Hope for Holy Saturday | The Easter Vigil
Hope is a hard thing. It’s hard because we all need it but we all lose it.
So, when did you first lose it?
“Yeah, I used to hope,” you might say, “back when I was a child. But that was before the abuse.” Or, “I used to hope before corporate used me for 20 years, chewed me up and spit me out...before the divorce...before the cancer...before...”
And so most of us hate hope. It makes us angry. It feels like a farce, like a lie. Without realizing it, we’ve inherited the worldview of philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche or Albert Camus for whom hope is absurd. Nietzsche wrote in Human, All Too Human that hope is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of humanity. And Camus saw religious hope as no different than Sisyphus pushing his boulder up that hill every day.
Not many years after Nietzsche died, one of his fans, Adolph Hitler, put this same hopeless worldview into practice, killing millions in the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel, a
holocaust survivor, wrote about his experience in the concentration camp in his book, Night:
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.
Literary students would have us note the way Wiesel uses a rhetorical device, called an anaphora, a sequence of words repeated again and again, “Never shall I forget! Never shall I forget.” What is it Wiesel won’t forget? Night. Hitler’s Night. Evil’s Night.
In the Easter Vigil, the opening liturgy of Easter, Christians also encounter an anaphora in the text of the Exsultet. Again and again, we proclaim “This is the night!” But it’s a very different night.
This is the night! When God rescued Israel from bondage to Egypt through the Red Sea.
This is the night! “When all who believe in Christ are delivered form the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.”
This is the night! “When Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave...how holy is this night...how blessed is this night.”
To be clear, none of us have experienced a night like the holocaust. But in our own profound ways we each know something of Wiesel’s night in our own sufferings.
Easter is when Christ’s Night conquers Evil’s Night. In his death and resurrection Jesus reaches into our nights and pulls us out of our hells. Jesus kills our hopelessness. He takes the worst nights of our lives (even the night of our death) and redeems them.
THIS IS THE NIGHT! When our Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Christianity, Tech, & Grief in our Viral Moment
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST WRITTEN FOR AND PUBLISHED BY BREAKPOINT.
For the past two weeks, my church in Orlando has been, like many churches around the world, hard at work responding to the coronavirus crisis:
How will we care for those effected by the virus? How will we continue our worshiping life, carry on leadership meetings, and handle a possible loss of financial support?
One of the tools helping us answer these questions has been technology. In fact, technology has been one of the only tools available to us in a time when local officials have asked us to stay home. So, we began livestreaming our liturgies and communicating daily with our congregation through emails and social media platforms. This has given all of us comfort and a needed (albeit disembodied and virtual) sense of connectedness during the uncertainty of this pandemic.
But I have to make a confession. A quiet unease has been lurking in my soul with every virtual worship service I participate in. It’s a dissonance between the reality of the global pandemic and my (subconscious?) attempts, via technology, to keep my life as “normal” as possible, in the realms where such false normalcy is possible: my emotions, my relationships, and my spiritual life.
“The six feet of physical distance between me and the person in line at the grocery store, not to mention the empty streets and closed businesses in my city, confronts me with this reality.”
Let me explain.
Physically speaking, the truth of the tragedy facing our world is unavoidable: the entire globe has ceased to function. The six feet of physical distance between me and the person in line at the grocery store, not to mention the empty streets and closed businesses in my city, confronts me with this reality.
But, if I so choose, with technology, I can leave this bleak physical existence and, thanks to emotion-numbing Netflix series, small group Facetime hang outs, and live-streamed worship, live relatively the same life I had before this whole thing started. Pandemic who?
Let me be clear. Technology isn’t the enemy. I’m no Luddite. I’ve read recent articles addressing these issues that sound, to my pastoral ears, unsafe on the one hand, or grumpy on the other. I’d prefer to avoid both postures, if possible. I believe technology is great until it becomes, like any gift of God, one more creative way we avoid the frailty of our humanity and the hunger of our souls; that is, our need for God.
But our use of technology the past few weeks has come dangerously close to the story of Job whose friends repeatedly offered him cheap answers to the question of the overwhelming tragedy that had beset his life. Such answers were no doubt attractive options for Job in ending the tension he lived between a God who claimed to be good and the unspeakable tragedy that God allowed. (In the end, even God Himself refused to give Job explanations for the evil he had endured, opting instead to remind Job of the trustworthiness of His own authoritative identity as God, the maker of heaven, earth, and every mystery in between.)
