Last night I cooked. As day deepened into darkness, I stood wrapped in an apron my mother made, grinding almonds, rolling out dough, chopping potatoes and onions, washing lettuce, slicing strawberries, blending whipped cream and cream cheese and sugar. I cooked until I was cranky, and then I kept cooking (Josh learned to keep his distance). I was preparing for the feast, but this preparation struck me as strange: how does one live into the joy of Easter in the mid-time mourning space of Holy Saturday?

In the church calendar, Good Friday may be the darkest day, but the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is for me a day of profound mystery. It bespeaks the waiting I often feel within myself, the tentative question: what next? I am preparing, I am mourning, I am hoping. For Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the other women who found his tomb empty early Sunday morning, Saturday would have been a Sabbath day. Would they have lit candles or lamps? What wailing would their mourning have entailed? They certainly weren’t preparing to celebrate; they weren’t peeling vegetables and drizzling honey. They weren’t wrapping their hair on strips of cloth to make spring Sunday curls.

But my experience of Easter happens now, with Bibles tucked on my numerous bookshelves telling me very little about Saturday but that by Sunday morning those women knew, as perplexed and afraid and astonished as they may have been, that there is such a thing as life out of death. That there was such a thing as a temple rebuilt in three days, One come to suffer with, to give his life a ransom for many, to vanquish death and evil in the most flip-flopped, unexpected way. Like a bulb planted in the earth–you look at it, and you think, how could this shrivelled brown ball ever make something beautiful? (How could this submissive, shameful death ever make something beautiful?) And then: life!

Life!

So I prepared my feast. I assembled friends to share the feast–as one of them called it, a “resurrection family.” I followed the recipes my mom and aunts taught me by many years of example. And after a night of deep sleep, I awoke to Life. (Let’s also be less romanticized and more honest: this morning I drank copious quantities of coffee and ate pastry and haphazardly hacked a nine-pound ham with a meat cleaver so that at least part of it would fit into a slow cooker.) Leaving the ham, Josh and I strolled two blocks to gather with the most beautiful collection of Christians I’ve ever witnessed. And we celebrated. After the darkness of Friday and Saturday, all I could see this morning was Light. All I could hear was Joy. All I could feel was Hope.

And then we ate. We ate in the sort of way where laughter ripples along the table, where forkfuls of avocado-lime pie pause in midair as people discover surprise connections, shared hopes. I took photos of us all and sent them to the family back home, where a similar feast had taken place, with a similar menu, also made ready by hands on that mysterious Saturday of waiting and preparation.

Tomorrow morning I will awaken to a day like most days, which at least for me are much more like Holy Saturday–the bridge between pain and beauty, death and life, looking back and looking ahead–than either Good Friday or Easter Sunday. I have hope and I have questions. I have sorrow and I have joy. I live in neither fast nor feast, but moderation, small happinesses. But my red-stained fingers, dyed brighter than the eggs I will now make into egg-salad, will remind me: we have fasted, and we have feasted. We have layered our laughter and tasted of life’s delight in special food and special friends. We live not just in the shadow of death but in the light of a Risen Son.

Cindy Wallace is a graduate student, a recovering fundamentalist, and a church-planting plotter with her red-goateed seminarian husband. This post originally appeared at her blog http://lafleurepuisee.blogspot.com/.

I read all four resurrection stories last night in an attempt to understand what it means to start over. I started off reading the first and second chapter in Matthew: the story of Joseph, Mary and the baby’s trek to Egypt. That’s starting over, I thought. A new culture a new language, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. So I headed toward the back of the book.

Matthew’s resurrection story is short and has the treasured Great Commission. Mark’s is even shorter unless you count the longer ending complete with snake-handling, but most scholars don’t, so I skipped that part. Luke has the great story of the two travelers who get the whole biblical story from Moses to the Prophets to the Messiah retold and interpreted for them by none other than Jesus himself… man I would have like to be a fly on the headdress of one of those guys. And then, I turned to John. Like the others you’ve got the women at the tomb, but also the race of Peter and “the loved one.” There’s the breathing on the disciples incident, and of course the famous “I’ll believe it when I see it” story compliments of Thomas’ doubt. But to end the book: an outing at sea.

