Tag: Holy Saturday

Exposed and Naked: Clothed in Righteousness

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

It failed. The grand divine experiment made tangible in Jesus of Nazareth failed. They took him. They tried him. And, they killed him. The promised coming of the kingdom stalled out and stopped. Everything they had witnessed and seen, everything they had experienced and touched, everything they had declared and heard was all now for naught. A big waste of time. A cosmic joke of grand proportions. Their tears give way to fear which then develops into anger. The oppression of their suffering I this moment was sealed by doubt, consuming them like innocent bystanders standing too close to a shore line when a tsunami hits. Where there had been light, there was now darkness. Where there had been liberation, there was now captivity. Where there had been love, there was now numbness. Where there had been life, there was now only death.

The Sabbath demanded a great deal of silence in body and mind. The people who followed Jesus—believed him to be the Messiah—were eager to enter the kingdom of God with Jesus as their great leader; these were now the ones who had to sit with their fear, anger, grief, and, for some who ditched Jesus in his final moments hanging and dying on the cross, they had to sit with their guilt. Not only did this divine experiment fail but they failed, too. And the time marking the sundown of Friday to the sundawn on Sunday morning was excruciating, burdened with great existential dread; this silence wasn’t like normal silences. It fell upon them like judgment from God; were they exiled…again? A silence so oppressive and a darkness so heavy, they might as well have been sealed in the tomb with Jesus to wait for decay and stench to arrive signaling death’s victory.

It all failed. They failed. Jesus failed. God failed.

On this night, all those years ago, the disciples died with Christ. What they didn’t know was that the story wasn’t as over …

1 Peter 4:1-8

Peter opens the fourth chapter of his epistle emphasizing Christ’s suffering and the correlation the believer has to that suffering. Peter writes,

Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, you, you also equip [yourselves] with the same thinking—because the one who suffers in the flesh has hindered sin—for the purpose of living no longer to human desires but by the will of God for the time remaining in the flesh (vv.1-2).

For Peter the suffering of Christ—a major theme in the letter[ii]—is emblematic and representative for the believer[iii] who lives in the world. It is this one who is consistently subjected to the blustering mythologies and bombastic actions of the kingdom of humanity. Thus, it is this one who must put on the mind of Christ as they suffer, taking courage that they suffer because they are hindering sin,[iv] putting an end to old associations with indifference, captivity, and death.[v] Christ’s divine glory was made tangible in and through his suffering on the cross; it is through this obscured expression of divine glory that divine glory encounters the believers in and through their own suffering in the world[vi] as they dare to live differently[vii] (hindering sin) from their coworkers, neighbors, friends, and, even, family.

Thusly, Peter continues,

For sufficient time has passed having participated in the determination of the Gentiles, having followed in licentiousness, lusts, drunkenness, rioting, carousal, and lawless idolatry, by which they have been surprised by your not joining in the same wasteful excess, so they slander[viii] (vv.3-4).

Peter exhorts the believers that their suffering in the world is the fruit of their hindering sin. For Peter, sin is temporal and not merely spiritual—act rather than power—thus, to hinder sin is not to become sinless but to withdraw from participating in the actions of the kingdom of humanity that are antagonistic to the reign of God inaugurated through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The Christian is to imitate Christ[ix] in the world; the Christian is to be a representative of Christ thereby pitting themselves against the kingdom of humanity and its actions thus leading to hindering sin in their own lives,[x] concurrently condemning those who slander them.[xi] For Peter, the believer once lived like everyone else in their society, but that way is now forever blocked.[xii] It will be up to the believer to serve either that which is easiest (going along with the kingdom of humanity thus sidestepping suffering thus negating Christ) or which is hardest: forsaking the kingdom of humanity, preferring to follow Christ, enduring temporal suffering, and seeking the way and will of the reign of God.[xiii] With either choice, they will be noticed and judged[xiv] accordingly either by their neighbor or by God and thus they will suffer now or later.[xv]

This is why Peter speaks of judgment.

They, they will have to give up word to the one who readily holds to judge the living and the dead. For this reason, the good-news is proclaimed even to the dead so that they might be judged according to human flesh but they might live by the Spirit as God does (vv.5-6).

