Holy Saturday Morning Prayer 2023

Is it nothing to you, all who pass by?

Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me when the Lord hath afflicted.

Lord, open our lips, and our mouths shall proclaim your praise.

Dearly beloved, we've come together in the presence of Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, to set forth his praise, to hear God's holy word, and to ask for ourselves on behalf of others those things that are necessary for our life and our salvation.

And that so we may prepare ourselves and heart and mind to worship God, let us kneel or stand or sit in silence as your piety dictates, and with penitent and obedient hearts confess our sin, that we may obtain forgiveness by God's infinite goodness and mercy.

God of all mercy, we confess that we have sinned against you, opposing your will in our lives.

We have denied your goodness in each other, in ourselves, and in the world you have created.

We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.

Forgive, restore, and strengthen us through our Savior Jesus Christ, that we may abide in your love and serve only your will.

Amen.

Almighty God have mercy on you.

Forgive you all your sin through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.

Amen.

Be joyful in the Lord, all you lands.

Know this.

The Lord is God.

God has made us, and we belong to God.

We are God's people and the sheep of God's pasture.

Enter the Lord's gates with thanksgiving.

Go into God's courts with praise.

Give thanks to God and call upon the Lord.

For the Lord is good, God's mercy is everlasting.

God's faithfulness from age.

Not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil.

Hallelujah.

Christ being raised from the dead will never die again.

The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all.

But the life that he lives in lives to God.

So also consider yourselves dead to sin.

Christ has been raised from the dead.

For since by a human came death, by humans come also the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam and Eve all die, so in Christ shall all be in one eye.

Hallelujah.

In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge.

Let me never be put to shame.

Incline your ear to me.

Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe, for you are my crag and my stronghold.

For the sake of your name, believe me and die.

Take me out of the net that they have secretly set for me.

My times are in your hand.

Rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me.

Make your face to shine upon your servant.

And let your loving kindness save me.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

Come, let us adore God.

Arise, shine, for your light has come.

And for the glory of the Lord has gone along.

For behold, darkness covers the land.

But over you the Lord will rise.

Nations will stream to your light.

And the gates of brightness are gone.

Your gates will always be open.

They will call you the city of the Lord.

Violence will no more be heard in your land.

You will call your walls salvation.

The sun will be no will no more be your light by day.

And the night will not be referenced.

A reading from the Gospel of John.

Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one, because of his fear of the Judeans, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus.

Pilate gave him permission, so he came and removed his body.

Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.

They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices and linen cloths according to the burial customs of the Judeans.

There was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.

And so, because it was the Jewish day of preparation and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

This is a day that we don't always gather in the United States, but in some countries like Bavaria, it is considered, Bavaria and Germany, it is considered the holiest day of the year.

This is a day when Christ is entombed and we have before us the question, doing what?

Maybe doing nothing.

Maybe just actually being dead.

Maybe, and this is Eastern Orthodox tradition, today is the day in the Orthodox calendar in which Jesus accomplishes the harrowing of hell.

That is to say, the oldest version of the Creed, the Apostles' Creed, says that not that Jesus descended to the dead, but that he descended to hell.

So in the Orthodox calendar, today is the day that Jesus breaks open the gates.

You could imagine this as some sort of military conflict between swarthy Jesus and the red-tailed devil, or you could imagine this as the Army Corps of Engineers.

There is an insuperable gap between what God has for us and where we find ourselves often.

Today is the day that Jesus builds a bridge between those two.

We didn't read this in morning prayer.

It's not cast for the day, but there is a passage in 2 Peter that says that when Jesus, in fact, on this day, he appeared to the spirits who were bound under the earth and proclaimed release to them.

The spirits 2 Peter is talking about are the angels, if you remember in Genesis 6, who looked at the women and they had these superhuman children.

According to the book of Enoch, which didn't make it in the Bible, those spirits, those rebellious demons were chained under the earth.

Today is the day that Jesus goes to those spirits and says, Come out.

He doesn't fight them out of their chains, but he does unlock them.

And he bids them to leave.

If you've read The Great Divorce by C.S.

Lewis, this is what C.S.

Lewis has in mind: that hell is only eternal if we choose to stay there.

In the book, C.S.

Lewis writes, God's bus shows up in hell every day and invites the residents of hell to get on the bus and leave.

But of course, people have commitments in hell.

They've got schedules.

They've got things to do.

They don't have time to get on that bus.

And so most people choose to stay in hell and complaining about it instead of getting on the bus and leaving.

It's imaginative and it's very real, isn't it?

It's very real.

Today is the day Jesus pulls up in the bus and says, hop on, let's get out of here together.

C.S.

Lewis was probably thinking about what happens when we die.

I'm thinking a little bit more about what happens every day we're alive.

We often find ourselves in places that just seem dark.

And even in those darkest places, Jesus pulls up on a bus and says, How about we get out of here?

And we in faith are asked to consider will we stay in the hill that we know, or will we follow Christ in faith?

When I was on my sabbatical, there was a book that was cast to us called Transitions.

The course was called Professional Career Transitions.

And the work of the book said we often think about a transition as I'm on one side of the street and I want to end up on the other side of the street, and what we forget is the actual crossing.

Which can look like the video game Frogger.

There's a lot coming our way, and we sometimes have to move back or sideways to get across.

We rarely want to spend that time in transition, that time on the road between.

The psychological word for that is liminal space, that is like the death space.

Today is liminal time.

It's the day between, well, Friday and Sunday.

And as far as anybody knows, there won't be any rolling away of the stone tomorrow.

No one expects that.

Remember, the women come tomorrow expecting to embalm his body.

The men are too afraid to come.

What did Jesus himself expect?

We don't know.

I'd like to think Jesus was surprised.

I'd like to think Jesus was surprised because if he knew Sunday was coming, probably Friday wouldn't have really hurt so bad.

We stand with children and parents and co-workers and honestly with ourselves, very often we stand not knowing if there will be Sunday or not.

We don't know.

What we do know is that in the middle of our transition, we're not alone.

We are solidly with the Lord in these transitions.

And if this idea that the heroing of hell is right, we're not only invited to cross that bridge when Jesus presents it to us, we're invited to help build that bridge with him.

For ourselves and for others, so that while we will end up in the grave one day physically, we don't have to live our lives with one foot in the grave now.

This doesn't take away from the fact that there are moments of life that are entombed and does not take away.

But it does remind us that even in those moments, God is with us, and God is calling us out of those moments.

I don't know if you're in one of those moments today.

But whether you are or whether you aren't, this is why we have the reserve sacrament.

So that we can have holy energy for our liminal space.

Or if not our own, for the liminal spaces of the ones we love, so that we can say, Come out.

Come out with me.

Let us pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Show us your mercy, O Lord.

Clothe your ministers with righteousness.

Give peace, O Lord, in all the world.

Lord, keep this nation under your care.

Let your way be known upon earth.

Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten.

Creating us clean hearts, O God.

So I'm going to invite you to the rail to stand or kneel as you prefer, or your piety dictates and receive holy energy from the reserved sacrament.

O God, Creator of heaven and earth, grant that as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life, who now lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

Amen.

Lord God Almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought us in safety to this new day.

Preserve us with your mighty power, that we may not fall into sin nor be overcome by adversity.

And in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

O God, you've made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near.

Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you, bring the nations into your fold, pour out your spirit upon all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Almighty God, you've given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you.

And you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his name, you will be in the midst of them.

Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us, granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come life everlasting.

Amen.

Let us bless the Lord.

Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.

Glory to Him from generation to generation in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever.

Amen.