There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
    the holy place where the Most High dwells.
 God is within her, she will not fall;
    God will help her at break of day.

Psalm 46:4-5

Holy Week this year, as it played out day by day, has led step by step to the silence and the gravity that is Easter Saturday – today.

PALM SUNDAY was loud, boisterous, full with laughter and tears (the good ones) and joy. We waved our branches, we celebrated baptism, and in the afternoon we watched the children enthusiastically and joyfully hunt for eggs on the church grounds.

WEDNESDAY the church was full again, this time to attend the funeral and memorial service for longtime member Gerald Ward, a man who was in every sense a “larger than life” presence at HMPC, and who I wish I had known. It was a celebration of the kind of fullness of life knowing Jesus makes possible.

THURSDAY we observed the Lord’s Supper – a smaller crowd, coming together for a more intimate remembrance of the personal focus of Christ’s love, and the way he poured himself into his friends at that last meal. Rebekah spoke about her first communion and we shared the bread and the wine, in awe at the fact that Jesus still gifts us with his personal and deepest self today.

FRIDAY, at noon, the community came together once again – this time in the hushed tones of both sadness and gratitude. Rebekah asked the rhetorical question, “Where we there?” And our mode – and our mood – shifted a little more away from the celebrating and into the waiting.

And the congregation became quiet. And the cross was draped in black, and now the stone is rolled in front of the tomb.

Today, the Silence:

Then today is what I have often called “The Silence of Easter Saturday.”

So I walked by the river in the early hours and I noticed how the sun illuminated the trees alongside, and how the water moved from the east toward me with the rising sun, before turning back to the south, and how the water flows regardless of the silence or the stillness or the hesitancy I bring with me today.

This day always gives me pause; but around me the rhythm, the flow, of life goes on. And I could not – cannot – help but think of Psalm 46, that there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God; as if the river, the water, the flow bears witness to the currents of grace and power and victory that define not only Easter but also my relationship to the eternal.

And so the celebration of Palm Sunday, and the assurance of the funeral Wednesday, and the intimacy of Thursday’s last supper, and the deep love and pain and suffering and faithfulness of Good Friday all flow together in the waters of the River of Life and they will crash over us in a torrent of love and transcendent glory as a gigantic waterfall of praise and glory Sunday morning!

Deep calls to deep
    in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
    have swept over me.

By day the Lord directs his love,
    at night his song is with me—
    a prayer to the God of my life.

Psalm 42:7-8

So yes, let the silence and the reflection of this day – the Saturday between death and resurrection – carry you just a little farther downstream and into the torrent of love and baptism in glory tomorrow morning!

In love, and because love makes Easter possible – DEREK