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Holy Saturday: ‘There Is No Longer Any Prophet’

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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)

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Denials, the Digital, and the Awesome

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I’m trying to decide if the apostle Peter is a good example of saying the quiet part aloud. When someone notes that an activist or someone has said the quiet part out loud, they mean this person has admitted to principles or goals his people usually leave unsaid or even deny. And Peter is famous for speaking his mind.

On Good Friday, we remember that Peter told Jesus he would die before he denied Christ. “Peter said to him, ‘Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!’ And all the disciples said the same” (Mt. 26:35 ESV). But he did deny the Lord, and I assume the others did too by running away.

When Jesus filled the fishermen’s nets to overflowing, Peter said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Lk 5:8 ESV), saying immediately what the others may think later, that they were unworthy to stand so close to a holy man. Many years later, Paul had to rebuke Peter for holding Gentile believers to an unholy standard, implying they should maintain Jewish habits in order to be right with Christ (Gal. 2:11-14).

With these and other examples, Peter shows himself to be a great example of a Christian who can’t keep his act together, who lives in continual repentance for not living what he actually believes. In this way, perhaps it’s right to say he says quiet things aloud, and by doing so, he helps us recognize or reject what he says. We can say we do believe that and it’s wrong, or we do believe that and it clashes with other professed beliefs.

Or perhaps we deny that we will ever reject Christ, and then we hear ourselves rejecting him. Don’t let that be your final word. Christ’s work on the cross is enough to flood your entire life and raise you to a new life with him.

As for other things:

Internet: How is the Internet shaping us? How has it formed our habits and changed our values? Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age (via Keith Plummer)

Social Media: “The thought of those in our ministries being drawn away by a stranger through a screen is gut-wrenching.” But influencers don’t have the physical proximity we do. (via Keith Plummer)

Gospel: “The one thing the gospel never does is nothing.”

Sci-fi: Why do some space movies achieve awesome grandeur and others do not? ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and the elusiveness of awe

And as meditation on the grief of Holy Saturday, here’s a Chopin prelude.

Khatia Buniatishvili performs Chopin’s Prelude in E minor Op. 28, no. 4