Season of Memories and Hopes
by: Gerrit Dawson, Senior Pastor
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!If I take the wings of the morningand dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,even there your hand shall lead me,and your right hand shall hold me.If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,and the light about me be night,”even the darkness is not dark to you;the night is bright as the day,for darkness is as light with you. (Psalm 139:8b-12)
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.Wonderful are your works;my soul knows it very well.My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret,intricately woven in the depths of the earth. (Psalm 139:14-15)
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!How vast is the sum of them!If I would count them, they are more than the sand.I awake, and I am still with you. (Psalm 139:17-18)
Holy Saturday is . . . a unique and unrepeatable interval in the history of humanity and the universe in which God, in Jesus Christ, not only shared our dying but also our remaining in death—the most radical solidarity.God, having made himself man, reached the point of entering man’s most extreme and absolute solitude, where not a ray of love enters, where total abandonment reigns without any word of comfort: “hell.” Jesus Christ, by remaining in death, passed beyond the door of this ultimate solitude to lead us too to cross it with Him. . . .Even in the extreme darkness of the most absolute human loneliness, we may hear a voice that calls us and find a hand that takes ours and leads us out. Human beings live because they are loved and can love; and if love penetrated even the realm of death, then life also even reached there. In the hour of supreme solitude we shall never be alone. Pope Benedict XVI, The Faith, ed. Paul Thigpen (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2013), pp. 84-85.
What you suffer is a shapeless fear. It is a sea of fear without shores, fear-in-itself. The fear which is the core of sin. The fear of God and his inescapable judgment. The fear of hell. The fear of never again seeing the face of the Father for all eternity. The fear that love itself and every creature with it have dropped you irretrievably into the abyss. You fall into the bottomless; you are lost. Not the faintest shimmer of hope delimits this fear. For in what could you still have hope? That the Father might still pardon you? He will not, cannot, does not want to do it. Only for the price of your sacrifice does he intend to pardon the world, not you. . . .“Father,” you cry out, “if it is possible. . . .” But now it is not even possible. Every fragment and shred of possibility has disappeared. You cry into the void: “Father!” And the echo resounds. The Father has heard nothing. You have sunk too low into the depths. . . . The Father has gone over to your enemies. . . . Are you sure that he still really exists? Is there a God? Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Heart of the World, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1980), 109-110.
Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. The Screwtape Letters (London, Geoffrey Bles, 1942), Letter VIII.
From my mother’s womb. David in his distress recalls the comfort of maternal love. Feeling such scorn, I imagine Jesus thinks of Mary, the one whose love is most reliable in all the world. He sees her, and, despite his pain, considers her future. He also sees John, the beloved disciple. So he makes a request: “Woman, behold, your son!” And to John he says, “Behold, your mother!” So we read “And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (John 19:25-27).They divide my garments. John 19:24 quotes this verse from Psalm 22 occurring at the crucifixion. The Romans stripped a criminal naked for crucifixion in part to shame him but also because, being as good as dead, he would have no further need for his clothing. The soldiers gamble to see who gets Jesus’ valuable seamless garment. Seeing this sick game played out underneath him, Jesus knows he is truly a lost cause.I am poured out like water. . . . My heart is melted within my breast. Psalm 22 depicts physical suffering eerily applicable to crucifixion. The psalm fills in the sparely written gospel accounts with gruesome bodily details.You lay me in the dust. Scholar Allen Ross notes that verse 15 “expresses the most troubling part of the lamentation, that God seems not only to have abandoned him, but is involved in his destruction. . . . [I]t was God who was putting him in the grave. The nuance of the imperfect tense stresses that God is now doing this” (1: 539). In recalling or praying Psalm 22, Jesus sees the torture inflicted on him by people as being the action of his Father who seems to have left him.
James Tissot. What Our Lord Saw from the Cross. 1890, Brooklyn Museum.
Oh Judas! You saw me exhausted after a day of healing. I let you see the pain on my face when others rejected my message. You smelled the heat of anger on me when the self-righteous bound up the little ones in laws. You sat with us as we weighed decisions about where to go next. You heard me pray to the Father. When, when and why, did you quietly close an inner chamber to love for me?Oh Judas! Bread multiplied in your very hands as you passed out the miraculous loaves and fishes. You thrilled to the words, “I am the bread of life.” We were so close I could dip your bread for you. I gave you all of me as we shared bread on the last night.Oh Judas! Yet when Mary anointed my head with that extravagant oil, you snapped. You moralized that its value could have been given to the poor, but your soul was jealous. You felt envy. The decision was finalized. I can hear your heart speaking to me, “It’s over. I don’t know you anymore. We’re done. There is another to whom I will go. This is not what I signed up for.”Oh Judas! You did not come to me with your conflict. You didn’t cry out against the devil’s temptation. You played your part willingly and invited him in. You looked me in the face and pretended you were with us right up to the end. You even made me command you, “What you are going to do, do quickly” (John 13:27).
Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ. 1602, National Gallery of Ireland.
THE SHEPHERDJohn records Jesus’ saying, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34). Easily then, I can hear Jesus pray, “My Father is my shepherd.” He knows who guides and cares for him. At the same time, Jesus the descendant of David the Shepherd King receives from his Father the mantle of Israel’s shepherd. So he tells us, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. . . . I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:11, 14). Tenderly he cares for his flock.THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOWIn Week Four, we will look at several key psalms that would have sustained Jesus in his passion, but today we just note the potency of verse 4. These two sentences uphold Jesus through many threatening conflicts with demons, Romans, and religious authorities. This verse serves as a preview to Jesus of the suffering ahead and offers the way through the suffering even as it predicts it.We can see the connection with “For you are with me” when, on the night of his arrest, Jesus declares, “Yet, I am not alone, for the Father is with me” (John 16:32). This is the basis of his assurance to his disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27). The Father was ever with Jesus. Jesus is Emmanuel, which means God with us, so he will promise us at his ascension, “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). In any valley of darkness, we are companioned.ANOINTED WITH OILOil soothed and cleansed, refreshed and scented. A gracious host provided oil for the hair and beard as it was a sign of a glad and generous welcome. The week of his crucifixion, Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus’ head with costly nard (John 12:1-8). Jesus receives the gift as a preparation for his burial which will occur within a week. Did he, while she massaged in the fragrant ointment, pray in thanks to his Father, “You anoint my head with oil”?MY CUP RUNS OVERJesus’ life overflows with the Father’s love, with the echo of the voice at his baptism: “This is my beloved Son.” Remarkably, we are invited into this divine fellowship. At his bountiful table, our hosting God gives us nothing less than himself as our portion. “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup,” proclaims David in Psalm 16:5. The blood that Jesus sheds in sacrifice overflows in atoning power. There is more love in God than sin in us. When Jesus is what fills our cup, even when we are amid enemies and failings, bountiful love overflows our lives. So could this line in some way have been the inspiration for Jesus’ presentation of the Eucharist?GOODNESS AND MERCY FOLLOW METhe Hebrew verb used here means “to pursue or chase.” This is an extraordinary image of the Almighty LORD running down his beloved with steadfast, loyal love. Is this not what the coming of Jesus demonstrates above all? God sends his Son to seek and to save the lost. He searches for us to rescue us. In his humility, Jesus lays aside his glory so that he may approach us as one of us. The eternal speaks to mortals gently so as not to frighten us away. This idea of God in his goodness and mercy running after us may well be the inspiration for Jesus’ most famous parable, that of the prodigal son. At first sight of his long-lost son, the father throws dignity to the wind, hitches up his robes and runs to welcome home the disgraced (Luke 15:20).
“Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,The LORD bless you and keep you;the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”
Melani Pyke. Jesus Carrying Lost Sheep Home. Contemporary.
DAY 7 SATURDAY
The Son Does What He Sees His Father Doing
Imagine standing with Jesus, right next to him, in prayer to his Father. Read this passage of praise aloud. As you do so, consider that you are praying along with Jesus, your two voices becoming one as you bless God.
But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;therefore God, your God, has anointed youwith the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” (Hebrews 1:8)
And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:6-17)
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew 6:28b-29)Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. (Matthew 10:29)The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. (Mark 4:26-27)When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ (Matthew 16:2-3)
John Everett Millais. Christ in the House of His Parents. 1849-50, Tate Gallery, London.
Jesus prayed Psalm 31 from the cross. But it contains a lot more than we didn’t hear him quote but is very meaningful to us.
Make time with the LORD a habit. Meet him at the edge of each day with Psalm 30. Hope comes with the morning, the new light, a new day.
Psalm 30
I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up
and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O LORD my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me.
O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol;
you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
As for me, I said in my prosperity,
“I shall never be moved.”
By your favor, O LORD,
you made my mountain stand strong;
you hid your face;
I was dismayed.
To you, O LORD, I cry,
and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
“What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!
O LORD, be my helper!”
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!