The Last Week:  Saturday- When God Seems Silent
Rev. Marti Zimmerman
Smoky Hill UMC

Pre- Apostle’s Creed 

Today as we focus on Saturday of Jesus’ last week  we discover in the gospel of Mark, nothing.  Friday the day is divided into three hour periods beginning with the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane,  Jesus’ trial before Pilate,  and finally the painful and humiliating death by crucifixion. 

But Saturday is silent.  Mark writes nothing about what happened on the Sabbath.  

In just a moment, we will stand and recite one of the oldest Christian creeds, written no later than the 4th century  commonly called the Apostles' Creed not because it was produced by the apostles themselves but because it contains a brief and simple summary of early church teachings.

As a Methodist child, we repeated these words each week in worship. I was confused as we said,  “I believe in the holy catholic church,” which I later learned meant the universal Christian church not the Roman Catholic church. 

When I went to church with my Lutheran grandma or Catholic friends, I stumbled when they said, in the final clause, "He descended into hell." We didn’t say that at all. Some denominations like ours consider this controversial phrase optional. To some, the descent into hell represents the physical agony of death upon the Cross. It was hellish in its pain. To others, the word hell means Hades or Sheol, the place of the dead, divided into Paradise or Abraham's Bosom—the state of God-fearing souls—and Gehenna, the state of ungodly souls. Thus the descent into hell may suggest to some that the Son of God carried the sins of the world to hell.

Some traditions believe the Son of God carried Good News of deliverance to the godly dead such as Lazarus the beggar and the repentant thief.

Still others like the writers of our Lenten study guide, The Last Week by Marcus Borg and Jon Dominic Crossan, suggest that the descent into hell account for the problem of God's justice by providing an opportunity for all humankind—in eternity as well as in time—to hear the message of liberation proclaimed by Christ Himself.

Please rise and share with me in this historic creed.  Hear it new.

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
      creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
      who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
      and born of the virgin Mary.
      He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
      was crucified, died, and was buried;
      he descended to hell.
      The third day he rose again from the dead.
      He ascended to heaven
      and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
      From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
      the holy catholic* church,
      the communion of saints,
      the forgiveness of sins,
      the resurrection of the body,
      and the life everlasting. Amen.

Mark 8:34  (NIV)

 34Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

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She woke up several times each night nauseous from the chemotherapy during her long ordeal with terminal cancer.  He got up to give her the medicine that helped her cope for a little while. But sleep never came easy to the two of them so Martin Marty, the great theologian and writer, read to his beloved wife Elsa aloud from the Psalms.

One night she caught him skipping over several Psalms including Psalm 88,  skimming over words such as  “My life draws near the grave. I am counted among those who go down to the pit....” (Psalm 88).  Instead he read more consoling images such as Psalm 91,

“He will cover you with his pinions and under his wings you will find refuge...”.

She asked,   “Why did you skip those Psalms?”

He told her he wasn’t sure she could take Psalm 88 that night.

“Go back. Read it,” she said. “If you don’t deal with the darkness,

the others won’t shine out.”   

“My God, my God,  why have you forsaken me?”

Last Sunday, our Lenten study focused on Friday,  a day of trial, torture and the cross.

“My God, my God,  why have you forsaken me?” are the anguished words from the cross just before Jesus breathed his last.

translates Jesus cry,

Why did you dump me   miles from nowhere?
   Doubled up with pain, I call to God all the day long. No answer. Nothing.

God seems silent.

Jesus felt abandoned on the cross.

For me these painful words offer the deepest insight into his human nature and mine own. Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor once observed that all of us feel God has let us down at one time or another. Dumped when the hospital calls to say your husband is critical, hurry. Abandoned when the dr. says the tests show positive for HIV or cancer.  Forsaken when she says she just doesn’t want to be married anymore. Deserted- when the long-hoped-for job or home or relationship doesn’t materialize. Where is God we wonder when reading about the Nazi gas chambers or the Cambodian killing fields,   

…when the beloved father gets called back to war again and again.

