Quiet and Dark

If you do not remember the sixties, believe me, you are not alone. So you might not remember a top 40 hit released three times in about four years. The Sound of Silence came out on Simon and Garfield’s first album in ‘64, then again as the title cut of their ’66 album, and finally, in their ’67 Live from New York album. It is one of those songs with verses we can sing along with here and there. The words mean what they mean to each who explores them. We absorb lines like this: Hear my words that I might teach you / Take my arms that I might reach you" / But my words, like silent raindrops, fell / And echoed / In the wells of silence. Masterful and beautiful, whatever their meaning!

Is it even possible that when Paul Simon croons, “Hello darkness, my old friend,” you think of the last line of Psalm 88 from Holy Saturday Morning Prayer? You will now—“My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me, and darkness is my only companion.” But let me spin another disc from that era. Lesser known, with a more common theme—“lost love”—do you recall these lines from the 1968 number from Los  Bravos?  “Black is black / I want my baby back / It's gray, it's gray / Since she went away, / Ooh-Ooh / What can I do / 'Cause I-I-I-I-I'm feelin' blue.

Put them together “Black is Black” and “The Sounds of Silence” and you have the theological heart of Holy Saturday. This is a day spent in the tomb. We cannot rush to the Paschal Feast. It’s not time to begin the song of Easter worshipers: “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness! God hath brought his Israel into joy from sadness.”  That hymn (199 in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982) is premature today with its lines from the second verse:

Tis the spring of souls today: Christ hath burst his prison,
and from three days’ sleep in death as a sun hath risen;

His prison is his Holy Saturday tomb, the three days sleep of actual death, is still observed today.  With purpose, we stretch out our sadness. Oh, by the way, how is it three days? I get asked that question a lot. In Jewish thought and practice, every new day starts with sunset, so since Jesus died about 3:00 P.M. on Friday, his first day in death was from mid-afternoon to sundown on Friday. From then to sundown Saturday is the second day. The third day is from then to whenever it was that the astonishing mystery of unimaginable divine power burst Christ’s prison of death and the tomb.

Use the collect for today to help you feel this day, and pair it with a portion of the reading from the Gospel for today:

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

And from Matthew 27:57-61 – When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

Mary and Mary are outside, we find ourselves inside the sepulcher. In the tomb, we know through and through that black is black. In the tomb, we hear the sounds of silence. It is the last day of Lent, the last day of Holy Week, and perhaps the oddest day of the season of preparation for the Queen of Seasons. In the tomb given by Joseph of Arimathea, what were the sounds: perhaps an occasional crack from somewhere in the rock? What were the sights? Without light, there are none. Pause. It is finished. The body of Jesus takes its rest in death on this Sabbath. Hard as it is, be present to that, and take your rest. No one dare disturb the sound of silence.