How will you spend your Saturday?

I apologize for having gone so long without posting, it's been a little crazy around here, with babies being due next month and such.  I had the honor of preaching my first sermon last Sunday at our church in honor of Marsha Stearns Marshall Month of Preaching. (And no, I'm not getting into the whole should women or shouldn't they argument right now. Study it for yourself and form your own opinion.)  There's nothing like preaching for the first time at 8 months pregnant.  Just to add to the hilarity, here's a picture:

 

I promise I am wearing shoes, they're just nearly invisible for some reason...

If you would like to hear the words that go along with the picture, you can hear the sermon here.

Anyway, as you can probably tell from the purple in the picture, our church follows the Christian year and the lectionary.  This is the season of Lent.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's a period of 40 days of "fasting", with each Sunday counted as a "mini Easter" or a feast day.  It begins with Ash Wednesday and finishes with Easter, with Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, & Good Friday sandwiched in the middle.

In our Wednesday night studies, we've been reading through a really interesting book by John Ortberg:

You can find it at: http://www.amazon.com/Who-This-Man-Unpredictable-Inescapable/dp/0310275946

He really goes into a lot of the historical impact that Jesus has had over the last 2000 years, it's more than just a theological commentary, it's really a great book for anyone who as any interest in who Jesus was.  Last night, we covered our last study which is called "Friday...Saturday....Sunday".  Now being in the middle of Lent, it only took me a second to guess what he was referring to - can you guess?  Good Friday, Good/Black Saturday, Easter Sunday.  He goes into detail about what happened on each of these days and many of the interesting things we often skip over.  He talks about what may have happened if Jesus did choose to call down legions of angels, or to fight along with his disciples, etc and how Jesus chose the best thing for everyone - except himself.  Any of the other choices would have most likely included the death of countless others, only to spare himself.  I had never thought about it that way.  It seems to me, we often make Jesus into this victim and if he had just done this or that, he could've been spared.  But Jesus was not a victim - read John 10, he chose to lay His life down and had the authority to pick it back up.  Jesus could've been a hero.  He could've gone down in history as the man who conquered Rome.  But Jesus chose the road less traveled.  Everyone wants to be a hero and these days, it's fairly easy to be a considered a hero.  You know what's really hard?  Being a servant.  Making the choice that hurts you but benefits everyone else.  Ouch.

So that's Friday, let's skip over to Sunday.  Easter Sunday, we all love it.  Pretty dresses, fancy ties, lots of candy, bunnies and eggs, it's just fun.  It's the day of hope and we really like hope.  Jesus first appeared to the women, sent them to tell the men, and really just went about scaring the daylights out of people.  Apparently, the disciples had a hard time remembering that Jesus told them that this is what would happen.  Dr. Ortberg points out that Jesus first words out of the tomb were remarkably unimpressive. They were equivalent to today's phrase, "Hey, how y'all doing?"  In others words, "Why are you so surprised? I told you this would happen!"

So Friday is painful and Sunday is joyful - where does that leave Saturday?  You know, I had never thought about it until after I went to my first Good Friday service.  At the end of the service, they extinguished the Christ candle, turned off all the lights, and we left in darkness and silence.

And then we waited.

It began to occur to me how real  this all was. 2013 or so years ago, this actually happened to real people just like you and me.  Can you imagine how the disciples felt on Saturday?  Their hope was gone.  Everything - gone.  Dr. Ortberg brings up something I'd never thought about:  That Saturday was the only day in history that no one believed Jesus was alive.  Wow.  You mean there was a day that Jesus wasn't alive??  Why hadn't this occurred to me before?

Death gave way to silence.  God was silent.  He left space for waiting, wondering, grieving, and separation, even in the death of his own son.  He could have spared him, but he didn't.  Jesus could have saved himself, but he didn't.  And so we wait.

But God didn't stop there.  Death gave way to silence and silence gave way to hope.  Jesus had every chance to take over and prove his power.  He could've taken over the government and freed Jerusalem.  He could've reigned forever over the earth.  But he didn't do all those things, he chose to love and respect God the Father and then to love and serve his neighbors.  He gave up all of himself for those he loved and for those who would never love him.  "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing."  Does that sound like an angry, vengeful Savior to you?

This past Sunday, after I was done, we got to enjoy a solo by a very special woman named Jodi.  Jodi is our music minister's daughter and about 2 years ago, she was diagnosed with a horrible, inoperable, malignant brain tumor and told she didn't have much longer to live.  Two years later, she is cancer free and the doctors have no idea why.  The song she chose to sing was "In Christ Alone".  I had heard the song before, but hearing it from her had an incredible impact on me.  The one phrase of the song that stuck out to me this time was this one:

"And on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied."

Now some disagree with the wording there, but I think we can all agree on the idea.  Through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we were justified in God's eyes by the blood of Jesus.  Wow.

There's a joke video called Djesus Uncrossed, a spoof on Django Unchained, and it features Jesus, after the crucifixion, coming back to take down those who made him suffer.  It's disturbing and laughable all at the same time.  What bothers me (and others) is that there are many people who seem to think this is what is going to happen in the end times when Jesus comes back.  Even Jerry Jenkins once said that the amount of people that take the Left Behind books as gospel truth is disturbing to him.  Now, I don't claim to understand everything (or even half) of what is spoken about in Revelation, but it certainly bothers me that most of us spend our time trying to interpret these symbolic things into things that will literally happen and trying to make sense of all this stuff, often completely ignoring the first part of the book where Jesus starts removing the lamp stands of churches for not doing what he told us to do.  Shouldn't we be more concerned with that?  Jesus told us that not even he knew the day or the time, so shouldn't we be focusing on doing what he told us to do, like loving our neighbor and being servants?  That is how we remain watchful, vigilant, faithful until the coming of Christ. 

Folks, we live in the "Saturday".  Friday has happened, Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected.  The ultimate Sunday is still to come, no one knows when or how.  Right now, we are in the Saturday, we're waiting, wondering, grieving, overwhelmed with the silence.  Sometimes we just can't take it anymore and in our desperation and anxiety we start searching and reading until we finally come up with our own answer and we experience this relief that we don't have to wait on God anymore.  But that is not how God designed it. All the worrying and wondering in the world will not make Sunday come any faster.  You cannot get to Sunday without first waiting through Saturday.

So I ask you this: how will you spend your Saturday?