Year A Holy Saturday 2023 Lament and Faith

Year A Holy Saturday 2023, 8 April 2023
St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA
“Lament and Faith”

Collect: O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24

I am one who has seen affliction
under the rod of God's wrath;
he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
against me alone he turns his hand,
again and again, all day long.
He has made my flesh and my skin waste away,
and broken my bones;
he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
he has made me sit in darkness
like the dead of long ago.
He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has put heavy chains on me;
though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
he has blocked my ways with hewn stones,
he has made my paths crooked.
The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
"The Lord is my portion," says my soul,
"therefore I will hope in him."

Matthew 27:57-66
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.
The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, "Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, `After three days I will rise again.' Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, `He has been raised from the dead,' and the last deception would be worse than the first." Pilate said to them, "You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can." So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.

Hello, friends! Thank you for coming into the unknown. Most people never do the Holy Saturday service. Congratulations. This is a rare service. It explores the wanderings in the dark most of us avoid.

We are finally emerging after YEARS of wandering in the dark after COVID. YEARS. It is hard to say and harder to believe.

As a culture we avoid the darker areas of life. We avoid the painful and those things causing us grief. We do not want to sit in the ashes and mourn. It says something about us. In my travels, people are always amazed at Americans' hopeful optimism. That is a good thing. I am a happy and positive person, or at least try to be. But the shadow side of that, and there is a shadow side to anything positive, a price it extols, the shadow side is that we do not do the darker side of existence well. Russians do it well, stereotypically. Germans, also. But we do not.

That came out in spades in 2020 and following. The rage and frustration that came out over common-sense rules and safety precautions caring for the least of these were in a large part, I believe, this shadow-side flaw of our upbeat nature. We cannot sit in our pain and let the healing take place. It is so needed, for all of us, but it takes work, time, and patience. So much patience.

In Jesus’ story, Jesus is dead. He died on Friday. Jesus was dead through Saturday, the Sabbath, the day of Rest. And come Sunday morning he arose. Thanks be to God!

But Joseph of Arimathea did not know that. Pilate did not know that. The Religious Leaders and their soldiers did not know that. Only Jesus spoke of it, and he called on his apostles to have faith in this the darkest of days.

When my children have problems, thankfully, come to me. They speak of their aches and pains, and of their slights and heartaches. They, for lack of a better word, lament. Because I love them, I listen to their lament. It hurts me because they hurt. It hurts me because I love them and I want their lives to be the best they can be. I do not regret their Lament, because that is their Truth. They are hurting and because of that they lament. God is no different.

Lament belongs in our faith. Today we read from the Book of Lamentations. God wants to hear our hurts and our pains. It does not belittle us or God! In fact, it shows how much faith we have because we trust that God hears us and cares! It shows the nature of God because it shows that God shows up. Lamentation is a testament of our faith.

Today’s passage closed with this:
    The thought of my affliction and my homelessness
        is wormwood and gall!
    My soul continually thinks of it
        and is bowed down within me.
    But this I call to mind,
        and therefore I have hope:
    The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
        his mercies never come to an end;
     they are new every morning;
        great is your faithfulness.
    "The Lord is my portion," says my soul,
        "therefore I will hope in him."

That is Faith, my friends. As Hebrews says:
    Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (11:1)

When we do not see, we see in here [point to heart]. We we do not know what to do, we know that something is being done that we cannot fathom by the One who is Faithful. [Point up]

In our darkness, that hope is our light. When the disciples hid in a room quaking with fear, the fear came more fully because of the miracles they had seen with their own eyes. Their fear came because they could not imagine this happening to God’s Anointed. It was love that drove their doubts and fears. But I trust, while they sat in their metaphorical ashes, lamenting and in tears, that they remembered that God is doing a new thing, a thing beyond their comprehension.

When we bury that seed of faith, we cannot know how it will spring up. Beside our front door is an iris. My wife buried an ugly bulb a year ago. And it emerged glorious. It has blossomed and wow! Georgia O’Keefe on her best day has nothing on it. But for that glory to emerge, it had to sit in the dark.

We are the same. For Easter to come, we have to sit through Holy Saturday. And as I mentioned, we do not do that well. God be with us, or rather, may we feel and know that God is with us, even through this.

Have faith, my friends.
    The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
        his mercies never come to an end;
    they are new every morning;
        great is your faithfulness.
    "The Lord is my portion," says my soul,
        "therefore I will hope in him."

Amen