Suffer once

Luke 23:1-47

Let's start with Saturday. That’s probably a strange way to start a Good Friday sermon, but hear me out. Between this night and Sunday morning we go through Holy Saturday, a Saturday which may feel like just another day in the calendar—a blip on Holy Week where we rest from going to church. But Saturday is an important day, because Saturday is every day. Let's start with Saturday, because our lives are spent in that Saturday.

            That Saturday between the day Jesus died and the morning when the women arrived at the tomb was the longest day. The disciples’ hopes and dreams were dashed. Jesus was not the Messiah. A Messiah wouldn’t die, not before defeating his enemies. They knew this. They were hiding in fear, in shock, starting to try to pick up the broken pieces. Sure, Jesus told them about what was going to happen, but they never heard, they never listened, it went in one ear and out the other. They assumed he was speaking in metaphor. They assumed wrong.

            We, too, have heard the promises. We’ve heard word of what has happened and what will happen. We, too, stand on faith in a time between times—between birth and death. We, too, trust in words to give us hope. Our entire lives pass in that Saturday. It is the day that represents every day to those of us who are alive. Every day is Saturday. Jesus came, so we wait and wonder: What happens next? Can we imagine that Jesus might come again?

            Saturday is the day of unknown diagnoses, the day of middle-of-the-night phone calls; it’s the day where we live in fear. It’s the day of faith because it is a day of waiting. For some it is a long day… too long. For some it is overwhelming. Waiting. We are terrible at waiting.

            All the things that might get us in this life tend to pale in comparison to the worries we carry about what might be. We worry. A lot. We feel we may have plenty to worry about. But do we? Do we really? 
            This can be a day of worry or it can be a day of hope. It can feel funny talk about hope on Good Friday, because this is the day when it feels like we’re supposed to let the heaviness sit, but today is only as heavy as the emphasis we put on the time between Friday and Sunday. The length of Saturday, like the length of grief over loss, is what determines our feelings about today, because resurrection is coming! You can see the signs of it: Signs of hope and joy and peace in the midst of destruction. You can see it in the ones who help, the servants, the ones who give for one another. There are resurrection signs all around us. You can see it in the spring; you can see it in a field, on a lake once frozen, in yards once covered with snow. It’s all around you if you open your eyes. We are living in Saturday but Saturday is packed with signs of resurrection.

            The inspirational quote that has been speaking to me in the last many months is one that is particular apt for a Holy Saturday, and judging by the response I got when I posted it on Facebook this week it’s one many of you find meaning in as well. It is this great little one-liner from Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them where he says, “My philosophy is worrying means that you suffer twice.”

            Worrying means that you suffer twice.

            That’s a Holy Saturday quote because between death and resurrection, between the cross and the empty tomb, is anxiety. We find reasons to worry. It’s easy to pick out examples of suffering and say, “Yes, my worries are justified! Look what could happen to me! Look what does happen.” And so we feel smart in our worrying; we feel we are being honest about the world.

            But for those of you who were at Keith Gillie’s funeral last Sunday you may remember I talked about the difference between hope and optimism, which is the same kind of distinction we must make on Good Friday. Optimism is encouragement and attitude, which makes it susceptible to worry. It is sometimes killed by worry. Holy Saturday is not optimistic. It can’t be, because there is no positive thinking that will bring Jesus back from the dead. Rather, Holy Saturday is hopeful, because it is foolishness to the way the world works. At first that Scamander quote feels like it is optimistic—don’t worry, be happy—blah, blah, blah. But if you listen closer it is not optimistic. It assumes you are going to suffer and only assumes that we have the ability to stop ourselves from suffering doubly. It is not optimistic; it is hopeful; because it looks toward a better future by acknowledging the reality of the present. Jesus came and died to change the rules of the game so that we may live lives that are not about optimism about what may come but about hope of what is coming, and hope is not crushed by worry. Hope ignores worry because hope is foundationally about something that worry can’t touch. It is about the source and ground of everything that we believe. It is something worth dying for. Jesus died to give us hope. Jesus died so that worry would be put to death.

            Now worry, like the sinful old creature who still holds us down, is clinging on to us for dear life on this Holy Saturday. Since we are alive it is too, though only just. There will come a time—our Easter—when all of this will be over, when the tug-of-war will cease and we’ll be left with something simple and good and true. Worries will not matter. Optimism will be irrelevant.

            That’s one of the reasons we call this day “good.” Because you need not worry. Suffering will happen, but there is no need to suffer twice. So as we go out into this Holy Saturday let us do so not with optimism but with hope, and let us be free from worry, which does not change a thing but only distracts from the promise of something greater that is coming. Instead, suffer once, as Jesus suffered. The way of the cross is the way of suffering once but doing so free from worry. It simply is what it is. And two days later it will all make sense.