Written by professors, graduates, and others in
the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary community, these reflections, prayers, and spiritual practices will take you along the journey with Jesus through the cross toward resurrection.
Saturday, April 4, 2015
• Psalm 40
• John 19:31–42
When I was in Central America my senior year of seminary, we had the chance to spend a day with theologian Elsa Tamez in Costa Rica. I learned from her that day, in the context of her teaching on the book of James, that “patience is an action verb.” It takes tenacity to wait, to wait it out (whatever “it” is), to trust in the timing of God more than our own.
I’ve come to believe that the notion of hope is an action verb as well. There’s nothing passive about it. It takes sheer, God-granted tenacity to hope in the face of all other evidence to the contrary.
How in God’s name can we dare to hope, especially on a day when we are given to read that the lifeless body of Jesus was entrusted to those who would prepare it for a traditional burial? Hope on a day such as this cannot be about denial or bargaining, as in “maybe he’s not really dead.” Such hope is required to look death squarely in the eye. It is indeed only in God’s name that we can hope, tenaciously holding on with every last ounce to the fact that hate, and sin, and death do not get the last word.
Prescott Williams taught us that one of the “tricks” of the psalmist and prophets was to proclaim God’s victory in the present tense, even when such victory was still clearly out of sight—years, decades, generations away. For Jeremiah, that meant blooming where you’re planted. For the psalmist, it meant enumerating deeds of goodness as though they were already done. For John of Patmos, it meant proclaiming God’s new heaven and earth in the face of the Roman Empire. What will it mean for you and for me? Holy Saturday is precisely the time to declare God’s victory in the here and now while it is still dark outside. And if it doesn’t exactly look like victory at first glance, well, that’s when we get to persist in using and living out that active verb, hope.
Thank you, faithful God, for what you have already accomplished beyond our sight and knowledge. Your faithfulness gives us reason to hope. Help us to find the courage to share that hope with all, even and especially when the balance of evidence seems otherwise. May we live to testify to the fulfillment of our hope, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Amen.
– The Reverend Dr. Sallie Watson (MDiv’87)
Missional Presbyter / Stated Clerk, Presbytery of Santa Fe, and Member of the Austin Seminary Board of Trustees
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