Category: Holy Week

Black Saturday

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment
  • Duccio, circa 1308
Psalm 42
For the choir director: A psalm of the descendants of Korah.

As the deer longs for streams of water,
    so I long for you, O God.
I thirst for God, the living God.
    When can I go and stand before him?
Day and night I have only tears for food,
    while my enemies continually taunt me, saying,
    “Where is this God of yours?”

My heart is breaking
    as I remember how it used to be:
I walked among the crowds of worshipers,
    leading a great procession to the house of God,
singing for joy and giving thanks
    amid the sound of a great celebration!

Why am I discouraged?
    Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
    I will praise him again—
    my Savior and my God!

Now I am deeply discouraged,
    but I will remember you—
even from distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan,
    from the land of Mount Mizar.
I hear the tumult of the raging seas
    as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
    and through each night I sing his songs,
    praying to God who gives me life.

“O God my rock,” I cry,
    “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I wander around in grief,
    oppressed by my enemies?”
Their taunts break my bones.
    They scoff, “Where is this God of yours?”

Why am I discouraged?
    Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
    I will praise him again—
    my Savior and my God!

There was a time when the Saturday before Easter was thought of as the quietest day of the year. Sometimes called “Easter Eve” or “Black Saturday,” it is when we are to commemorate the full day Jesus was in the tomb. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the day is treated as a funeral. On the liturgical calendar most of us follow, it is marked “Easter Vigil.”

Contrast that somber tone with how we usually approach the Saturday before Easter. The more secular aspects of Easter—the egg hunts, the candy, the spring festivals—tend to occur on the grounds of churches that day.

I do not begrudge us those events, but let’s at least remember where we are in the story. Jesus is dead. As far as the disciples are concerned, the dream of a new world is gone.

For them, the day is a day of weeping, for trembling in fear behind locked doors, wondering if every footstep represents a soldier coming for them. Three years of ministry are accounted for as wasted time.

They long for God. Their hearts are breaking. It would not surprise me at all if these good Jews begin singing Psalm 42 to themselves, quietly, very quietly.

We also should meditate on the mystery of what Jesus experienced while dead. A couple of Bible passages have shaped this speculation over the centuries:

1 Peter 3:18-20 (NLT)

Christ suffered for our sins once for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit.

So he went and preached to the spirits in prison—those who disobeyed God long ago when God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat. Only eight people were saved from drowning in that terrible flood.

There also is an obscure passage in Ephesians 4:7-10 about Jesus’ ascending and descending, with translators debating where it was he descended, our world or hell.

Out of those verses came the concept of the “Harrowing of Hell,” the idea that in his death, Jesus burst into the underworld and freed those who died before him, making it possible for them to believe in the work of the cross and be saved.

Church leaders and theologians through the centuries, including John Wesley, have struggled with this idea. I think the notion has two positive results, however.

First, it led to some fascinating art through the centuries. (See above.) Often you’ll find a squashed demon in the depiction, one who was standing too near the door when Jesus knocked it down.

Second, we are reminded that Jesus Christ’s act of salvation had repercussions far beyond what we can comprehend. We dwell on this for a time, and we see astonishing, magnificent grace in Christ’s death.

Lord, may your Spirit guide us in a time of quiet reflection today, and on the Holy Saturdays to come.

The Grace of Good Friday

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

Worship is important whenever it happens, but if I had to rank the importance of worship services, I would say that Good Friday and Easter Sunday would tie for the top spot. On Good Friday, we relive the story of Christ’s suffering and death, knowing this gracious act is what saves us from sin. Easter, of course, brings us the story of the resurrection, proof that the work done by our Savior on Good Friday is effective.

Wherever you may be, let me encourage you to find a Good Friday worship service near you in a church that will treat the story as real and relevant. (If you’re near Holston View Methodist Church in Weber City, Va., ours will be at 7 p.m.) If for some reason you cannot do so, let me at least offer you the chance to read it for yourself:

John Chapters 18 and 19

Blessings on you all.

Thursday: What Matters

~ Chuck Griffin ~ 1 Comment

John 13:34-35 (NLT)

“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

“Love each other.” Easy to say, but sometimes hard to do.

It helps to remember the context of Jesus’ words. It is the same as yesterday’s devotion. Jesus and the disciples gathered to share a meal, with Jesus clearly knowing he was headed for arrest, scourging and death on a cross.

Jesus looked around the room, and he also knew how his followers would fail at love over the next few days. He knew what everyone was going to do. He knew where Judas was headed. He knew Peter, brash early in their evening together, would deny him three times before morning broke, before the rooster crowed. He knew these supposedly loyal followers would run and hide as soon as the situation got scary.

Jesus knew how alone he was about to be, hanging on a cross naked and bleeding. And yet, he loved them. He washed their feet. He offered them words of grace. And for the time to come, the time when they would regather and form a fledgling church, he gave them a new commandment.

