The day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is an odd, muted day. Between a sober Friday service, in which the Christ candle leaves the sanctuary, and a joyous Sunday service, which, if we could, we would pack with sunlight as dazzling as a Hallelujah, stands a Saturday that feels like any other end of the week.
On that first Saturday before Easter, I doubt the disciples would find much comfort in the habits of the Sabbath. The light of the world was gone. “O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?” (Psalm 74:1)
Joseph of Arimathea had put Jesus’s body in his tomb Friday night, and when he woke up on Saturday, he may have wondered how the sun was still allowed rise. How could anything carry on normally with Jesus of Nazareth in the grave?
We do not see our signs;
there is no longer any prophet,
and there is none among us who knows how long.
How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?
Is the enemy to revile your name forever? (vv. 9-10)
Holy Saturday is a good day to ask these questions and to consider the darkness that lingers, the dream that’s deferred, the disappointment that goes unresolved.
Psalm 74 is a cry to God after the destruction of the temple. “The enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary!” (v. 4). That was in the 6th century B.C. Later, in A.D. 33, Jesus had left a similar hole in his disciples’ hearts. He had told the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” referring to his body, but no one understood at the time (John 2:19, 21). On that first Saturday, it felt as if the enemy had destroyed everything.
We live in brighter days comparatively, but it’s still easy to ask the Lord whether he has cast us off when our own bodies fail us or when our communities are threatened. How long will enemies war against us and our neighbors? Does our current pain mean he has rejected us?
War, crime, and countless inhumanities—no one knows how long they will last. But we do know who has broken them. “Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth” (v. 12).
O God, let us see your salvation at work with the Easter sunrise and every sunrise thereafter.
(Photo: Sebastian Molina fotografía via Unsplash)