My Hope For Holy Saturday!
It is my hope we would sit in shock, in quietness, in awe...
For many of us we focus on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Between the two is Holy Saturday. If we place too much emphasis on Good Friday we are probably reducing our gospel entirely too narrowly on sin and sin management in the individual. If we focus too much on Easter, we are probably creating unrealistic, underwhelming expectations about the demands of the true Gospel, venturing into self-help, reductionism and dangerous triumphalism. If we focus only on the two, Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, we create an unhealthy dichotomy so starkly contrasted that by necessity we have to observe them both only as religious obligation where the two events meld into a single event without further reflection or transformation.
It is my hope that today we would question everything! From the standpoint of today, there is no tomorrow. There is no Easter Resurrection. There is no new creation and the destruction of death. There is nothing. The messiah has failed by all earthly measures. The epitome of religion is unchanged in Jesus' failed attempt at bring the Jewish nation to repentance. The epitome of politics is unconverted in Jesus' encounter with the powers and principalities with the Roman state, using Jesus as a pawn in business as usual. Whatever Kingdom Jesus sought to establish is crushed. The King is dead.
We should consider what our lives would be like, in reflective trajectory, if there were no resurrection. Did our father keep the fishing nets? Should we join the counter-revolution again, forcing about our own utopia? What would we be doing if the Lord had left us alone? What would our lives look like if the risen Lord had not risen at all to call us out to be reconciled and reconcile?
This day should challenge our entire Christian lives. Is it all for nothing? We should allow ourselves the holy act of doubting if we have ever really believed, if we have ever really understood, if we have ever really got it right - got him right. Yesterday, Good Friday, needs to cause us unbelief, today requires that we place our hope in ourselves and what we know... or no hope at all, and tomorrow should wreck us. Tomorrow should redefine everything. Tomorrow should theologically interpret all of our past and current self to push us into something so new and so exciting Christians simultaneously called it the 1st day and the 8th day of the week.
But for now... we are left, in the very least, with jaw dropping disappointment, and at most, the grips of sadness and despair. A sense of nothingness, lostness, deflated courage and misplaced hope... a sense having sunk all our money into the stock of a bankrupt company, having gone all in on a failed gut shot straight, having quit your job because you only thought you had the winning lottery ticket, having ditched all your friends for what your thought was the love of your life - all gone, now there is nothing.
For many of us we focus on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Between the two is Holy Saturday. If we place too much emphasis on Good Friday we are probably reducing our gospel entirely too narrowly on sin and sin management in the individual. If we focus too much on Easter, we are probably creating unrealistic, underwhelming expectations about the demands of the true Gospel, venturing into self-help, reductionism and dangerous triumphalism. If we focus only on the two, Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, we create an unhealthy dichotomy so starkly contrasted that by necessity we have to observe them both only as religious obligation where the two events meld into a single event without further reflection or transformation.
It is my hope that today we would question everything! From the standpoint of today, there is no tomorrow. There is no Easter Resurrection. There is no new creation and the destruction of death. There is nothing. The messiah has failed by all earthly measures. The epitome of religion is unchanged in Jesus' failed attempt at bring the Jewish nation to repentance. The epitome of politics is unconverted in Jesus' encounter with the powers and principalities with the Roman state, using Jesus as a pawn in business as usual. Whatever Kingdom Jesus sought to establish is crushed. The King is dead.
We should consider what our lives would be like, in reflective trajectory, if there were no resurrection. Did our father keep the fishing nets? Should we join the counter-revolution again, forcing about our own utopia? What would we be doing if the Lord had left us alone? What would our lives look like if the risen Lord had not risen at all to call us out to be reconciled and reconcile?
This day should challenge our entire Christian lives. Is it all for nothing? We should allow ourselves the holy act of doubting if we have ever really believed, if we have ever really understood, if we have ever really got it right - got him right. Yesterday, Good Friday, needs to cause us unbelief, today requires that we place our hope in ourselves and what we know... or no hope at all, and tomorrow should wreck us. Tomorrow should redefine everything. Tomorrow should theologically interpret all of our past and current self to push us into something so new and so exciting Christians simultaneously called it the 1st day and the 8th day of the week.
But for now... we are left, in the very least, with jaw dropping disappointment, and at most, the grips of sadness and despair. A sense of nothingness, lostness, deflated courage and misplaced hope... a sense having sunk all our money into the stock of a bankrupt company, having gone all in on a failed gut shot straight, having quit your job because you only thought you had the winning lottery ticket, having ditched all your friends for what your thought was the love of your life - all gone, now there is nothing.
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