Job 14:1-14
Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16
I Peter 4:1-8
John 19:38-42
Death can be violent, horrific, dreadful. It cuts off life, empties the body of breath and movement, and severs relationships. It is a fearful power before which all of us are defenseless and vulnerable. It turns the strongest among us into victims. When death is near, we may wonder where God is, if God will rescue, if God will deprive death of its power and “let [God’s] face shine on [us],” as Psalm 31 says. The psalmist sees God as a refuge from enemies, from the horror of death, and trusts that every breath of life is “in [the Lord’s] hands.” And so the psalmist cries out to God, believing that God can triumph over the psalmist’s enemies and deliver the psalmist to new life.Death can also be viewed as rest. It brings an end to suffering, brokenness, and unspeakable pain. This is the portrait of death that Job paints. He says to God, “If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed!” The continued presence of God in Job’s life—now scarred by affliction, the deaths of loved ones, and the loss of his future—only continues Job’s torment. He believes it would be better for God to leave human beings alone to live out their brief, fleeting lives, rather than sustain human life in suffering.
Job and the psalmist give us two very different pictures of death with two different visions of God. In Psalm 31, God is the one who remembers and saves the psalmist from imminent death, and the psalmist places all hope and trust in God, who is faithful. But for Job, God is the one whose presence staves off death and enables suffering to continue, and Job laments God’s involvement in his life. The psalmist clings to God in the face of suffering and death, while Job begs God to stop clinging to him in the face of Job’s suffering.
What are we to do with these different pictures? Is one true and the other false? Which God is the real God—the psalmist’s or Job’s?
I wonder if Holy Saturday makes both pictures true. I wonder if the body of Jesus lying in the tomb, bearing the unhealed wounds of execution, shows us the violence and horror of death, but also shows us God’s stubborn refusal to let go of a body even in the worst suffering. I wonder if this day affirms both the trust of the psalmist and the protest of Job because both were on Jesus’ lips just moments before he died and both went with him to the grave (“Into your hands I commit my spirit” and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). The dead body of Jesus is a sign of God’s faithfulness in life and in death—a faithfulness that may not make sense to us when suffering persists, but a faithfulness of incomprehensible love deep enough to embrace our protest and our hope. In Jesus’ death, God journeys into suffering and death with us—not to relish in our pain—no!—but to show us that nothing—no violence, evil, or deadly power—can “separate us from the love of God,” as Paul says in Romans.
Today, on Holy Saturday, in the psalm and in Job, we see one picture: the broken body of Jesus held in the hands of a faithful God. We see the power of death being destroyed in Jesus’ dead body. And we see the picture of our hope and our protest transformed in his tomb, as his very body, wounded and lifeless, displays the incomprehensible depths of God’s love for us. “[Our] times are in [God’s] hands,” and God has refused to let us go. Ever. Amen.
----Jodi Belcher
April 23rd, 2011
