Sabbath Devotional :: The Middle Space

It has been a week full of mourning with and holding space for the pain of people I love. I feel a strong call to sit with, listen, and try to carry some of their burden. It is sacred work to be able to fulfill baptismal covenants in this way, but it also means that I am a little bit weary, so I am bringing you a simple devotional this evening, filled with the words of others.

I don’t feel particularly naturally skilled at mourning with those who mourn, other than being an introvert who is satisfied to listen while others talk. But I have learned over the years that it is important to do more than passively listen. A word that comes to mind to describe this approach is “witnessing.” It is a privilege to be a witness who first sees and hears, then seeks to understand, and finally testifies as appropriate. The connector between those three actions is that they are magnified and sanctified when undertaken in the spirit of love. In Deidre Green’s “Jacob: A Brief Theological Introduction”, I found words that describe this endeavor perfectly:

. . . Some Christian theologians assert that believers often move too quickly from the crucifixion to the resurrection, without adequately appreciating all that can be gleaned by reflecting upon the absence and uncertainty of what lies between Good Friday and Easter Sunday: the in-between symbolized in Holy Saturday. By viewing the duration of Christ’s death, we witness and embrace loss that has not yet found resolution. Not unlike the wilderness in which Jacob was born, this middle space between crucifixion and resurrection is rife with contingency and unpredictability; however, this space also affords a love that remains even amid weariness. Love’s work is not limited to the sacrifice on the cross but is expanded to witnessing and remaining in a middle space. Theologian Shelly Rambo explains that in this context “survival is given shape through the curious imperative to remain and to love.” To view Christ’s death is to remain in Christ and to remain in love, even in the uncertainty of his absence and the indefiniteness of awaiting an unrevealed future. The divine absence and resultant ambiguity are not incidental but rather crucial to the Christian commandment to love. Rambo articulates that in the middle space, love is ‘birthed through a failure of comprehension.’ Within the middle space meaning proves elusive, love becomes the ‘name for a series of relationships rebirthed in the aftermath of death.’ This love is ‘grounded in the process of speaking and listening.’

In this middle space of unresolved grief and pain, there is opportunity to demonstrate and grow great love. I may be tired, but seeking to quietly carry a bit of burden as I listen for and gently speak of another’s pain has brought an increase of sacredness into my week. And so, as I prepare for the Sabbath, I lovingly hold in my heart the sorrows of my dear ones, hoping that my witness to their “middle space” will uplift us all.