The vigil

Holy Saturday…the space between.
The waiting in the darkness.
The fear of shadows lurking
just outside the upper room.
The collective grief of being together
yet so far apart…

The memory fresh
of Judas’ blatant betrayal and suicide,
of Peter’s denial and absence at the cross,

Our God,
murdered.

What God can die?
Was he ever God at all?
Were all those miracles we witnessed
all a ruse?

…

A shuffle of feet.
A stifled sob.
A sideways glance.
Can I trust any of them?

I see Thomas looking at his hands,
a vacancy in his eyes.

John, who has not stopped crying,
always the one carrying our emotions.

It is the silence.
It is crawling beneath my skin.
It is the memory of chaos in the garden,
the agony etched into my Teacher’s face,
the rage at myself for doing nothing.

The emptiness.

Yahweh!
Where were you?
Where are you?
Why would you?

Silence.

A footstep.
We freeze.
Mirroring the fear in each other’s eyes.
Who’s there?
Is it time?
Have they found us?
Will we be crucified too,
complicit in the treason?

Silence.

A collective exhale of breath held.

And we wait.

And we wait.

And we wait.

For we know not what.

Safety?
Assurance?
Hope?

Because these seem impossible to attain.

And so we remain in the dark.
We remain in our grief.
We remain in a state of utter hopelessness and fear.
With no way out of our self-imposed prison
in the upper room.