March 26: A Day of Grace
♫ Music:
Saturday, March 26
Holy Saturday
Scripture: Exodus 15: 1-18
Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying,
“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
my father's God, and I will exalt him.
The Lord is a man of war;
the Lord is his name.
Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea,
and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
The floods covered them;
they went down into the depths like a stone.
Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power,
your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.
In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries;
you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble.
At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up;
the floods stood up in a heap;
the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake,
I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them.
I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’
You blew with your wind; the sea covered them;
they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
You stretched out your right hand;
the earth swallowed them.
You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed;
you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.
The peoples have heard; they tremble;
pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia.
Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed;
trembling seizes the leaders of Moab;
all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.
Terror and dread fall upon them;
because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone,
till your people, O Lord, pass by,
till the people pass by whom you have purchased
You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain,
the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode,
the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.
The Lord will reign forever and ever.”
A DAY OF GRACE
We exist in a Saturday world. Behind us is Friday: The darkness of our hopeless plight, our bondage under the Pharaohs within and without, the wails in the dark night and the terror of trusting God and not ourselves. Before us is Sunday: the arrival of perfect, the recovery of Eden, the Promised Land of Christ’s resurrection world.
In the meantime we wait. We “sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously,” but we also long for final resolution, for an end to the troubles of this world. The wilderness in which we wander is vast. The day-to-day struggles seem endless. The world seems on the verge of collapse.
We cheer for the victory that Friday assured, but we weep for what it cost, and for the waiting we must still endure. As the song celebrates, our pain is tempered by victory (“Pharaoh's army got drownded, Oh Mary don't you weep”), but we still want Sunday to come: the vindication of our pain and the confirmation of our belief. But God has us in Saturday for a reason. There is beauty in waiting, in the tension of now-and-not-yet faith.
God created the world in time—six days—but also made room for an “off the clock” escape: the Sabbath. A day to forget the hustle, the hurry, the heaviness of circadian cycles. A pause in the midst of the storm. A time to catch our breath between the struggle behind us and the struggle ahead. This special time was meant to be holy—a time of peace and reflection where we might taste the eternal God without the pesky interruptions of eternity’s antithesis (the clock).
It is no accident that Jesus died on the eve of the Sabbath and then rose again when time “started up” again on Sunday. How ironic that his absence from those who loved him spanned the day designed for us to feel closest to him. But perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps the struggle of that Sabbath—finding peace and rest amid abandonment (Jesus was gone) and uncertainty (God was silent)—is a metaphor for existence at large.
“Ours is the long day’s journey of the Saturday,” wrote literary critic George Steiner in Real Presences. “Between suffering, aloneness, unutterable waste on the one hand and the dream of liberation, of rebirth on the other.” But it is precisely in this lasting Saturday—this divine discontent, this limbo—that art finds a reason to exist.
Art helps us pilgrims and wanderers who are stuck here in time. It helps us look forward and backward for Eden. Art is memento mori, spectral hauntings of Paradise’s lost and broken communion. But art is also about the unexpected intrusion of the holy, the icons and brushstrokes of restoration. In its framed realities, art is a mournful expression of limitation even as it hints at transcendence out of view. Like the vibrant chaos of Picasso’s Weeping Woman and Crucifixion, the best art is lament interacting with hope; color and texture and shape and space working together to bear witness.
To what do they bear witness? To the vestiges of once and the seeds of again. To the fragmentation of Friday and the stitching-back-together of Sunday. But above all to the beauty of Saturday: a day for waiting and wandering and relying on God. A day of relief and a day of tears. A day of grace.
Prayer
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 and the Holy Spirit,
One God, forever and ever. Amen.
Brett McCracken, Associate Director of Presidential Communications
Artwork #1
Weeping Woman
Pablo Picasso
Oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London, England
Artwork #2
Crucifixion
Pablo Picasso
Oil on canvas
Musée Picasso, Paris, France
About the Artist and Art
Pablo Picasso (1882-1973) the Father of Modern Art, is considered the most important artist of the 20th Century. There has been no other artist, prior to Picasso or since, who has had such an impact on the art world, or has had such a large following of both fans and critics. Picasso’s free spirit, his energetic styles, and his complete disregard for what others thought of his work, made him a household name during his lifetime. Picasso’s development of Cubism and modern Expressionism, movements that distorted reality to express the artist’s inner vision and emotions have made his work a catalyst for generations of artists to follow. His career spanned a 75 year period in which he created 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 34,000 book illustrations, and 300 sculptural and ceramic works. Picasso was intrigued with subjects of suffering and sorrow. He painted his “weeping women” images over and over. Although Picasso was an atheist, he found the crucifixion of Christ to be one of the most potent subjects for depicting the violence and agony of the world. This Crucifixion is a precursor to his most famous work of suffering and war, Guernica (1937), and was painted at a time when some scholars feel he was “seeking spiritual transformation in his work.”
About the Music
“O Mary Don’t You Weep” is a Negro spiritual or “slave song” that originated prior to the American Civil War. It contains coded messages of hope and resistance and is one of the most important Negro Spirituals. The song tells the biblical story of Mary of Bethany and her distraught pleas to Jesus to raise her brother Lazarus from the dead. Other narratives relate to The Exodus and the Passage of the Red Sea, with the chorus proclaiming Pharaoh’s army got drown-ded!, and to God’s covenant to Noah after the Great Flood. With victory over bondage and liberation as one of its themes, the song regained popularity during the Civil Rights Movement.
Lyrics
Well if I could, I surely would,
Stand on the rock where Moses stood.
Pharoah's army got drownded,
Oh Mary don't you weep.
Oh Mary don't you weep no more,
Oh Mary don't you weep no more.
Pharoah's army got drownded.
Oh Mary don't you weep.
Well Mary wore three links of chain,
On every link was Jesus’ name.
Pharoah's army got drownded,
Oh Mary don't you weep.
Well one of these nights about 12 o'clock,
This old world is gonna rock,
Pharoah's army got drownded,
Oh Mary don't you weep.
Well Moses stood on the Red Sea shore,
Smote the water with a two by four.
Pharoah's army got drownded,
Oh Mary don't you weep.
Well old mister Satan he got mad,
Missed that soul that he thought he had.
Pharoah's army got drownded,
Oh Mary don't you weep.
Brothers and sisters, don't you cry,
There'll be good times by and by.
Pharoah's army got drownded,
Oh Mary don't you weep.
God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, but fire next time.
Pharoah's army got drownded,
Oh Mary don't you weep.
About the Performer
For nearly four decades Bruce Springsteen (b. 1949) has been a working-class hero: a plainspoken visionary and a sincere romantic whose insights into everyday lives - especially in America’s small-town heartland - have earned comparisons to John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie. His belief in rock’s mythic past (and its potential) revitalized pop music and made Springsteen a superstar in the Eighties. He maintains an enormous popularity today, having become an even more candid political activist.
http://brucespringsteen.net