kingdom of Heaven that they had been eagerly awaiting was nowhere to be found.
Disorientation is also a good description of the state many have spent the last year in. We are no longer where we were before, but we are not yet to the next place. Humanity finds us in this liminal space again.
As Holy Saturday arrives, may we take our cue from the disciples. Instead of allowing the disorientation of Jesus’ death to take their hope, they waited on God. And God proved that He was at work even as they waited.
“The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus…
‘Why do you look for the living amount the dead? He is not here; He has risen!’”
Luke 23:55-56, 24:5-6 NIV
Instead of allowing the disorientation of Jesus’ death to take their hope, they waited on God. And God proved that He was at work even as they waited.
May the disorientation of life and events, the liminal space we find ourselves in, be a place where our faith is built. May we continue to wait on God, holding to the truth that Sunday is coming. Jesus is risen, and that will change everything.