My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.
from An Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday
As I consider younger days, it is hard for me to come up with a time in my life when I dated someone toxic. Not that I never went on a date with a toxic person, but all of the relationships I have had seem to have been with people who were really trying. Which points to the truth that I have, at times, been a bad boyfriend. There were times when I was either unwilling or incapable of trying. So it makes me wonder what it’s like for the person on the other end. What’s it like when you wake up one morning and realize that this guy you have been trying to build a relationship with is slowly chipping away at the structure you’ve labored on, that he’s carrying a little bit of dirt in his pockets every time he goes out to the yard.
And I don’t know how much effort Jesus was putting into having a relationship with Lucifer in the first place. Maybe he was just acknowledging that, as the one through whom all things are created, he’s going to have some sort of relationship with the adversary whether that is going well or going poorly. Clearly, Satan is not willing to be in any kind of pairing that requires mutuality and trust. Instead, he’s put a big poster of Eve over the hole he’s drilling in the side of creation, a portal of nothingness that, given the chance, he’d widen until it sucks everything into it’s maw.
After the Friday Jesus has had, he needed a sabbath. The adversary has done his worst, extending that gash of his right into the side of The Savior. And Jesus felt that. Somewhere in his moments of sleeping and dreaming, maybe it dawns on Jesus that this is never going to change. Satan is going to satan, and nothing Jesus does will alter that. Jesus, therefore, will simply Jesus. In the process, he’ll reach out to everyone who has been sucked into that hole, drawing them out of the void and back into life. But he and Satan are never, ever, ever getting back together.