Aren’t Christians people who tell the truth, as best we can, according to God’s word, about ourselves, our world, and about God? To lose this calling is to lose ourselves and our mission, right? This was the kind of prophetic calling that Flannery O’Connor embraced. She awakened readers to their universal need for God’s grace by refusing to shield them from the violence and grotesque brokenness of a world in need of a savior. In the face of Covid-19, I believe this is now our calling, too.
What if this pandemic is offering us as Christians an opportunity to show the world not how to avoid human pain, but how to process it with honesty, endurance, sacrifice, Christ-like compassion, and most importantly, the hope of eternal life offered in Jesus Christ?
Normally, in these articles, my thoughts would end here. If you’ve had your fill, stop now! If, on the other hand, you want one (admittedly technology-addicted person’s) practical suggestion for moving into the days ahead, read on. It’s actually just one word.
“Grieve because, “Jesus wept.” This verse of Scripture, infamous for its brevity, is a profound statement about dealing with tragedy honestly as the beloved people of God.”
Grieve.
Grieve because the overwhelming presence of laments in the book of Psalms, more than any other genre, are instructive for us in all times of life, but especially during a global human crisis. Psalm 4, for instance, is a Psalm of Lament prayed in the liturgy of Compline right before sleep.
Grieve because, “Jesus wept.” This verse of Scripture, infamous for its brevity, is a profound statement about dealing with tragedy honestly as the beloved people of God. Be sure to read the context of the verse- that wonderfully moving story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Incidentally (providentially) this was the gospel story assigned to be read in many churches all around the world this past Sunday, March 29th!
Finally, grieve because sadness is what healthy humans do with tragedy in a fallen world. Grieving evil will actually move you toward sanity, toward healthy relationships, and toward intimacy with God.
I’ll leave you with these encouraging words from author, Mike Mason, in his work, Practicing the Presence of People, about the nature of grief:
Sadness signals change…It is an intermediate emotion, a feeling that is going somewhere. Like a seventh or a ninth chord in music, it is rich in subtle tones that tend toward resolution, lean toward home. This is what distinguishes sadness from moroseness, self-pity, or depression, all of which have a feeling of stuckness. Sadness is always in motion in the backfield. You will know the real thing by this sense of movement toward happiness. In photographs, crying and laughing are hard to tell apart.
Sadness is like that moment in a rainstorm when the rain has not yet stopped, but there is a perceptible brightening, and there comes that subtle change in the atmosphere signifying the imminence of a rainbow. Sadness is hopeful. Anger feels hard in the body, fear feels alien, and depression is like a dull poison. But sadness is at home in flesh and blood. It is a soft and relaxed presence, a comfortable garment for the heart.
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Desire: Longing For God in the Aches of Our Hearts
This article was first written for and published by BreakPoint.
The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for…
– Catechism of the Catholic Church
When I was a kid, the day after Christmas sent me into an existential crisis. When I was in high-school, I felt a loneliness I’ve never forgotten. When I was in college, I fell in love but that love was not returned. And at some point in my twenties, when the pressures of adulthood mounted, I grieved the loss of youth.
Longing. Desire. If there’s one subject discussed more than any other in my office as a therapist and pastor, it’s this. My clients and parishioners don’t use these words, exactly, but you can hear it in their stories:
“I wish my Dad had been a different man.”
“I wish she would marry me.”
“I wish I didn’t have to feel this grief.”
“I wish God would tell me why.”
“I wish I could find work that makes me happy.”
I can remember my own awakening to desire and longing in college, when I heard for the first time Saint Augustine’s line: “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” Not long after, I read this from C.S. Lewis:
If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Longing. It’s that ache in the belly felt by every human being at some point in life. It’s as unavoidable as growing old. And perhaps, for precisely this reason, rather than ignoring it, denying it, demonizing it, or giving into it undiscerningly, we should pay attention to it. According to John Eldredge (who has done much work on this topic), “How you handle your heart’s desire will in great measure determine what becomes of your life.”
Perhaps not knowing what else to do with my own longing, I wrote a song about it. Here’s the lyric of the chorus:
All our longings- they’re like sacred signs. And they point us to the God behind them all. That’s why sadness, and every sweet romance- that’s why sunsets always make us homesick.
“Homesick” is a song, a story, about two people who confront their longing and find, underneath it, a holy fire, God’s fingerprints.
The man in verse one has a sex addiction. He is drowning in shame. What if he could know that, lurking beneath his depravity is actually a longing for intimacy, placed there by God, pure, innocent, beautiful, and full of dignity?