Peter offers a word of encouragement and hope in these verses. The judgment that the believers will have to endure due to the slander of their neighbors still held captive by the allure of the kingdom of humanity pales in comparison to the judgment they will have when they find themselves face to face with God;[xvi],[xvii] for everyone–even the dead—is on a collision course with Abba God.[xviii] The believers can endure temporal suffering because the divine glory is theirs by their faith in Christ—partially now and in full when Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead.[xix] Divine glory is also theirs by way of their zealousness to imitate and represent Christ in the world to the glory of God; for as God is glorified does God give glory.

Therefore, Peter exhorts the believers to live well and to pray and to love one another,

Now the end of all things has come near. Therefore, be of sound mind and be soberminded toward prayers. Above all things, have earnest love toward each other, because love covers a great number of sins (vv.7-8).

The believers are to live in a way emphasizing their faith in Christ and their loving orientation toward each other while resisting relapsing into old habits and forsaking doing good in the world. Prayer becomes crucial here; prayer informs and is informed by love. As one bends one’s knee (literally or metaphorically) to God in prayer (a posture of humility and dependence) one is, therein, formed by God and God’s will[xx]—thus Peter’s argument comes full circle. To pray to God in the name of Christ is to identify with Christ and, therefore, to be molded in such a way as to identify with those with whom Christ identifies. This identification is none other than divine love for the beloved. Prayer gives us access to this divine love[xxi] so we can earnestly[xxii] share it with one another[xxiii] and, more importantly, share it with the world. In this way, believers participate in God’s mission[xxiv] of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation for the world.

Conclusion

For the disciples, the deadly silence of Saturday was palpable. For (about) 36 hours, waiting for the Sabbath to pass, they died; each one of them died with Christ—in hopelessness, helplessness, lifelessness, groundlessness, because of human ruthlessness. They despaired of themselves; they released all that they thought was and came to the absolute ends of themselves. And here, in their ignorance to divine movements, amid their darkest doubt, their deepest despair, surrounded by a void of sound and word, God was gearing up to usher them into a brand-new conception of what it means to live in Christ, to live in love, to live liberated from all that was. As the host of heaven held its breath and as the disciples cried, God was on the move raising the greatest gift for the cosmos: the fulfilment of God’s glorious promise, Jesus the Christ raised holding death itself captive to death, transforming suffering into glory—now and in the future, for all those who believe and follow him.

Tonight, we move from death to life. This service dives in deep to the silence of Saturday, the despair of a missing messiah, the stripping away of hope. At the beginning, we are stuck in our sin, set on a path toward that frightful day of judgment with no Christ to mediate, stealing from us any sense of peace—for how can anyone really have peace if they are always scrambling away from and fighting against judgment and death and their fruits? But in the blink of an eye, God moved, the heavenly host exhaled, and we find ourselves shrouded in the mystery of Christ being raised from the dead to be for us the source, sustenance, and sustainment of divine life, love, and liberation for all people, the entire cosmos, forever and always. We find ourselves moved from slavishly following the ways of the kingdom of humanity and (once again) in love with the reign of God and God’s will.

Tonight, we need to be moved from such enslavement into liberation so we can live and be different in a world that is collapsing into itself, being consumed by the hurt pride and immature tantrums of people who are out of control[xxv] and the epitome of hopeless,[xxvi] helpless,[xxvii] lifeless,[xxviii] groundless,[xxix] and ruthless.[xxx] Tonight, we must find ourselves naked and exposed in our complicity and captivity to the very same and then compelled to let go. We must let go of those ways because God has come in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to clothe us with divine grace, mercy, kindness, joy, and the righteousness of God. And these are the fruits we bring into a world devastated and destroyed by death and destruction. And even as scary as our world is right now, tonight, through the suffering of Christ, our terror is quelled, our anger is released, our grief is met with divine comfort, our anxiety gives way to peace that surpasses all understanding, and our detestable state is exchanged for cherished. Tonight, As Jesus is raised to life out of death, so, too, are we raised out of death into new life, new hope, new help, on to a new ground, with new confidence not in ourselves or debased global leadership but in God, in love, in life, and in liberation. Today we are new creatures with a new life and a new way to walk in the world for the wellbeing of our neighbors and to the glory of God.

Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, TNICTNT, ed. F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 147.

[iii] Davids, Peter, 147. “He encourages the Christians of Northwest Asia Minor to follow the example of Christ.”

