Gordon Hempton is of the opinion that you can count on one hand the places in the United States where you can sit for twenty minutes without hearing a generator, a plane, or some other mechanized sound. (His estimation is all the more dreary for Europe.) As an audio ecologist, Hempton has traveled the world for more than twenty-five years searching for silence, measuring the decibels in hundreds of places, and recording the sharp decline of the sounds of nature. “I don’t want the absence of sound,” he tells one interviewer of his search. “I want the absence of noise.”  Adding, “Listening is worship.”(1)

For the Christian church, Holy Week begins a time of silence, a week of sitting in the dark with the jarring events from the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem to the march of Christ to the grave. Holy Week moves the world through the shouts of Palm Sunday to the empty space of Holy Saturday. Though the Christian story clearly and loudly ends on the note of triumph and resurrection, there is a great silence in between, a great darkness we believe is necessary to sit with.

Writing of Holy Saturday, the day most marked with this silence, theology professor Alan Lewis says of the Christian story:  “Ironically, the center of the drama itself is an empty space. All the action and emotion, it seems, belong to two days only: despair and joy, dark and light, defeat and victory, the end and the beginning, evenly distributed in vivid contrast between what humanity did to Jesus on the first day and what God did for him on the third… [Yet] between the crucifying and the raising there is interposed a brief, inert void: a nonevent surely—only a time of waiting in which nothing of significance occurs and of which there is little to be said. It is rare to hear a sermon about Easter Saturday; for much of Christian history the day has found no place in liturgy and worship it could call its own.”(2)

Perhaps this is because we are generally uncomfortable with silence, uncomforted by waiting. We don’t understand a messiah who stands at the crossroads of an identity as a deliverer, a political hero who could fight with force for our salvation and that of a servant, a messiah who chooses intentional suffering, who chooses to walk us through darkness on the way to redemption. If Holy Week is filled with events that silence us in disbelief, Holy Saturday levels us with the silence and emptiness that is the end of God.

Yet Holy Week attempts to prepare the world precisely for this silence. For certainly, here, after the end of God on Easter Saturday, we find not only the absence of sound, the absence of noise, but the end of the world—confirming our despair and doubt, the fear that history is meaningless, that evil is in control, and our future perilous. Such silence is one in which we can only manage a redirected cry for “Hosanna,” a reiterating of the lighthearted cheers of Palm Sunday, a desperate prayer for a Messiah to save us now, to deliver us from evil and emptiness.

Such is indeed the cry of the Christian. Professor and psychologist James Loder tells of the case of Willa, a young adult who was hospitalized and classified as schizophrenic of an undifferentiated type. She was born into a home where she was unwanted and abused. She was a bright child, but everyone took advantage of her such that she grew up with no sense of boundary or healthy relationships. Tragically, the very individuals who pledged to help her also became stories of abuse in her life. She was in the second year of graduate school when she finally broke down and could not finish her examinations.

In the hospital, she sat for hours rocking her doll and staring into space. The head nurse on the floor told Dr. Loder that they expected Willa would never leave the hospital. One day, however, while she was sitting in her chair, someone came up behind her, put arms around her and said, “The silence is not empty; there is purpose for your life.” She turned around, but there was no one there. The power of that experience began to build sanity, and to distinguish illusion from reality. While no one thought she would ever leave the hospital, she was released after three weeks. She was eventually baptized and returned to the profession for which she was training. Commenting on this encounter with God in the silence when all else seems lost, Loder writes: “The intimacy of the Spirit runs deeper than family violence and neglect, and has immense restorative power.”(3) Truly, the intimacy of God runs deeper than silence.

This is the story Holy Week sets before the world this week. There is much to listen for in between the crucifying and the raising. There is always much silence and darkness to sit with, but it is never fully empty.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia. 

(1) Diane Daniel, “Listening is worship,” Ode Magazine, July 2008.
(2) Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection:  A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 1.
(3) Story as told by James Loder, The Logic of the Spirit (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 264-265.

Morning    “They took Jesus, and led him away.”    John 19:16

He had been all night in agony, he had spent the early morning at the hall of

Caiaphas, he had been hurried from Caiaphas to Pilate, from Pilate to Herod, and

from Herod back again to Pilate; he had, therefore, but little strength left,

and yet neither refreshment nor rest were permitted him. They were eager for his

blood, and therefore led him out to die, loaded with the cross. O dolorous

procession! Well may Salem’s daughters weep. My soul, do thou weep also.

