The song, “Drive out the Darkness” by Paul Zach and the Porters Gate musical collective is in my head this Saturday morning, tucked as it is between the Passion of Friday and the Glory of Sunday, and often overlooked as an away day from the spiritual contemplation or religious observances of Easter.
But on this day, I am thinking of those women, those first witnesses, those “Myrrh Bearers” as the Greek Orthodox tradition calls them, those who came bearing spices to anoint the dead body of Jesus on the first morning after the Sabbath ended.
What are they thinking as they pass this awful Saturday in the darkness of unknowing, as they prepare the spices and plan this act of devotion before the first light of day.
What’s on their minds? Grief? Despair? Disbelief?
With all that they had experienced - the horror, the gore, the screams of agony, the baying of the crowds, and with all that they had observed of the cold limp body being carried in the strong arms of Joseph of Arimathea, did they lose hope?
I think not. There was too much of Jesus already in them. His words continue to ring in their ears - even those uttered while in his agony on the cross. His compassion still surrounds them, as they trip through the dark night, wondering, ‘who is there even to roll away the stone?’ Here is faith. Faith that says, yes, even now,
we are confident we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
We don’t know how, but we know that he will in the end drive out the darkness, and bring us into the light.
And as we rise tomorrow to celebrate our own Easter, my hope is with those women. That whether, now or later, he will drive away the darkness of unknowing, and bring us to perceive the light of his goodness during this season of our lives.
“Come o Come
Be our Life
Drive out the Darkness”. **
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpGu359wRjE
** The illustration is from a Greek Orthodox icon of the women at the tomb.
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