After the crucifixion and the appearances of Jesus, the disciples return to doing what they know how to do best. Like a kid who finishes Summer Camp and then has to go back to school in August, the disciples return from their journey with Jesus and head to their fishing boats. I suppose Luke went back to his hospital clinic and Matthew went back to the IRS office, but Peter, James, John and Andrew joined back up with their partners and went back out to sea.

With New Year’s Eve, we too come off the high of Christmas. Usually it’s a time when everyone is a little bit nicer, a little more giving, and a little more repentant. From Christmas we move straight into the New Year when our culture offers us an opportunity to take our repentance and really “do” repentance by making resolutions. We even change numbers on the calendar, a constant reminder that we have really started something new.

Two Thousand and Ten
Twenty Ten
Two Oh One Oh

It’s not 2009, it’s 2010. And for our culture it’s a time to start over, start fresh.

Similarly, that’s what the disciples faced after Jesus’ ghostly appearances. What now?

“Well, I guess we go back to work.”

And that’s what happens to us too. We have an encounter with Christ and then we have to go back to work. Our lives don’t change as radically as we feel they should. We don’t get new parents or a new city to live in or a new job or a new body. What changes is within us. When the external parts of our world keep on going and we’re standing there wide-eyed and gape-mouthed having seen Jesus alive and at work, at some point we have to push our jaw back into place and go on with our lives.

And that means going back to work.

“Cast your nets on the other side,” Jesus called to them. Returning to work after an encounter with Jesus can mean doing things a little differently.

“Come have breakfast with me,” Jesus invited them. Taking a break in our busy lives for communion with Jesus can be necessary for nourishment.

“What is that to you what I do with your friend’s life?” Jesus asked of Peter. Following Jesus doesn’t mean making comparisons between you and others in your community, neither does it mean passing judgment on them.

It’s pretty easy to spiritualize this text as I’ve just done. And it’s pretty easy to just leave it alone. But the disciples had to carry on just like you and I carry on. So how did they do it? How do they live normal lives, changed by their encounter with the risen Christ?

And that’s what New Years reminds me of: my conversion, or rather, my continual process of conversion. This time of the year reminds me what it means to start over in our hearts and minds, but carry on living in the same world as before.

And so I leave you with a question (just in case resolving to go to the gym every day weren’t enough of a burden).

How will we start over… now that we’ve had breakfast with God?

Rev. Ann Pittman is the Minister to Young Adults and of Creative Discipleship at First Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. She is a writer, singer and mother of two cats and a dog. She blogs at www.anncpittman.blogspot.com.

And believe it or not, this Sunday marks the start of the season of Advent in the Western church. Here at Emerging Women we want to focus our posts during this time on the idea of incarnation. What are the practical implications of incarnation in our lives. What does God becoming flesh mean for your faith? How can we celebrate and be present in incarnation each and every day? How does incarnation turn our world upside down? I invite you to share your thoughts in the form of a reflection, or a poem, or a photograph (or whatever medium you desire). We have already received a few beautiful submissions, but would really like to hear from as many members of this community as possible this season. These posts can be whatever length you want them to be, we just want to hear your thoughts. So please send them along to emergingwomen@gmail.com.

Enjoy the holiday, and I look forward to hearing your reflections.

- Julie Clawson

So today I want to give the opportunity for anyone looking for a short internet sanity break to share whatever they want about the craziness of the holidays. Feel free to vent, boast, complain, share ideas, encourage… say whatever needs to be said.

I encourage everyone to post their reflections on this time. Good Friday, Easter… What significance does it have for you this year? What traditions do you follow? How are you celebrating?

If you would like to read a collection of reflections a number of bloggers are participating in about Holy Week, the stations of the cross, and the stations of the ressurection, I encourage you to visit the Via Crucis Gridblog 2007.

Read more about the service here.

What are your thoughts? reactions?

Since many of us are probably quite involved with both church and family in the coming several days, I wanted to post a greeting to all the Emerging Women participants. May God bless you and make you a great blessing as we celebrate the birth of the Savior!

Peace,
Psalmist