Holy Saturday...alternate realities

I remember moving through the days after my mother's death, on autopilot. I didn't make my bed, I barely ate, or when I did, I gorged on Kryspy Kremes. I went to work, but didn't accomplish much. But my mother was 78, I'd known her all my life. She died of a stroke, not at the hands of executioners. I wasn't even at the hospital when she died. I woke up with a start at midnight and looked at the clock. Twenty minutes later the floor nurse called. It was over.

There's nothing holy about Holy Saturday. Those who loved Jesus would have been in shock today. If they had slept at all, they would have woken up to remember that the nightmare of yesterday was not a dream. He was dead. It was over. What's so holy about that? A few centuries later we can sit out the day with anticipation while Jesus cools his heels in the tomb. Tomorrow is Easter. As Paul Harvey used to say, we know the rest of the story. They didn't.

While I have experienced loss, for me to put myself in their shoes creates an alternate reality. I've mentioned a Palm Sunday meltdown I had years ago. That was an alternate reality. I was in the church and then I wasn't. I couldn't see any details of where I was, couldn't hear them. All I knew for sure was something very bad was happening to someone I loved and I was helpless to do anything about it. The emotions were horror, guilt, grief... all rolled together. Multiply that by a hundred and you may come close to what Jesus' mother felt.

So today... while I wait outside the tomb, I'm thinking about alternate realities. What kind of world would have played it out differently? How would it have looked? The new string theories suspect as many as twenty-seven dimensions to our world we can't even imagine, maybe more. Those with paranormal abilities have a personal sense that there's more to life than we admit. Shamans know it. We track time as a linear progression, but I have experienced moments when time slowed down or stood still. Time warps and closes in on itself. Deja vu tells us this has happened before.

But if time progresses in a linear fashion, then one change may affect all the subsequent results. Imagine a world full of sin into which Jesus is born. His cousin John has set the path: repentance. Jesus begins his ministry and the miracles themselves are enough to get the Pharisees' attention. If this man can raise people from the dead, we need to listen to him. Even if we get killed by the Romans, he could bring us back. We need him to teach us what he knows. No betrayal, no crucifixion, in fact, the movement of compassion spreads. Even the Romans see how corrupt they have become and set about mending their ways. No fall of the Empire... it dissolves peacefully as the kingdom of God works in the hearts and minds of the human community. Yeah, right.

Okay then... imagine this one. I have (so many times) questioned God about the way He handled the crucifixion. The curtain in the temple was rent? That's all you could do?!? They probably had a new curtain up the next day.

I never got an answer to my question until now. No, that's not all He could do. In another reality the first soldier to wield a hammer was struck by lightning. And the next. They ended up tying Jesus to the cross to get him hoisted. But the heavens opened and a voice thundered... "What then will the landowner do to those tenants? He will come and destroy them and give the land to others." And the earth quaked and angels came, and all Jesus' bruises and cuts disappeared and it was judgment day for the earth. Like that one any better?

Why didn't you do anything, God? Because he asked me not to.
I beg your pardon? That's correct. Do you really think I was indifferent? That I didn't watch the whole thing in horror myself? I would have done anything for my son. Whatever he asked. I would have destroyed the world with fire and started over. But he asked me not to. He asked me to forgive them.

"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Oh. I forgot that part. Well, I didn't forget, I just didn't know how all of reality could turn on three words... one request.