New life begins in darkness. Seeds pushed down into dark soil change and grow. A baby grows in the shadowy embrace of a mother’s womb. A new idea germinates not in the busyness of daylight, but when a head rests on a pillow and a brain is embraced by the gentle tick…tock… of the small hours. New life cannot be willed into being. In truth, our willfulness often gets in the way.

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday altogether make up what liturgical scholars call the Easter Triduum. I like this ancient Latin term that simply means “three days” because it helps my brain remember something important: For centuries, the worshiping church has considered the liturgies of these three days to be not three discrete services, but three acts of one great service. Maundy Thursday’s supper and shadows happen, and they end not with a period but with an ellipsis. Good Friday’s cross happens, but it doesn’t get the finality of a period; Good Friday, too, ends in an ellipsis. Holy Saturday, silent as a body in a tomb, happens but ends in an ellipsis. Only after we stumble upon an empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning, only then do we reach a period.

“Easter Triduum” may sound strange. It sounds even stranger if you pronounce it correctly. It looks like “vacuum,” but with emphasis on the first syllable, it’s pronounced trid·yoo·uhm. It’s weird. I get it. But it helps me. It helps connect the episodes of God’s Great Story in my mind and heart. Thursday’s supper…Friday’s cross…Saturday’s silence…Easter’s hope.

This weekend, new life is beginning. As usual, it begins in the darkness, in the shadows of Lent. When I call it the Easter Triduum, it has a rhythm that I don’t hear if I shy away from that strange Latin terminology. Thursday-Friday, there was evening, and there was morning, the first day. Friday-Saturday, there was evening, and there was morning, the second day. Saturday-Sunday, there was evening, and there was morning, the third day.

And you remember what happens on the third day, right?

And “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

Sunday’s comin’. But I learned years ago, worshiping with Northside Drive Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA, that I, Zach, can’t get to Easter Sunday without Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I can’t really, fully, get there. I think it’s because whether we’re talking about the tulips in my lawn or the worship in my head and heart, new life begins in darkness.

And though full flower is still a few days away, it’s beginning. Easter is beginning now.

~ Rev. Zach Bay