Today is Holy Saturday. We find it difficult to know what to do on this day of waiting caught between Good Friday and Easter. It has only been the last few years that I began to understand darkness and silence as holy gifts, after spending several weeks to learn how to pray in silence with some Jesuits. Ever since then, I’ve been nurtured by God’s mysterious power through this holy darkness and holy silence.
Jesus is laid in the tomb. No light. No words.
He died on the cross and was laid in the dark tomb silently on Sabbath. The darkness of the tomb, absence or disabling effect of looking puzzles me more than the death itself because of the power of God to raise the dead, from the first fruit, his own son, Jesus.
Sun deities of the modern day
Sun deities of the modern day
After opening themselves to the world in the late 19th century and lifting the ban on Christianity, Japan’s major drive was to build a strong modern nation with military power and modern science. To rise up again to the world as the empire of the rising sun. When eyewitnesses of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima cried out, “The sun is falling down!,” it shook the foundations of political identity and imperial militarism of Japan at the end of the World War II.
‘Tae-Yang-Chul,’ (April 15) or the Day of the Great Sun is the birthday of the late leader of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, whom the people worship as the great Sun of the peninsular. April 15 is the most important holiday in North Korea and the starving nation is going to celebrate the 100th birthday of their dead leader at a very high cost this year. The North Korean government announced that they would launch a rocket some time between April 12th and 16th in celebration. This is now creating much fear and tension in the islands of Japan (bizarrely enough my own country, South Korea, seemed to be quiet about this during and after the Nuclear Security Summit.)
There is much fear and tension in the Far East region right now and the whole world is watching how this modern day 'Sun deity worship' will unfold. Please pray for North Korea, a place where Christianity was vibrantly growing just over 100 years ago (see this short documentary of the 1907 Revival and church history in Korea – here).
The God of all creation, including light and day; sun, moon and stars, is still at work in absolute darkness and deep silence. He works with his creation under the sun, he exists above the sun, and he performs his miracles of raising the dead - without the sun.
The power of darkness and silence of God overcomes the fear of death and the fear of uncertainty. The day in the tomb is just not a day sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter Sunday in hopeless waiting. The mystery of life is completed even when we can’t look and when we can’t listen.
The local churches in Fukushima continue in their work of recovery and building a future, including the complex reality of energy issues (such as stopping nuclear or going solar, or something totally different.) My prayer for Fukushima on this Easter comes from the ancient liturgy of Holy Saturday below:
The Reading for Holy Saturday in The Liturgy of the Hours
Something strange is happening on earth today – a great silence, and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captive Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him, Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised up him, saying “Awake, O sleeper and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
The Pastor: A Memoir, by Eugene Peterson.
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