I don’t want to let this day pass without a post about Holy Saturday. As a Seventh-day Adventist, I think we’ve got a lot to say about this day, but we rarely do.  I am glad to see SDA communities like the Hollywood Seventh-day Adventist Church incorporating Holy Week gatherings into the life of their community, for example last night they had a Tenabrae service.

My new friend Maury Jackson, a professor of religion at La Sierra University, is preaching today about what to do when God is dead (He is preaching at the Kansas Avenue Seventh-day Adventist Church in Riverside, CA). Yesterday Maury told me  he’s using the Holy Saturday text, Matthew 27:57-66, where Jesus disciples bury him with the help of Joseph of Arimethea. Maury made a good point that I’m still contemplating this morning: Christians often move to quickly to conclusion. We rush to wrap up the story with a happy ending. However the reality is we live in a world where God often seems silent. And dare I say it, God seems dead. What does it look like to live faithfully when experience this in your life?

I just read a quote, that today we are all atheists (I don’t have time to unpack that for you now—just put yourself in the disciples place two-thousand Saturdays ago and maybe that will help). The truth is I experience the death of God in my life a lot more than the resurrection of God. Even now I am tempted to add a sentence or a paragraph about hope. I’m not going there. Today everyone will be celebrating Easter in my church and I will too (but inside I am going to be contemplating on this Holy Saturday text—I am going to imagine what my faith would look like if I didn’t know Sunday is coming).

By the way, here’s an interesting link on the meaning of Holy Saturday, if you’d like to learn more about the meaning of this day in the Greek Orthodox tradition, also called Holy Pascha.