Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16
"Holy" Saturday - Years A, B, C
Eventually we run out of options. We raise our hands and surrender. Seeing no way out of a net made of our own expectations, there is a time to appeal for help.
Even then an old joke comes into play: While hanging onto a cliff by a fingernail and importuning G*D to intervene, a voice from above says, “Let go,” to which we respond, “Is there anyone else up there?”
We can’t trust ourselves to get us out of our pickle. We are unwilling to trust any other wisdom, particularly if it stretches our disbelief farther than acceptable to us.
Whine all you want about your distress or loss; our experience is that dead means dead. Only a great mystery will do here, not a quick answer.
On a Saturday like today we are experiencing a hell in our lives and not experiencing Jesus bringing his new perspective. Sometimes there is no explaining forlornness. We no longer live in hope and can but hope that hope still lives in us.
Even then an old joke comes into play: While hanging onto a cliff by a fingernail and importuning G*D to intervene, a voice from above says, “Let go,” to which we respond, “Is there anyone else up there?”
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16
Job 14:1-14 or Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24
I Peter 4:1-8
Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing, a live thing out of a dead thing? Certainly not a magician. Certainly not positive thinking or prosperity theology. Certainly not an acculturated church. Certainly not individual faith.
It is important at some point to give up hope, to have dead be dead. This day we don't even wait. We go through motions. We become the walking dead.
Yesterday was bad enough. Today is badder yet. Tomorrow will be worser than anything. The end of all things is near. I wouldn't believe a proclamation of good news if it were yelled in my face.
Peter with his "disciplined prayers" and "constant love covering a multitude of sins" can go hang himself with Judas. If there is a next generation, they might listen to that but, today, it's most unreal.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
“Save me in your steadfast love.”
When life gets desperate, we pull out our last gasp. Beyond our ability to hope any longer is some even deeper understanding beyond our understanding that a cosmos-wide force of love will find an unexpected encounter with our life, even as does that of the elusive neutrino.
Finally, without expectation, we simply ask to have our grief observed. Not even acknowledged, just impassively, peripherally glimpsed.
Today is an opportunity to practice absence to such a degree that we will be filled with an assurance of being beloved, anyway. Whenever a smidgeon of hope arises, let it be as any distraction, momentarily present and set aside. To get distracted by hope before encountering steadfast love will weaken our resolve to live steadfastly, no matter what.
In some ways this pericope is the exception to the sense of absence needed in this day. Don’t let that distract you, tempt you out of absence too soon. Your dark day of the soul is needed, even as it is a trial.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/psalm-311-4-15-16-saturday.html