[iv] I. Howard Marshall, “1 Peter,” The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, eds. Grant R. Osborne, D. Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson, (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 1991), 133. “His point is essentially that a person who suffers shows that he has given up those things against which his suffering is a protest. In other words, by suffering Christ showed his opposition to sinful living. Therefore, persecuted Christians must follow his example and say a firm no to their temptations.”

[v] Davids, Peter, 148. “What the Christian readers here put on is an ‘insight’ or a ‘point of view.’…That point of view is explained immediately: ‘the one suffering in the flesh has finished with sin….’”

[vi] Davids, Peter, 149. “While it is obvious that this is a difficult phrase, it seems most likely that (2) and (4) in the list above make the best sense of this clause, and that they are related in that (2) expresses the main point based on the underlying assumption of (4).” And the substance of (2) and (4): “…(2) when a person suffers, he breaks the power of sin (which is rooted in his flesh) over his life or atones for the sin in his life;…(4) when Christ suffered, he finished with sin (i.e., the phrase does not refer to the Christian at all)…”

[vii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 134. “…all Christians were controlled by sinful desires in the past, but must no longer be so controlled for the future.”

[viii] Davids, Peter, 152. “Their reaction to this nonconformity is to slander the Christians.”

[ix] Davids, Peter, 150.

[x] Davids, Peter, 149. “First, sin in 1 Peter always indicates concrete acts of sin, not the power of sin over people…the ceasing of concrete acts that is intended. Second, the desire is to draw out a principle from Christ: he suffered for sin once in the past…with the result that he will ever have to deal with sin again. Third…the battle has an ending point. Finally, the point is that once the Christian grasps this insight he will realize from the example of Christ in 3:18-22 that he must live for God now (which means a suffering in the flesh and thus a battling of sin), for that will lead to a parallel victory (a state of having ceased form sin).”

[xi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 136. “If Christians take a firm and consistent stand against this way of life, then by implication they condemn their former associates.”

[xii] Davids, Peter, 150. “On the other hand, since the flesh is weak and fallen, it is the mode of existence in which the evil impulse in human beings operates. Believers thus have a choice: (1) they can live their remining time ‘for human desires,’ or (2) they can live it ‘for the will of God.’”

[xiii] Davids, Peter, 150. “Thus there is a clear choice between taking the path of least resistance to their natural desires and their committing themselves to follow God’s will even if it entails suffering.”

[xiv] Davids, Peter, 152. “All of this rejection was certainly painful, especially when it came in the form of rumors they could not correct and ostracism from former friends and colleagues.”

[xv] Davids, Peter, 151. “These Christians, on the other hand, had been part of the culture, so their nonparticipation was a change in behavior and thus quite noticeable.”

[xvi] Davids, Peter, 152. “While the Christians may feel abandoned by God and unable to defend themselves, it is their accusers, not they, who have a problem, for the detractors will have to answer to God.”

[xvii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 138. “Because there will be a final judgment, what the world thinks of Christians does not matter. What matters is the twofold fact that the pagans will have to answer to God for their refusal to obey him and that those who heard the believed the gospels will be vindicated by God and enjoy eternal life.”

[xviii] Davids, Peter, 153. “Yet we must not lose sight of the fact that the concern of the phrase is not who will judge, but that even the dead cannot escape the final judgment…”

[xix] Davids, Peter, 155. “The point of the passage, then, is that the judgment is also the time of the vindication of Christians. They, like Christ, may have been judged as guilty by human beings according to their standards, either in that they died like other human beings, or through their being put to death …”

[xx] Davids, Peter, 156-157. “Thus our author is calling for a mental alertness that sees life correctly in the light of the coming end. This will lead to prayer—not the prayer based on daydreams and unreality, nor the prayer based on surprised desperation, but the prayer that calls upon and submits to God in the light of reality seen from God’s perspective and thus obtains power and guidance in the situation, however evil the time may be…for proper prayer is not an ‘opiate’ or escape, but rather a function of clear vision and a seeking of even clearer vision from God.”

[xxi] Davids, Peter, 157.

[xxii] Davids, Peter, 157. “Thus when applied in situations such as this it means not to slack off on love, to keep it going at full force, to be earnest about it…these Christians are to maintain their devotion to one another.”

[xxiii] Davids, Peter, 157. “The love that is so important is that for fellow-Christians. As in the whole NT…unity with and practical care for other Christians is not seen as an optional extra, but as a central part of the faith.”

