April 20: Of the First Black Saturday

Joshua 21:1-22:20

Luke 20:1-26

Psalm 89:1-13

Proverbs 13:15-16

"If you rebel against the Lord today, tomorrow he will be angry with the whole community of Israel….When Achan son of Zerah was unfaithful in regard to the devoted things, did not the wrath come on the whole community of Israel?  He was not the only one who died for his sin."

- Joshua 22:18, 20

Let's think about the aftermath of Jesus's death on the cross for a second, from the standpoint of those who had called Him Rabbi for the past three years, who had given up their lives - their nets, their tax collection, their livelihood - to follow Him, believing Him to be the one who would save Israel - from the Romans, they thought.  Let's think about how all the certainty they'd built up in their heads that they were making a good bet - "Lord, to whom else would we go?  You have the words of eternal life" - how all that certainty died with Jesus on the cross and was buried in the tomb with Him, leaving them bereft, vulnerable., lost and afraid.  

When they saw Jesus die, the apostles didn't just lose a Teacher and Friend.  They lost their purpose.  They lost their aspiration.  They lost their hope.  They trusted this Man Who, when Peter said "We have left everything to follow you!  What then will there be for us?" answered that "everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."  That Man was gone, and with Him any hope of receiving a hundred times as much.  That Man was dead - what then was He talking about when He said "eternal life"?

Can you feel, can you smell that fetid mixture of helplessness, hopelessness and desperation?  The worry that, if Jesus was dead, He was wrong all along, and the Pharisees were right…and so He would not be "the only One Who died for His sin"?

The disciples were afraid - and rightly so.  They did not have the benefit of the knowledge we have, that Jesus would rise again.  They had not yet seen His resurrection, nor received the gift of the Holy Spirit.  What they saw on Easter Sunday and afterwards, and what they received on Pentecost, changed them.  It took them from fear to courage; from desperation because of their circumstances, to hope and joy despite them.  It took them from what they thought was the end of their story, to just the beginning. 

Today, on Black Saturday, we have an advantage over those disciples.  We know how this story develops.  We know what is coming.  We know the disciples never had reason to be afraid, that the story God had written was far better than anything they could have imagined, and certainly far better than anything they might have feared. 

And yet, how often do we find ourselves in own little Black Saturdays?  When the rent is due and the bank account is empty, or the fever just won't go down, or the fights just won't stop and the marriage seems like a farce, and the kids are getting into things that simply cannot end well….these are our Black Saturdays, reeking with the smell of that same fetid mixture.  

Father, when our lives seem darkest, remind us of that first Black Saturday; of the needlessness of the disciples' fear.  Give us Your Holy Spirit to change our hearts - from fear to courage, from desperation to hope and joy.  Take what we fear to be the tragic end of our story, and turn it into the beginning of Yours in our lives.