Holy Saturday A 1st Reading
Job 14:1-14
Darlene Hyatt
Frailty – not a subject we North Americans like to consider. Yet, Holy Saturday compels us to face down fear and reflect upon our mortality. This most-neglected of the Three Great Days (the Triduum) forms a Sabbath rest between death and resurrection. Holy Saturday constitutes the middle of the greatest drama in human history. It’s a time of liminality – what the Celts would call ‘betwixt and between’ time – with Christ entombed and his first followers in the equally liminal space of disorienting grief.
Alan E. Lewis, in his incredible book Between the Cross and the Resurrection/A Theology of Holy Saturday, reminds us that the center of the three days is “empty space” and a “no-man’s land” apparently filled only with sorrow and divine silence. (This book is particularly poignant as it was written during a brief remission from the terminal cancer that wracked Lewis’ body.) Holy Saturday is a day of unavoidable waiting, with our only remaining decision being how we wait.
All these themes align with today’s Lectionary reading from Job. Once the epitome of his culture’s ideal of a person living under God’s favor, by chapter 14 Job is immersed in grief, surrounded by counselors who offer scant comfort, questioning the reason(s) for the sorrow with which he is now all too acquainted, and puzzled and angered by God’s silence amidst such fierce circumstances.
As we enter into Job’s wrestling with God, the prologue section (1:1-2:13) serves a vital purpose as it presents Job as a guiltless sufferer (akin to Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53).
Without this prologue the Job of the dialogues and monologues might justly be considered a man with an insufferable self-righteousness, and the reader would be left without a heavenly perspective much as in the other theodicies of the ancient Near East. With this Prologue the purpose of the book is clarified – to show that in a world where evil is a reality, good people may appear to unjustly suffer, but that such injustice is precipitated by the Accuser and, though permitted by God, it is an expression of God’s total confidence that the faith of his servant will triumph.[1]
Unlike his counselors who speak about God rather than to God in engaged relationship, Job genuinely struggles with God and that offers us a picture of authentic biblical faith. No mere untested triumphalism but truly cruciform faith, characterized by wholehearted honesty with God. (In a very real sense, Holy Saturday calls us to that same engagement; a transformation averted when we cheapen Easter by avoiding the pain of Good Friday and the divine silence of Holy Saturday.)
Today’s pericope occurs in the first of three dialogue-dispute cycles (cycle one: chapters 4-14; cycle two: chapters 15-21; and cycle three: chapters 22-27). In this cycle, each of Job’s companions offer their “consolation” and Job then responds to each. The third of the consolers is Zophar who speaks in 11:1-20. Job then replies in 12:1-14:22.
Zophar typifies the ancient belief that right relationship with God exempts human beings from tragedy and suffering. The rigid, severe Zophar believes that sin lurks behind every pain and that God causes suffering to expose secret sin and exact divine judgment. Thus, Job’s intense suffering speaks to the immensity of his sin. Zophar warns Job to repent – a measure that will restore wellbeing and good fortune. He further cautions that failing to do so will preclude Job from becoming a wise person.
The problem? Job has no unconfessed sin so repentance is not an option. Job’s relationship with God is troubled at present – but because of growth, not because of sin. Accordingly, Job first addresses his companions (12:1-13:19) and then speaks to God (13:20-14:22).
From 13:28 onward, Job expresses his despair at the brevity and difficulty of human life. Job acknowledges that impure human beings may warrant punishment but, from the depths of misery, Job pleads for God to desist in 14:5-6. Job presents death at God’s hand as the only respite from the great weight of suffering.
In 14:7-9, Job contrasts human death with the demise of a tree. Life remains in the stump and roots of the tree, needing only moisture for new growth to readily spring forth. But, human renewal does not occur immediately for “mortals lie down and do not rise again; until the heavens are no more, they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep” (v. 12). In v. 13, Job seeks God’s remedy of his plight, requesting that Job’s life be taken until God’s anger is assuaged. Then, God may call Job back from Sheol.
It is known that the doctrine of bodily resurrection was not fully developed in Israel until Hellenistic times and, even then, it was denounced by the schools of wisdom. Yet, Job posits “If mortals die, will they live again?” (v. 14). Verse 12’s “until the heavens are no more” also suggests that Job saw God’s capacity to be boundless. Job was at the end of his own resources. His only hope is in God’s ability to bring resurrection.
On Easter, we celebrate Christ’s resurrection as a precursor of our own. Still, we also recognize that its fullness is not yet our experience. We do indeed live between the cross and the resurrection. Our hope is grounded in Easter and we most certainly are called and enabled in the power of the Spirit to join God in movements of resurrection in the present. But, we also live in Holy Saturdays, waiting with faith for what is to come when God fully restores all things.
One July morning in 2000, my 27-year-old son died from a rare type of sarcoma that attacks only young males. His wife of eleven months, his three sisters, his parents-in-law and I experienced our own Holy Saturday waiting as we faced divine silence, no easy answers to the problem of suffering, intense grief, and a profound sense of “what now?”.
Through Holy Saturday, God comes “over to our side … to open a way for us from within our helplessness and hopelessness – yet without in any way over-trumping that situation with his omnipotence”.[2] Christ did so by practicing “the absolute weakness of love.”[3]
On our family’s July morning of helplessness and hopelessness, God opened a way. Knowing that such waiting and vulnerable surrender to it was part of our Savior’s story assured us that the Lord truly was “God with us” amid our personal Holy Saturday. That morning was not a “no-man’s land” but was filled with the presence of God.
“The absolute weakness of love” is our invitation to keep Holy Saturday by embracing such vulnerability and entering the liminal space of the center of the Great Three Days. That is the path to wisdom.
Job thought that resurrection was possible but we know resurrection to be reality. Surely, that makes all the difference in how we live out our Holy Saturdays.
[1] The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 4, editor Frank E. Gaebelein, p. 878.
[2] Elucidations, Hans Urs von Balthasar, p. 40.
[3] Ibid.
Pastor, Hope Pointe Community Church, A Church of the Nazarene Congregation
Darlene Hyatt
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