[xxiv] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 134.

[xxv] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/18/exposed-and-naked-we-are-not-in-control/

[xxvi] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-fragile/

[xxvii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/08/exposed-and-naked-we-are-unsafe/

[xxviii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-hurt/

[xxix] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7127

[xxx] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7130

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“Prone to Wander”: Into the Tomb

Psalm 114:7-8 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of Abba God, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.

Introduction

A day of silence. A day of eyes dampened with doubt, confusion, fear, anger, and even despair. It’s not just the women who cry; the men cry, too; no one is exempt from the overwhelming barrage of emotions that comes when hopes are dashed, expectations go up in flames, and faith feels shattered. The one whom they loved, the one whom they followed, the one whom they would die for—so they claimed—had been killed, and his body lay in a sealed tomb, guards flanking the massive stone. They didn’t even have time to prepare his body properly before the Sabbath moon rose gently in the sky reminding them that what was was no longer …

In the silence of that Sabbath, thoughts of what happened, how could this be, what was it all for, is this really it paraded about the minds of the disciples as they forced themselves to rest, no recourse to business of banal tasks to keep their minds occupied. They were stuck in this moment of death, like Jesus in that tomb. The extra layer for some (all?) is that they didn’t stick around, defend, follow Jesus all the way… They ran, denied, hid, betrayed. Their consciences were plagued with loss and confusion and burdened with the uncomforting, weighted-blanket of failure and guilt—heavier for some, lighter for others. These precious souls (no matter their guilt and failure, their denial and betrayal) had to endure the sun-down to sun-down plus a few more hours to receive the actual ending of the story. On this night, all those years ago, the disciples of Christ sighed, wiped away tears, and wondered what it was all about… Death, and all its children, held them hostage like Christ sealed in the tomb.

On this night, all those years ago, the disciples died with Christ. What they didn’t know was that the story wasn’t as over …

Romans 6:3-11[1]

In Romans 6, Paul anchors the silence of Saturday into the death of Good Friday and the life of Easter Sunday. For Paul, those who follow Christ follow him in the ways they speak and act and through deep identification with Christ even if it means going into the tomb with Christ on Good Friday. For Paul, this identification with Christ in Christ’s death is the key to the identification with Christ in his resurrected life. For Paul, this is how believers participate in the entirety of the Easter event, from beginning to end, from death into new life. In other words, our Romans passage is a clear distillation of what is happening as we transition from death to life through the silence of Saturday.

Paul begins with a question (v. 1) that he then (passionately) answers in v. 2: What therefore will we say? Should we persist in sin so that grace might superabound? Hell no! How can we who died to sin still live in it? In this portion, Paul addresses the new life believers have in Christ: this is absolutely not a continuation of what has gone before and is something completely new! There is a clean break between what was sealed up in the tomb with Christ on Good Friday, and the new life the believers step into on Easter Sunday Morning.

Because there is no continuation between what was by deeds of the flesh and what is now by faith in Christ, Paul feels compelled to ask the Romans, Or, do you not know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? (v.3)Meaning, there’s a lie floating about that those who believe in Christ don’t suffer Christ’s fate, that we are exempted from that death. For Paul, while we weren’t nailed to the cross in literal terms, we do suffer a death like Christ’s, and this is actualized in our participation in the waters of baptism. (Being submerged under the water is to buried with Christ, to come up out of the water is to be raised with Christ.) For Paul, it is imperative that we take seriously the reality that we die like Christ; for Paul (and thus for us), THIS IS GOOD NEWS! Paul writes, Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of Abba God, in this way we, we might also walk in the newness of life (v.4). Through what God did in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, death that leads to life is the only path for believers. What is ruled out? Death that leads to death. Why? Because those who journey through a death like Christ’s receive resurrection into new life that cannot die like Christ cannot die (and this new life is both internal and external, spiritual and temporal!).[2] Thus why Paul can then write, For if we have become united together with him in a death like his death, we will also [be united with him in his] resurrection (v. 5). We live unafraid of another death because we live eternally in and with Christ.