What learn we here as we see our blessed Lord led forth? Do we not perceive that

truth which was set forth in shadow by the scapegoat? Did not the high-priest

bring the scapegoat, and put both his hands upon its head, confessing the sins

of the people, that thus those sins might be laid upon the goat, and cease from

the people? Then the goat was led away by a fit man into the wilderness, and it

carried away the sins of the people, so that if they were sought for they could

not be found. Now we see Jesus brought before the priests and rulers, who

pronounce him guilty; God himself imputes our sins to him, “the Lord hath laid

on him the iniquity of us all;” “He was made sin for us;” and, as

the substitute for our guilt, bearing our sin upon his shoulders, represented

by the cross; we see the great Scapegoat led away by the appointed officers of

justice. Beloved, can you feel assured that he carried your sin? As you look at

the cross upon his shoulders, does it represent your sin? There is one way by

which you can tell whether he carried your sin or not. Have you laid your hand

upon his head, confessed your sin, and trusted in him? Then your sin lies not on

you; it has all been transferred by blessed imputation to Christ, and he bears

it on his shoulder as a load heavier than the cross.

Let not the picture vanish till you have rejoiced in your own deliverance, and

adored the loving Redeemer upon whom your iniquities were laid.

 

Evening    “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;

and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”    Isaiah 53:6

Here a confession of sin common to all the elect people of God. They have all

fallen, and therefore, in common chorus, they all say, from the first who

entered heaven to the last who shall enter there, “All we like sheep have gone

astray.” The confession, while thus unanimous, is also special and particular:

“We have turned every one to his own way.” There is a peculiar sinfulness about

every one of the individuals; all are sinful, but each one with some special

aggravation not found in his fellow. It is the mark of genuine repentance that

while it naturally associates itself with other penitents, it also takes up a

position of loneliness. “We have turned every one to his own way,” is a

confession that each man had sinned against light peculiar to himself, or

sinned with an aggravation which he could not perceive in others. This

confession is unreserved; there is not a word to detract from its force, nor a

syllable by way of excuse. The confession is a giving up of all pleas of

self-righteousness. It is the declaration of men who are consciously

guilty–guilty with aggravations, guilty without excuse: they stand with their

weapons of rebellion broken in pieces, and cry, “All we like sheep have gone

astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” Yet we hear no dolorous

wailings attending this confession of sin; for the next sentence makes it almost

a song. “The Lord

hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” It is the most grievous sentence of

the three, but it overflows with comfort. Strange is it that where misery was

concentrated mercy reigned; where sorrow reached her climax weary souls find

rest. The Saviour bruised is the healing of bruised hearts. See how the lowliest

penitence gives place to assured confidence through simply gazing at Christ on

the cross!

 

He shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.      Isaiah 53:10

Ask God to fulfill this promise quickly, all you who love the Lord. It is easy work to pray when our desires are fixed and established on God’s own promise. How can He who gave the word refuse to keep it? Immutable truth cannot demean itself by a lie, and eternal faithfulness cannot degrade itself by neglect. God must bless His Son—His covenant binds Him to it.

The Spirit prompts us to ask for Jesus what God the Father decrees to give Him. Whenever you are praying for the kingdom of Christ, let your eyes behold the dawning of the blessed day that draws near, when the Crucified will receive His coronation in the place where men rejected Him.

Take courage, you who prayerfully work for Christ with only scant success—it will not always be this way; better times are ahead. Your eyes cannot see the wonderful future: borrow the telescope of faith; wipe the misty breath of your doubts from the viewfinder; look through it and behold the coming glory.

Reader, let us ask, do you make this your constant prayer? Remember that the same Christ who tells us to say, “Give us each day our daily bread,” first gave us this petition, “Hallowed be your name; your kingdom come; your will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” Do not let your prayers be all about your own sins, your own desires, your own imperfections, your own trials, but let them climb the starry ladder and get up to Christ Himself, and then as you draw near to the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat, offer this prayer continually: “Lord, extend the kingdom of Your dear Son.”

When you fervently present such a petition, it will elevate the spirit of all your devotions. Make sure that you prove the sincerity of your prayer by working to promote the Lord’s glory.

The family reading plan for April 2, 2012

Proverbs 20 | Colossians 3