The woman in verse two has lived, faithfully, in a lifeless marriage. Her attention to the longing in her heart for a better marriage or a different marriage is an act of faith. Romantic desire says, “Leave.” But God-given desire says, “Stay. Let your longing be an act of faith to the God who hates divorce.”
And so, her tears become tears of faith. Who knows, maybe God will fulfill her longing but, in the meantime, I imagine Him wrapping His arms around His brave, grieving daughter. She has confronted the very desire that He gave her and released it back to Him.
All our longings- they’re like sacred signs. And they point us to the God behind them all. That’s why laughter, and every moonlight kiss- that’s why silence always makes us homesick.
“Homesick” was a difficult song to write. My goal in writing it was to deepen my own awareness of the truth that, beneath the depravity of my human nature- beneath the loneliness, beneath the unrequited love, beneath it all- is a God-given dignity, one that, when finally restored, will be nothing less than the divine destiny for which I was created. Don’t hate your desire. Bring it to Jesus and let him refine it or fulfill it.
Count The Stars: Hope
This article was first written for and published by BreakPoint.
One clear night, I went camping with friends on the banks of the Chickamauga Lake, just down the street from my house when I was a teenager in Tennessee. About one or two in the morning we put a canoe in the water and rowed out into the middle of the lake 150 yards from shore, until our campfire became a tiny dot of orange on the sand.
There, in the middle of the lake, surrounded by darkness and the sound of water splashing up against our canoe, we’d lay back and stare in awe at the millions of stars above our heads, stars that were only visible to us because of the blue, purple, and black darkness of the night sky.
Little-known poet, Sarah Williams, wrote, “I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.” My song, “Count the Stars,” is a song about this: being too fond of the stars to be afraid of the night. It’s a song about being too fond of God’s promise to surrender to my doubt, too fond of Christian hope to surrender to despair.
“Count the Stars” was written a number of years ago for my church as we studied the darkness, doubt, despair – and hope – of Abraham and Sarah from the book of Genesis. Theirs is a heartbreaking story of infertility, but also one whose promise of hope was declared in the stars lighting the darkness.
Astute Bible readers will note that the entire biblical narrative hangs on whether or not God blesses them with a son. Only through Abraham’s lineage do we get the Messiah. Only through the Messiah do you and I get grafted in to Abraham’s family. In other words, there is a sense in which weare some of the stars God told Abraham to count in Genesis 15!
Back at church, during the sermon series, some close friends of ours were, like Abraham and Sarah, struggling with infertility. Our community watched as Paul and Jessica longed for a child month after month. Amidst the tearful conversations and processing we had with Paul and Jess, one truth hit me the hardest: the emptiness of Jess’ womb was not the worst part of the pain.
The worst part was the hope required of Paul and Jess to continue coming to church, to continue praying, to keep rejoicing with every new expecting mom in our church, and to keep trying – again and again – for a child of their own. Hope was the hardest part.
Hope, according to philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus, is absurd, senseless, and stupid; especially religious hope. “Hope,” wrote Nietzsche, “is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
People with religious hope, Camus said, are like the character of Sisyphusfrom Greek Mythology, a man sentenced by the gods to roll a rock up a hill everyday only to have it tumble back down once he reached the top.
But, their “hope” is not our hope.
Abraham and Sarah’s story in Genesis is paradigmatic of God’s hope-filled way of doing things in the Scriptures. Their story asks us to read the Bible through a kind of hermeneutic of hope.
God seems drawn to human emptiness like a moth to a flame, anxious to fill the widow’s jar with oil, the barren wombs with life, the darkness with light, the wedding jars of Cana with wine, the bellies of the crowds with loaves and fish, and the tomb with resurrection. Against the backdrop of human doubt, God’s glory, like the stars, shines brightest.
May the same be true for us – that we would see God’s glory, especially in the Promised One, Jesus Christ, shining brighter than our dreams for ourselves.
Preview & Pre-order Josh's New Album
You can pre-order the album at Bandcamp right now, and check out a couple of songs while you're there. And please help me spread the word by sharing this album on your favorite social media feed!
Dear Friends, I have been working on arranging and recording these hymns for the past two years and I can't wait to share them with you. My vocation is a wonderful mix of husbanding, dadding, counseling, priesting, and music making. So, most of the work on this album was done in between sermon-writing, potty-training, and therapy (my own and that of my clients). Stealing away to work on this music brought life to me as a husband, priest, dad, and therapist. This Fall I will be releasing these songs on all the familiar online retailers (Bandcamp, Amazon, iTunes, Spotify) and will be printing physical CDs to bring with me on tour. Thanks for supporting my music! You can preview and pre-order the album here. - Josh Bales