Paul continues to elaborate about this identification between the believer and Christ, Knowing that our old person was crucified together [with Christ] with the result that the body of sin is abolished, so that we are no longer a slave to sin, for the one who has died [with Christ] has been declared righteous from sin (vv. 6-7). Paul anchors the believer in the death of Christ so that their body of sin—not their existence as fleshy creatures, but their defective orientation resulting in sin thus death[3]—is put to death and this is liberation because it cannot weigh the believer down anymore. Another way to say this is that by virtue of identification with Christ in Christ’s death, sin and its consequence, death, are put to death.[4] What was ushered in by Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, has been put asunder by the death of death that is brought in and through Christ’s death and resurrection. And if this is the case, then with Paul we can say, And if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live together with him (v.8). Captivity itself is now held captive and the captives—the ones formerly held in captivity to sin and death—are liberated.[5]

Paul then writes, Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead no longer dies, death no longer rules over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God [always]. Thus you, you also consider yourselves to be dead to sin and only living to God in Christ Jesus. For those who follow Christ, to live is to live unbound by death, released from captivity, no longer controlled and threatened by sin. According to Paul, it’s not that believers now no longer sin; they do. Believers will miss the mark, they will shoot and not score, they will mean one thing and do another, they will harm, they will mar, they will wound. What Paul is getting at is that the believer—while still a sinner—is liberated from the effects of sin which is death. The believer—now declared righteous although a sinner still (simul iustus et peccator)—has died once and for all (like Christ) and never needs to die again to sin (though sin is going to happen).[6] In other words, the believer does not need to intentionally sin so that they can die again to sin and again be declared righteous. Doing so is unnecessary and declares the grace of God unnecessary (Hell no!), as if being made righteous can come by any other means apart from grace and faith in Christ.

Because Jesus died once for all, believers in union with Christ by faith will never really die (they will “fall asleep in Christ”) because death has met its own death, captivity its own captivity. [7],[8] Rather, like Christ, they will live by the grace of God and for the grace of God.[9] This is an eternal living because the believer—by faith and God’s grace—lives in Christ and Christ who is now the Lord of life is no longer subject to death and its lordship—thus, those who live in Christ have life eternal because Christ is now eternal even in his raised and ascended body.[10] Even when sin shows up in the believer’s life—and it will—this eternal living is not hindered or hampered. Rather—through easy access to forgiveness and absolution—the believer can get up, wipe the dust off, and try again to live the life that reflects their eternal life in Christ.[11] Here the spiritual can manifest in the temporal, the outer aligns with the inner, God’s will can be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Conclusion

For the disciples, the deathly silence of Saturday was palpable. For (about) 36 hours, waiting for the Sabbath to pass, waiting for the dawn of second full day after Christ’s death, they died, each one of them died with Christ—in grief, loss, shock, doubt, hopelessness, helplessness. They despaired of themselves, they released all that they thought was, and they came to the absolute ends of themselves. And here, in their ignorance to the divine movements, amid their darkest doubt, their deepest despair, surrounded by a void of sound or word, God was about to usher them into a brand-new conception of what it means to live in Christ, to live in love, to live liberated from all that was. As the host of heaven held its breath and as the disciples cried, God was on the move raising the greatest gift for the cosmos: the fulfilment of God’s glorious promise, Jesus the Christ raised holding death itself captive to death.

Tonight, we move from death to life. This service dives in deep to the silence of Saturday, the despair of a missing messiah, the stripping away of hope. At the beginning, we are all stuck in our sin, set on a path toward death eternal, forever held captive by its threat and presence, stealing from us any sense of peace—for how can anyone really have peace if they are always scrambling away from and fighting against death and its fruits? But in the blink of an eye, God moved, the heavenly host exhaled, and we find ourselves shrouded in the mystery of Christ being raised from the dead to be for us the source, sustenance, and sustainment of divine life, love, and liberation for all people, the entire cosmos, forever and always. As those who are prone to wander, God has come in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to be our new life marked by remembering and not forgetting, walking and not tromping, gathered and not estranged, accepting and not judging, peaceful and lifegiving and not violent and death-dealing. Today we are new creatures with a new life and a new way to walk in the world for the wellbeing of our neighbors and to the glory of God.

Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!

[1] All translations from Romans are mine unless otherwise noted

[2] LW 25:309. “For having put on our mortal flesh and dying only in it and rising only in it, now only in it He joins these things together for us, for in this flesh He became a sacrament for the inner man and an example for the outward man.”

[3] LW 25:313. “The term ‘old man’ describes what kind of person is born of Adam, not according to his nature but according to the defect of his nature. For his nature is good, but the defect is evil.”

