Overwhelmed and powerless.
I’ve had days like that, you probably have too.
What were they like for you? What happened? What were the conversations in your head? What feelings, memories, hopes did you carry in your heart?
On those days I feel small and insignificant. Circumstances feel large and heavy. I feel pressed down and stuck, without options. I can’t go back to the way life used to be and I can’t move forward. I don’t know what’s next or if there will even be a next.
When I feel overwhelmed and powerless I’ve got no energy, imagination, or creativity. It’s all too big and asking more of me than I have or can do.
A Great Stone
The circumstances that leave me feeling overwhelmed and powerless are like a great stone that I can’t lift, move, or do anything about. Sometimes it’s a loss, a tragedy, an injustice, a war, an inequity, an abuse of power. The great stone shows up in a thousand different ways.
I wonder what the great stone is in your life today. What has left you feeling overwhelmed and powerless?
Today’s gospel (Matthew 27:57-66) sets us before the great stone.
Jesus is dead. His body has been has been wrapped in a clean linen cloth and placed in a tomb. “A great stone” has been rolled to the door of the tomb. “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.” (Matthew 27:59-61)
Sitting opposite the tomb.
Sitting opposite the great stone.
Sitting in opposition and protest.
The Day After
As tragic as Good Friday is, the day after, what we call Holy Saturday, just might be the more painful and difficult day, and it’s never just one day.
I thought the day our older son died was the worst day of Cyndy’s and my life. And it was – until I woke up the morning after. I suspect you also know what the morning after is like. We spend a lot of our lives in Holy Saturday.
Holy Saturday is exhausting. It’s like trudging through quicksand. Time passes. Nothing much seems to change. It feels futile. Is this just how it is? As good as it gets?
Overwhelmed and powerless, I think to myself, What’s the use? What can I do?
A Sit In
Those days call for a sit in – sitting in opposition, sitting in protest – like Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.
What if protest is how we enter into and move through the Holy Saturday of life? What would it be like to sit in opposition to the “great stone” in your life? What if we sang to the stone, “We shall overcome”?
Protest, sitting in opposition, is more than denial.
It is an act of hope. It declares that there can be and should be something more, something else. Protest is the refusal to give up. We practice showing up. We put faith in the more of life, each other, ourselves, and God.
Protest dreams a dream and offers a vision for the future. It keeps this moment from closing in on us and closing us in. It holds the door open.
Protest is never more necessary than when we feel powerless. Elie Weisel puts it like this:
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
And let’s not forget about Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Those two protesters saw the great stone rolled back. They were the ones who heard the angel’s good news, “He has been raised,” and the first to touch the risen Jesus. (Matthew 28:1-9)
How will you protest the great stone in your life today? In our country? In the world?
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Image Credit: By Cestsalam – Own work, CC0, Wikimedia Commons.
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