Love each other. Love would show the world something very important about God and his followers. Their mutual love would mark them, making it easy for the world to identify them. Not a building with a steeple. Not a cross on a wall. Love.

So, here’s a simple question for us on this Holy Thursday. How are we doing at this “love each other” thing?

We’ve learned some hard lessons the past few years. During a pandemic, we discovered who held on to the idea of living as a church regardless of their ability to gather in a building. Through an acrimonious denominational breakup, Methodists saw just how ugly and vindictive followers of Christ could be to each other.

American churches in general find themselves further separated from the shifting values of the culture around them, although in the long run, that could be a sign of future growth. Christianity has always had more dynamic success as a counter-cultural influence, an alternate way of life.

We may grow angry or frustrated as what was so familiar seems to change so much. We are a little like the disciples after they saw Jesus dragged away in chains, their Lord not forcing the situation to turn out the way they had imagined.

The solution is to love each other regardless of the troubling events of the day. If we each meditate on this new commandment long enough, we will figure out a response to any circumstances we will face.

Lord, let love guide all our decisions. Amen.

Wednesday: The One Who Betrays

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

John 13:21-27 (NLT)

Now Jesus was deeply troubled, and he exclaimed, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me!”

The disciples looked at each other, wondering whom he could mean. The disciple Jesus loved was sitting next to Jesus at the table. Simon Peter motioned to him to ask, “Who’s he talking about?” So that disciple leaned over to Jesus and asked, “Lord, who is it?”

Jesus responded, “It is the one to whom I give the bread I dip in the bowl.” And when he had dipped it, he gave it to Judas, son of Simon Iscariot. When Judas had eaten the bread, Satan entered into him. Then Jesus told him, “Hurry and do what you’re going to do.”

If you have a strong reaction to this story, you’ve probably been betrayed. A co-worker, a friend, a relative, a spouse—someone not only let you down, the person actually turned on you, consciously violating a long-established trust.

And the closer the relationship, the worse the pain caused by the betrayal. It usually is hard for the victim of betrayal to forgive.

Most cultures hold betrayers in very low esteem. In Dante’s fictional account of hell, punishments grew progressively more severe moving inward, and the heart of the inner circle was for betrayers who remained frozen in painfully contorted positions. In the very center, Satan munched on the people Dante considered to be the three greatest traitors, Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius.

In contrast to our personal and cultural reactions, Jesus seemed resigned to betrayal. Of course, by this point in the story, he knew exactly where he was headed, down to the minute, I suspect.

Jesus didn’t do anything to change Judas when he gave him the morsel of bread; Judas’ heart was already turned toward sin. In the act, Jesus simply identified who among the 12 was most deeply broken. The sharing of the gravy-dipped bread seems poignant, though.

To eat with someone on such a night—in this case, to literally break bread—is an intimate moment. To compound the intimacy, earlier in the evening Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, Judas included. But none of those acts could turn the betrayer from his plan.

On that night, Judas truly was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And once your mind is so firmly set in such a terrible direction, it is easy for Satan or one of his minions to enter and lead the way.

I do wonder about something, though. The Bible tells us that Judas died shortly after the betrayal. (The accounts in Matthew 27 and Acts 1 are difficult to reconcile, but in each one he ends up dead.) Had he lived, how would the resurrected Jesus have treated his betrayer?

The closest analogy we have is Peter, who proved to be the worst of the deniers once Jesus had been arrested. Near the end of the Gospel of John, we see Jesus forgive and restore Peter. Again, the scene is intimate, on a beach near a charcoal fire, a breakfast of fish and bread cooked and waiting for some very ashamed men.

Had Judas lived, carrying with him the remorse and repentance he seems to bear in Matthew 27:3-4, I suspect he would have found forgiveness, too. Such radical forgiveness would be typical of the Savior we serve.

Lord, where we have been betrayed, let us find a way to forgive, and where we have betrayed others, may we be forgiven. Amen.

Tuesday: A Deep Truth

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

John 12:34-36 (NLT)

The crowd responded, “We understood from Scripture that the Messiah would live forever. How can you say the Son of Man will die? Just who is this Son of Man, anyway?”

Jesus replied, “My light will shine for you just a little longer. Walk in the light while you can, so the darkness will not overtake you. Those who walk in the darkness cannot see where they are going. Put your trust in the light while there is still time; then you will become children of the light.”

After saying these things, Jesus went away and was hidden from them.

After watching Jesus ride into Jerusalem, hailed as a king, people in the crowd had questions. They had heard Jesus repeatedly call himself “Son of Man,” and they understood he was staking claim to the role of Messiah, the one to fulfill the greatest promises in their Jewish Bible. But they also had heard Jesus indicate how he would die.

How can one anointed and glorified by God, the one we now understand to be God in flesh, die such a horrible, humiliating death? Over time, Christians have gotten used to the idea of the bloodied Jesus hanging on a cross, but we simultaneously have to admit the image is strange, particularly to people not raised in the faith.