[4] LW 25:310. “Eternal death is also twofold. The one kind is good, very good. It is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated form sin and the body is separated rom corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God. This is death in the most proper sense of the word, for in all other forms of death something remains that is mixed with life but not in this kind of death, where there is the purest life alone, because it is eternal life. For to this kind of death alone belong in an absolute and perfect way the conditions of death, and in this death alone whatever dies perishes totally and into eternal nothingness, and nothing will ever return from this death because it truly dies an eternal death. This is the way sin dies; and likewise the sinner, when he is justified, because sin will not return again for all eternity…”

[5] LW 25:310. “This is the principle theme in scripture. For God has arranged to remove through Christ whatever the devil brought in through Adam. And it as the devil who brought in sin and death. Therefore God brought about the death of death and the sin of sin, the poison of poison, the captivity of captivity.”

[6] LW 25:314. “The meaning is that we must undergo this spiritual death only once. For whoever dies thus lives for all eternity. Therefore we must not return to our sin in order to die to sin again.”

[7] LW 25:311. “Because for death to be killed means that death will not return, and ‘to take captivity captive’ means that captivity will never return, a concept which cannot be expressed through an affirmative assertion.”

[8] LW 25:311. “For the entering into life can, and necessarily must, become a departure from life, but the ‘escape form death’ means to enter into a life which is without death.”

[9] LW 25:313. “Nor can he be freed of his perversity except by the grace of God…This is said not only because of the stubbornness of perverse people but particularly because of the extremely deep infection of this inherited weakness and original poison, by which a man seeks his own advantage even in God himself because of his love of concupiscence.”

[10] LW 25:315. “For just as the ray of the sun is eternal because the sun is eternal, so the spiritual life is eternal because Christ is eternal; for He is our life, and through faith He flows into us and remains in us by the rays of His grace. Therefore, just as Christ is eternal, so also the grace which flows out of Him is from His eternal nature. Furthermore, just because a man sins again his spiritual life does not die, but he turns his back on this life and dies, while this life remains eternal in Christ.”

[11] LW 25:315. “He has Christ, who dies no more; therefore he himself dies no more, but rather he lives with Christ forever. Hence also we are baptized only once, by which we gain the life of Christ, even though we often fall and rise again. For the life of Christ can be recovered again and again, but a person can enter upon it only once, just as a man who has never been rich can begin to get rich only once, although he can again and again lose and regain his wealth.”

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Who Do You Say That I am?

The Silence of Holy Saturday

If there was a day to feel the most human, I know not one better than the 24 hour period linking the event of death of Good Friday to the event of life of Resurrection Sunday.  Yet, I believe most of us rush through Saturday, not paying any attention to tension embedded in this day.

We know what happened: Jesus died on Friday and was raised on Sunday. Saturday is just the day I run those last minute errands, color eggs, plan for tomorrow’s dinner celebration, and lay out my “Easter best” outfit. My day to day productivity attempts to eclipse the possibility of eventful reflection. God can break through the clutter and cacophony of a regular day just as God can break through stone hard hearts and closed off minds. But if we are too immersed in the demands of our worlds and lives, we could miss the silence of Saturday; missing this silence and the very pregnant space-time pause, steals from the abundance of tomorrow, Easter Sunday. Might as well just be a celebration of the fertility of the Spring solstice.

In my opinion, Holy Saturday, the divine silence of this 24 hour period, is the center of the chiastic structure of massive event proportions. While everything feels normal here, nothing is actually normal. Everything is different but then none of it is. It’s the entire book of lamentations jammed into a day; it’s the moment between Adam and Eve stepping out of the Garden per divine decree and the settling in of the cherubim and seraphim who will forever prevent return. It’s the between of the walls of water dropping and drowning the Egyptian soldiers and the arrival at Mt. Sinai. It’s the deep dark of transition before Mary pushed Jesus into the world and held him to her breast. It’s the pain of Dinah after her rape and before her brothers find out; it’s the harrowing  moment between the last few breaths of the Levite’s concubine of Judges 19 and the door opening the next morning. This is where we are; it makes sense that we run through it.

