Holy Saturday – March 30, 2002
Worship Set #1:
Intro Section:
• Welcome. Announcements (?). Offering (is this appropriate? Necessary for SDC and regular giving…)
• Place this service in the order of events of the Easter weekend.
• In some churches where there are services of some type every day, they observe this day by canceling those services! We have a unique opportunity tonight to try to imagine, to try to get a glimpse, of what Jesus’ disciples might have felt on this “in-between time,” the time before Jesus rose from the dead. We aren’t doing this to be morbid or depressing – not at all! In fact the opposite is true – we feel that in order to really celebrate Christ’s victory over death, in order to really understand the joy of the resurrection, we need to meditate on all the events of this weekend. We need to come to the cross, as we did yesterday, and see our Savior who died there for us. And we need to remember that the resurrection didn’t happen instantaneously – there was a space of time, when Jesus’ disciples were still around, no doubt confused, distraught, overwhelmed, not knowing what to think. And that is the moment we want to pause it tonight.
• Describe service – outline
• Pray
Worship Set #2:
Scripture: Matt. 27:62-66
Reflection: “Have you ever had a dream?”
Have you ever had a dream? Something you worked for, strived for, longed for, sacrificed for? Have you ever lost that? Had it slip away, get crushed, evaporate in front of you? Have you ever found yourself in a place where all you felt was disappointment, confusion, even anger?
The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about the disciples between the cross and the resurrection. We don’t know where they were that Sabbath day, what they did or what they thought. We can only imagine. We know they were not anticipating a resurrection – they were surprised by the empty tomb, puzzled, in fact even as they looked in on the empty tomb John records, “They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” (Jn 20:9).
What I found fascinating in Matthew’s Gospel is that while the disciples hadn’t caught the message of Jesus rising again from the dead, the chief priests and the Pharisees hadn’t missed it! They went running back to Pilate, asking to post a guard and make the tomb secure lest the disciples steal the body and claim some crazy resurrection.
We do know the disciples had a dream. They had seen Jesus do miraculous things, had walked with Him triumphantly towards Jerusalem shouting praise to God. Yet now He was dead. There hope was dashed. The enemies had won, Jesus was dead and so was the movement. They’d seen this kind of thing before. It always seemed like just when God started doing something, something else interfered and destroyed the momentum.
Scripture doesn’t fill in the rest of the details – we have to look to our imaginations for that. Let me share with you Walter Wangerin’s re-creation of those moments of despair, out of his imagination. (read section)
Worship Set #3:
Scripture: Psalm 88
Reflection on Psalm 88:
Last September I came to the church on a Tuesday morning. I’d never been here on a Tuesday morning. But Thomas and I were out for a drive and I thought I’d pop by just quickly and say hi to our Tuesday morning Bible study. As I walked in, our secretary Ellen mentioned that there was a man in the sanctuary. He’d arrived quite upset and had asked her if it would be ok if he just sat and prayed in our sanctuary.
I walked in, and there he sat, in the back pew over there. He was more than upset – he was distraught. He was a big guy, looked quite strong, in his 50s. He had his Bible open, reading Ps. 88. He shared his story with me – life had been cruel. Harsh. He recognized some places where he could have made different choices, but much of it was beyond his control. He’d been injured on the job, which took away his ability to work. Some mistakes were made in his treatment and compensation. I cried with him as he described losing everything, his savings, then his house, then his vehicle, coming to the point of watching his wife put water on her cereal because there was no money for milk. That day his anger had boiled over, he’d come to the end, and in his frustration he had pushed his wife – the love of his life – and she had fallen on the ground. At that moment he was broken – she leapt right up and wrapped her arms around him crying “its okay, its okay, that’s not you, that’s not you,” but for him it wasn’t okay. He left, came to the house of God. And found the expression of his heart in Psalm 88.
As I read this Psalm this week, I could hear it on the lips of Jesus’ disciples. It fit perfectly. Imagine Peter, mouthing these words:
3 For my soul is full of trouble
and my life draws near the grave. [3]
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like a man without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.
6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.
7 Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
8 You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief.
Can’t you hear those words on Peter’s lips? “You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them.” I can imagine Peter feeling that way, feeling that shame at having betrayed Jesus.
The section of the Psalm that follows asks a series of questions (vss. 10-12). Now I know that in the original Psalm, they were further expressions of darkness and despair. They were indications of the deep, deep depression that the writer was feeling. They are words of despair: (read).
Thinking still of Peter, we know he was impulsive. He was intense, he jumped to conclusions, he spoke before he thought. I can imagine him spitting out these words, expressing heartache and confusion. “Is your love declared in the grave?” I can imagine him shouting these words out to God in the anguish of his soul. Possibly even words of challenge, coming out of the depth of feeling at the death of Jesus and the death of the dream they had of Him restoring the Kingdom to Israel.
This is the darkest Psalm in the Bible. It is the only one for which there is no concluding note of praise – no spot anywhere where the Psalmist expresses some positive hope or past experience or affirmation of who God is. This Psalm is an expression of a soul in torment, feeling betrayed, feeling depressed and helpless and distraught.
And then I read those questions in verses 10-12 again. This time, from Sunday’s perspective. This time from the knowledge that Jesus experienced death for us, and He defeated the power of death. Now I recognize the disciples didn’t know this that Saturday, and I’m jumping ahead a little, but I want to read those questions again from an empty-tomb point of view:
Now we have answers to those questions: Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? YES! Is your love declared in the grave? Absolutely!! Your faithfulness in destruction? YES AGAIN!
I mentioned this is the darkest Psalm in the Bible, one in which we find expression of a depth of emotion we don’t often talk about, we don’t acknowledge as a part of our experience as Christians. We don’t read this Psalm in worship, we don’t preach on it very often. I have a website I like that boasts more that 40 000 sermons and sermon helps – only 4 turned up in a search for Psalm 88 and of those only 1 actually reflected the real tone of despair. And yet sometimes each of us battle those feelings. I believe Jesus’ disciples battled them also in that time between Friday and Sunday.
Look back at verse 1. Look to whom the Psalmist addresses the outpouring of his soul. True, there is no hope, no redemption, no promise or statement of faith in deliverance in the body of the Psalm. But look to whom the Psalmist writes: “O Lord, the God who saves me.”
That’s Jesus. He is the Lord, the God who saves me. Even at our darkest moments, we can reach out in prayer to God, we can pour our souls out – yes, even our darkest thoughts and feelings and emotions. We can say those things to God – the Psalmist did! And we can know that the character of God is “the God who saves.”
Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Because Jesus did so, the answer is a resounding YES! Is God’s love declared in the grave? Not only “yes,” but if the grave we are referring to is the grave of Jesus – the EMPTY grave of Jesus – then we can clearly say that God’s love is BEST declared in the grave.
That day in September, after listening to this man pour out the agony of his soul, I said: “It sounds to me like you need two things. First you need a few dollars for grocery money (which, by the way, he never once asked for). But more than that, it sounds like you need a little bit of hope.” I gave him a few dollars for groceries out of our Benevolent Fund (describe if feel it is necessary). That part was easy. Then I turned around and pointed at this cross on the wall behind me. And I said, “There is hope here, hope at the cross.” He agreed wholeheartedly – “that is why I came here. It is the only place I could think to turn to and find some hope.” I was glad he found expression for the aching torment of his soul in Psalm 88, and I encouraged him to keep reading that Psalm but to read beyond that also. To read about the answers to the questions of verses 10-12. And to find hope in Jesus death and resurrection.
Closing Worship Set