Probably the most dramatic Old Testament reference to the “Son of Man” comes in Daniel 7:13-14: “As my vision continued that night, I saw someone like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient One and was led into his presence. He was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him. His rule is eternal—it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed.”

Any orthodox-minded Christian reading that passage is going to think, “This is a prophecy of the coming of Jesus Christ.” We believe Jesus has authority, honor and sovereignty over all the nations, something all people will one day recognize. The vision does make him appear invincible, however.

To answer the crowd’s question, we have to explore the design of salvation, and that means we delve into a mystery too complex for us to understand in full, at least in this life. Jesus’ answer gives us deep insight, however.

For all practical purposes, the Son of Man mounted a rescue mission. Because of our sins, we were trapped in darkness—a place that the Holy God, who is light, has every right to disregard. Out of love, however, he chose not to forget us or destroy us. Instead, the light entered the darkness to find us, taking on flesh. The title “Son of God” reminds us of his divinity; the title “Son of Man” reminds us of his blessed humanity. (Now we’re back to the Christmas story, the incarnation.)

To break the grip sin and death had on us, Jesus had to bear our punishment for sin. Or we might say he had to ransom us from sin. Or we might say he carried our shame. Or we might say he became the one perfect sacrifice for sin, simultaneously priest and slain lamb. These and other descriptions of how atonement works mark the point where the mystery becomes almost unfathomable. We use metaphors to understand what can be grasped in full only by the mind of God.

What’s important is that we believe Christ’s death on the cross is effective, that the divine machinery behind salvation works even if we cannot comprehend all its cogs and pulleys.

We also have an advantage the Passover crowd did not have. We know that ultimately, the Son of Man is invincible. Death could not bind him, and ultimately will be destroyed by him. The proof lies in an event following the crucifixion.

That’s a story for Easter Sunday, though.

Lord, today we reaffirm our belief that the Son of Man died on the cross, knowing our belief is enough to pull us from darkness into light.

Over-the-Top Monday

~ Chuck Griffin ~ 2 Comments

John 12:1-11 (NLT)

Six days before the Passover celebration began, Jesus arrived in Bethany, the home of Lazarus—the man he had raised from the dead. A dinner was prepared in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, and Lazarus was among those who ate with him. Then Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.

But Judas Iscariot, the disciple who would soon betray him, said, “That perfume was worth a year’s wages. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor.” Not that he cared for the poor—he was a thief, and since he was in charge of the disciples’ money, he often stole some for himself.

Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

When all the people heard of Jesus’ arrival, they flocked to see him and also to see Lazarus, the man Jesus had raised from the dead. Then the leading priests decided to kill Lazarus, too, for it was because of him that many of the people had deserted them and believed in Jesus.

Yes, we are to care for the poor. Yes, we are to do all sorts of good works. We should commit a significant portion of our resources to the work Jesus calls us to do, caring for people living on the edge of ruin and death.

In this story, however, is a remarkable idea, one that even some very good-hearted people might find confusing. Honoring Jesus Christ—who he is and what he has done for the world on the cross—takes precedence over all other motivations and actions.

The story of Mary anointing Jesus is a story of extravagant thanks. Jesus had recently restored to life Mary and Martha’s brother, after Lazarus had decomposed in a tomb for four days.

Mary took what was probably her life savings, her security, and used it all at once to honor the one who had granted this miracle. The stench of death had been the sisters’ great fear; now, a perfumed declaration of joy filled the room, emanating from the one who had driven death away. If you’ve never smelled spikenard, know that it is sweet and musky, an earthy, lively odor. Try to imagine peat from the Garden of Eden.

Even though Judas’ motivation likely was theft, some people might agree with his stated objection—the pouring out of all that nard in one place can seem like an awful waste! These likely would be people who take a strictly humanist approach to solving the problems of the world, saying if people would just act right and do enough good, with enough efficiency, most of the problems of the world would go away.

Christians see that as a cart-before-horse assertion, however. God is our motivator. God provides the power. In John 17:20-26, we hear Jesus root his relationship in the Father, and then Jesus prays that we will be similarly rooted in the Father and Son. Even altruistic actions properly begin with an understanding of who we are in relation to God.

If we are to develop that relationship, we need to stop now and then to give extravagant and even inefficient thanks. Then, rightly motivated, we will see God pour grace into us until it spills out of our church and onto the world.

In fact, grace can arrive in such abundance that efficiency becomes at most a side-issue. Remember the stories of Jesus feeding the multitudes—all those leftovers indicate efficiency was not something the disciples needed during the distribution.

Great works have always happened through Christ’s church. People living on the edge of ruin constantly find themselves pulled back from the brink by people with a firm grip on God, the anchor for all altruism.

Lord, we offer thanks for who you are today, and we consider in our hearts what we might do to show extravagant thanks. May we revel in the inefficiency of it all. Amen.