There’s nothing easy about Holy Saturday. It’s filled with questions with no answers. It’s filled with crisis and confrontation. It’s filled with darkness no matter how bright the noon day sun shines. The demand of what in the hell just happened? weighs down on human skeletal structures, and there is no reprieve of an answer. This is loss; this is sorrow. Our bodies are forced into a conflict of feeling and thought: he was here, and now he’s not. The longing to touch him still courses through the nerve endings of the skin of my finger tips, but I cannot touch him anymore. The grief of desiring to lay lips on his that are now dead and gone, cold and lifeless. Substance was here and now it is seemingly vanished; the vacuum pulls my body into it: where I could not lie and sit and stand because he was there, I now can and that awareness of absence is crushing.

In the midst of this palpable heaviness that feels like divine silence, God isn’t actually speechless. The kerygma floats on the warm breeze: who do you say that I am? On Good Friday humanity answered with a conviction and judgment that ended in death. On Sunday, God will do the same but it will bring about life. But even if answers have been given, the question spoken long ago still demands an answer today; we aren’t off the hook because we’re being addressed today. And today, Saturday, the question haunts us as faith goes searching for her desire: what we knew and believed is being met with a radical upheaval of the unknowability of the future.

Today, law failed. Today, religion failed. Today, piety means nothing. Today, faith feels like a farce. Today, bodies long and hearts faint. Today, prophets only sigh. Today, love mourns. Today, grace feels beyond reach. Today, we are naked. Today, we are forced to be human, to reckon with what was and confront what will be. Today, we must wrestle with the demand of the eternal question in the divine address: who do you say that I am?

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The Silence of God, God of the Void: A Reflection for Holy Saturday