…when a loved one refuses to accept their descent into addiction has affected the whole family. We pray like Jesus, “let this cup pass,” but it doesn’t. We do everything right  but God seems silent.

Spiritual advisors call it the long night of the spirit,  trying times when God’s longed for voice is missing.

Mother Teresa knew these times. She wrote her confessor, ”Since 1949 or 50 this terrible sense of loss- this untold darkness- this loneliness --this continual longing for God- which gives me that pain deep down in my heart—Darkness is such that I really do not see--…the place of God in my soul is blank….I feel he does not want me—

He is not there—Sometimes I cry,  “My God” and nothing else comes.”                           

It seems Jesus spoke to the young Teresa of Albania often as she took her vows and began her early ministry in far off India. This deep personal relationship continued as Jesus requested her to serve the poorest and the dying of Calcutta.  But then the voice went silent.  For almost 50 years,  she touched the poor, the agony of the cross visible in their emaciated bodies and on their worm eaten faces, those the rest of the world abandoned, offering them a drink, she said, just as some around the cross offered Jesus a drink while he was dying.

But in her prayer life, God was silent  like Saturday of the Last Week. 

While wanting to be aflame with love, all she felt was icy cold darkness.  Her diaries published after her death, show how she hid her spiritual darkness.  Even the other sisters of her order were shocked.

Such suffering would cause many to abandon their call,  but Mother Teresa continued to “care for the least of these my brethren” offering them the love of Jesus. Still she cried out to God in the midst of this absence.

Martin Marty wrote of this spiritual emptiness after his wife died, yet he discovered how absence was a sign of presence. It was their great love, now in different form, that caused his distress. Absence he explained was a statement of relationship.

Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.”

I thought there was no God answer until I discovered again,  with the help of our study book, that his words on the cross were from Psalm 22. Like other Psalms of Lament,  Jesus begins with protest. 

PSALM 22  NRSV  

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest, 3Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.”

Remembering the Passover he just celebrated at the Last Supper –we hear the words change from anguish to memory of God’s presence in times past.

4In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. 5To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame. …7All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; 8“Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver— let him rescue the one in whom he delights!”

The Psalmist returns to the pain that remind of the crucifixion.

14I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; 15my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. 16For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shriveled; 17I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me; 18they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.  

Finally the Psalmist offers a word of promise.                                        

19But you, O Lord, do not be far away! O my help, come quickly to my aid! 22I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you!24For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him. 26The poor shall eat and be satisfied; 27All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. 28For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

What begins in pain ends in praise.  The Psalmist prayer that Jesus began on the cross, was an affirmation of faith that God, while absent was not missing. 

Mother Teresa also affirmed her faith,  that God was present even when silent. 

One of the most important lessons a child learns, is that a parent is still present even when one is dropped off in the nursery or at school. 

I believe in God… is a statement of relationship. God is present even when God seems absent.

Its told that Native American Indians had a unique way of training young braves. On the night of a brave’s 13th birthday, after learning hunting, fishing and scouting skills, he was placed in a dense forest to spend the night alone. He had never been away from the security of the family and tribe until this night. But on this evening, he was blindfolded and taken several miles away from the tribe. When the blindfold is removed, the young man finds himself in the middle of the woods by himself–    all night long. Every time a twig snapped, he visualized a wild animal ready to pounce. Every time an animal howled, he imagined a wolf leaping out of the darkness. Every time the wind blew, he wondered what more sinister sound it masked. It was a terrifying night.

After what seemed like an eternity, dawn broke and the first rays of sunlight entered the interior of the forest. Looking around, the boy saw flowers, trees and the outline of the path. Then, to his utter astonishment, he beheld the figure of a man just a few feet away, armed with bow and arrow. It was the boy’s father. He had been there all night long. Although his son thought his father was absent, he was still present.

“My God, my God,  why have you forsaken me.” Even on those Saturday’s of our lives when God seems absent, ….God is present.   Amen. 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Story found online-  from God’s Absence in Prayer.  July 29, 2007. The Rev. Dr. Peter  James,  Vienna Presbyterian Church)

(Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta. Doubleday. 2007. p.2)

Ibid. p. 254.