Holy Saturday: Where Missional-ary Dreams Go To Die

Before coming to Malawi, we were warned not to be too disappointed if our efforts yielded little to no change. People often think that the kind of move we did, selling most of what we owned and heading to a country 15,000 km away from where we lived, could only be motivated by the belief that our efforts would make things better. Either our efforts would bring more people to Christ or make tangible life better for other people. In either case, people wanted us to be realistic about our potential. They didn’t want us to hold to idealistic (read unrealistic) ideals about our work here in Malawi. Upon reflection, this seems right but maybe for reasons different than what the advice givers intended.

Death Kills Plans

Holy Saturday, the time after Jesus was placed in the tomb and when the first witnesses realized his body was no longer there, offers a Biblical and theological rationale for not expecting our plans to yield change. Simply put, death exposes the ultimate futility of our plans and dreams. Death shows us that we often confuse the fundamental relationship between Creator and creature. Too often we think we can Create, with a capital “C”, when in reality we can at best be good stewards of God’s creation. When we come face to face with death, our pretention becomes painfully real. No one can plan themselves past death; no dream will alleviate the reality of our demise.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says it much better than I can:

When death happens and growing stops, there are no more plans, no more hope of control: for the believer, there is only God left. Just as at the very beginning of creation, there is God, and there is the possibility that God has brought into being by his loving will.

When death has done all it can do, God remains untouched and his will is the loving and generating will that it eternally is. When we look at death, we look at something that can destroy anything in our universe – but not God, its maker and redeemer.

If we accept that we shall die and all our hopes and schemes fall into the dark, we do so knowing that God is unchanged. So to die is to fall into the hands of the living God.

As Williams hints at, Holy Saturday, the moment when we descend into death with Jesus, is a destructive moment. It unmasks our pretentions but it does not yet offer the creative moment. It isn’t until Easter Sunday, when we can look back from the other side of death that we can see that we have in fact fallen “into the hands of the living God.” Not till Easter Sunday do we see that the same hands that were pierced on the Cross, the same hands folded under the death shroud, are the same hands that created humanity in the first place.

Missional-aries Must Die

But for the Saturday, we are in the tomb. We must die. When we become missional-aries we must die. It is popular in certain sectors of the church to celebrate the missionary as the one who sacrifices for the Gospel. Sure, missionaries don’t live a comfortable middle class North American life but this does not count as sacrificing for the Gospel. By playing up material differences, the missionary option becomes a kind of faux martyr. A faux martyr is viewed by others as sacrificing life for the Gospel when in reality they are simply living as many Christians do every day. Sure, there may be suffering, even suffering on behalf of the Gospel, but that is to be expected of Christians regardless of where they live. No, we must die at a deeper level. We have to die to our own plans and future.

Jonah: World’s Worst Missional-ary

I’ve been teaching the minor prophets again so Jonah has been on my mind. I’m always struck that his prophetic office looks a lot like a missional-ary, although he is decidedly the world’s worst missional-ary. He gets a task, “go to Nineveh”, and heads in the opposite direction. He has plans and they don’t include new life in a foreign land.

Then he encounters a storm. “Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up” (Jonah 1:4). Like in Genesis when God hovers over the water, over the chaos of some kind of primordial void, and like when God breathes creation into being, a storm so much larger than Jonah’s plans imposes itself. The ship, our human way of navigating the deep chaos of the ocean, our attempt to bob along the currents and swells of an existence that we will never control, our plans, threatens to break up. Jonah volunteers to get thrown overboard because he knows that it is his plans that have caused this eruption. Despite this offer, in the end he cannot take responsibility. He can’t face the fact that death will overcome him. He is in denial at some level. He turns to the sailors and says, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea, and it will become calm.” Then they did just that.

And Jonah goes to the deep. He descends. Even here though, he is not free from the God who created the world. A fish sent by God swallows him. And then it dives. It dives. Deep. In the belly of a fish at the bottom of the sea.

Up From the Depths

Commentators struggle to know whether Jonah’s prayer from the deep is authentic or manipulative. In either case, hear him out (Jonah 2:1-9):

I called to the Lord out of my distress,

and he answered me;

out of the belly of Sheol I cried,

and you heard my voice.

You cast me into the deep,

into the heart of the seas,

and the flood surrounded me;

all your waves and your billows

passed over me.

 Then I said, ‘I am driven away

from your sight;

how shall I look again

upon your holy temple?’

 The waters closed in over me;

the deep surrounded me;

weeds were wrapped around my head

 at the roots of the mountains.

I went down to the land

whose bars closed upon me forever;

yet you brought up my life from the Pit,

O Lord my God.

As my life was ebbing away,

I remembered the Lord;

and my prayer came to you,

into your holy temple.

Those who worship vain idols

forsake their true loyalty.

 But I with the voice of thanksgiving

will sacrifice to you;

what I have vowed I will pay.

Deliverance belongs to the Lord!

Jonah, the world’s worst missional-ary, faces death. All of his pretension and plans fall away in face of the terror of the deep. All he can do is call out to God in God’s abode, the temple.

On this Holy Saturday I am reminded of Jesus’ words to the Pharisees and teachers of the law, the ones who have all the plans and pretensions, the ones who claim to be the most fastidious observers of God’s temple:

“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).

Jesus didn’t just face death; Jesus died. The creeds fight about whether he went to hell but whatever the case, he went down. The tomb was his. The body of Jesus lay there.

Before rushing to Easter, we need to face the fact that we must die for resurrection to happen. This is not just an existential fact that we face at our death beds. It is a reality each day. Our ability to create a future is quite limited. We can do it for 80, maybe 90, if we are really extraordinary, 100 years. But that is a drop in the bucket compared to the millennia of human existence. Our plans for our future are small. They are ours so we cling to them. Holy Saturday tells us to let go of them. Rowan Williams again:

If we accept that we shall die and all our hopes and schemes fall into the dark, we do so knowing that God is unchanged. So to die is to fall into the hands of the living God.

When we let ourselves go into God’s hands, we do so confident that he is free to do what he wills with us – and that what he wills for us is life.

The Easter story is not about how Jesus survived death….it is about a person going down into darkness and the dissolving of all things and being called again out of that nothingness. Easter Day, as so many have said, is the first day of creation all over again.