Silence is disturbing. Personally, I’d rather know bad news than sit with myself in the midst of silence of reply. I’d rather a verbal explosion go off, leaving word shrapnel strewn about; that’s something I can tangibly make sense of, examine, create order with. Give me baskets piled high of “what-you-actually-think”, and no matter how much pain I may have, at least I have something to work with and to fight with. The whole idea that “no news is good news” escapes me; I find no comfort in having nothing with which to do battle against. I can’t kick against silence; there’s nothing to fight in the void. God gifted me with the ability to be a very good and efficient problem solver. A MBTI INTP, I live to order chaos, to make precise connections over vast intellectual distances, to build and construct and expand and to push and to see just how far this *thing* can go (be it object, idea, or my own person). Thus I would naturally expect that God would meet me as I am: give me riddles to solve, puzzles to put together, ask me to follow along a trail of thoughts dropped by God’s divine hand so that when I arrive at the end I can, as if by intellectual paint-by-number, assemble these thoughts to get the full picture I’ve been desiring. But rarely is this so. Rarely?…Better yet: never. That I expect God to meet me in such a way is my own demand on God, it is my own form I’m forcing God into. I forget that God self-discloses God’s self. The reality is that my encounter with God in the event of faith is often in the midst of total silence, where I feel as if I am suspended and hovering above a void and an abyss that it is threatening to take me into it. Where my repeated whispers of “Why?” are pulled from me only to float off into the distance and seemingly evaporate like a lone cloud does as it floats over the dry Colorado desert. Where my “Where were you when…?” stack up and collect dust and become brittle, like old books long forgotten. Where the word “hope” has no value and where doubts of God seem to ontologically define my spirituality and my personhood. I’m not alone in this particular encounter with God in the event of faith. According to one scholar, Elie Wiesel has a similar conceptualizing of God,
“For Elie Wiesel the struggle of the survivor is not merely an inquiry with the mind while knowing in the heart but a shattering of that knowledge, that trust in God. Wiesel’s God is not a God who gave man freedom in history but rather a God who promised deliverance and remained silent in the hour of Israel’s greatest need, a God who made it impossible to believe in the promise of future deliverance. Wiesel’s theodicy is a theodicy of the void. His God is a God of silence. Wiesel’s struggle is to live in the face of the void.”[1]
Everything that has been held dear is shattered and rent asunder. Like Wiesel, everything I’ve put my “hope” in is and has been demythologized. The stories become like playground taunts to my pain and suffering, to my deep abiding questions. The God I’ve historically worshipped is, in the silence and in the face of the void, demythologized; and I come face to face with God’s Thou-objectivity as it is and not as I assume it to be. I’m exposed as the one who has worshipped the stories and not the one to whom the stories point: God. Thus, I am demythologized. Recently I was reminded of a concept Luther articulates early in his lectures on Galatians and one that I use frequently with my students when explaining the journey of faith. Faith is a journey into darkness not up and into the light but down and into the darkness, being lead by the hand and not by our own sight. Luther writes,
“Here let reason be far away, that enemy of faith, which in the temptations of sin and death, relies not on the righteousness of faith or Christian righteousness, of which it is completely ignorant, but on its own righteousness or, at most, on the righteousness of the Law. As soon as reason and the Law are joined, faith immediately loses its virginity. For nothing is more hostile to faith than the Law and reason; nor can these two enemies be overcome without great effort and work, and you must overcome them if you are to be saved. Therefore when your conscience is terrified by the Law and is wrestling with the judgment of God, do not consult either reason or the Law, but rely only on grace and the Word of comfort. Here take your stand as though you had never heard of the Law. Ascend into the darkness, where neither the Law nor reason shines, but only the dimness of faith (1 Cor. 13:12), which assures us that we are saved by Christ alone, without any Law. Thus the Gospel leads us above and beyond the light of the Law and reason into the darkness of faith, where the Law and reason have no business.”[3]
In the event of faith, we are ushered out of the light and into the darkness; we are completely undone unto death of the self that was. Where faith is undone unto it’s own death. Where our self-created depictions of God are undone unto their death. Where we are thoroughly and completely brought to nothing in the divine silence and in the void.
“Therefore we are nothing, even with all our great gifts, unless God is present. When He deserts us and leaves us to our own resources, our wisdom and knowledge are nothing. Unless He sustains us continually, the highest learning and even theology are useless… Therefore let no one boast or glory in his own righteousness, wisdom, and other gifts; but let him humble himself and pray with the apostles (Luke 17:5): ‘Lord, increase our faith!’”[4]
In the silence, stalwart faith turns to haunting doubt; hopeful stories are exposed as hopeless myths; reason is exposed as enemy; and I am left naked and exposed and in what feels like certain death. I let go of the things I’ve had a death grip on and give in to the pull of the void. Arms clinging to unsubstantial things go limp and unfurl to the left and right; head drops back and eyes close waiting to be sucked in and all the way down into nothing, in to the void. But in this silence, in this seemingly deathly void, there is life. The “I am who and what I am” is. I am in God’s intimate embrace, locked deeply in the divine kiss summoning me from death–resurrection from the dead–and as I wake and the divine kiss pulls back, one word, “hope”, remains, trailing on my lips. We rush from Good Friday to Easter Sunday clinging to the stories therein as if these were our only hope. We skip over Saturday because it has no story to offer us, no story for us to anchor our faith in, no words that we can cling to when we face doubt and despair. We skip over Saturday because silence is disturbing and the void feels most threatening. But maybe, maybe it’s the silence of Saturday that is the most divine because we are brought deep into the darkness, into the silence, into the void and asked to die to everything we’ve held on to for life. To have faith in God’s activity in the world depicted in the stories handed down to us makes sense but is not the substance of faith but of the rational. Rather, to have faith in the wake of the cessation of divine activity, when words aren’t spoken and heard, where there’s nothing to cling to but God’s ambiguous and alarming “I am” is the substance of faith. To have faith today, when it doesn’t make sense because all seems lost and gone, is the substance of faith. And this is the substance and demand of the silence and void of Holy Saturday. [1] M. Barenbaum “Elie Wiesel: God, the Holocaust, and the Children of Israel”. See also, Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God and his reference to Elie Wiesel’s Night, pp. 273-4. [3] Martin Luther Lectures on Galatians: Chapters 1-4 LW vol. 26. Pp. 113-4. Emphasis, mine. [4] Ibid, 114.
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The Silence of Saturday

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On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.  Luke 23:56b

John, in his gospel, records that Jesus’ last words from the cross on Friday were, “It is finished” (19:30). Luke records, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” (23:46b). Both Matthew and Mark have recorded as Jesus’ last words, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (Matt 27:46b; Mark 15:34b). These records of Jesus’ last words from the cross have always brought me immeasurable comfort. But then again, I know the full story. My eyes dart from the “it is finished” in John to the “Now on the first day of the week” of the resurrection story located just  a few inches lower on the page.

Chronologically speaking, I’m missing an entire day as I read along in my bible: the Sabbath. And, technically, that’s today: the day in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  I jump ahead to the end because I…

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