The church fellowship Jan and I are a part of is persistent in finding fresh ways to deliver its convictions about God’s work through Jesus Christ. This Easter was no different. This year, 2023, they created a brief video for each day between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Each day mentions the activities of Jesus on that particular day of his last week as a human being. I was asked to appear before their camera crew to record a minute-long statement for what some call Holy Saturday. Jesus wasn’t doing anything!
Andrew, the officiating creator of the series, asked me to participate and handed me a script. We have known each other since he was a teenager, and we share a healthy deposit of goofiness in our personality pallet. We like to tease and laugh. As he handed me the script, he permitted me to make changes that would make me feel ownership of the words I was to say. So, I did.
I modified it, submitted it, and received permission from him to use it. Here is what Andrew’s and my cooperative effort produced.
Holy Saturday could also be called Sepulcher Saturday. It is the time between humans doing their worst to God and God doing His best for humans. On this day, Jesus lay in his tomb following his crucifixion. Remembering the death of Jesus on humanity’s behalf and anticipating his resurrection as humanity’s hope, It is a time to meditate upon what our lives feel like today and expect what God has promised to make us tomorrow. Our sepulcher suffering today will be erased in the glory of God’s presence tomorrow. In our world, it is easy to be overwhelmed by life’s uncertainties and feelings of abandonment. Your Sunday is coming! Hang on to this hope today. Your resurrection is sure!
At the taping, Andrew sneaked up behind me as I sat on a stool while the camera crew was doing camera stuff, and he jabbed me in the ribs. I startle easily on my most alert days. This intrusion into my nervousness and unsuspecting space sent me straight up with a cry. When I landed on the stool again, I took off, chased Andrew down, and did my best to stifle his squeal of delight! It was all great fun, and put my mind at rest for the task.
This Easter will be my seventy-seventh Easter. It will be my sixty-sixth as a follower of Jesus. It is my fifty-third after I said I would accept God’s invitation to be a pastor. I have a Bachelor of Science from a Baptist university. I have also acquired a Master of Divinity Degree from one Baptist seminary and a Doctor of Ministry degree from an additional seminary. And I still have not understood the Easter I long to have.
The wonder of Easter and the depth of my unworthiness overwhelm me. I cannot help but ask, “How can all this be true?” Yet there is it, right before me and feeding me hope and peace in the chaos of everyday living in what seems to be an increasingly angry world.
Through the years, I have come to accept that there are many “Sepulcher Saturdays” that we must endure. There are days and seasons when God seems too busy elsewhere or ignoring my plight. These are not pleasant times. But they are necessary for me to mature to release my “self-life” and live in the “New Life” God has given me. These dead periods will always be followed by a resurrection to a new depth of understanding of God’s loving care for me. I hope you know Him in the same way.
Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness[a] of life. For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection. Romans 6:4-5 (CSB)
Happy Easter!
(I am never confident at giving web destinations, but if you want to see the Holy Week videos try: Long Hollow Church or Long Hollow (@longhollow) • Instagram photos and videos.)
Photo – Sunset in Duhok, Kurdistan, looking over Turkey.
Baldwin Heirlooms 