Morning Psalm

• Psalm 146
• Psalm 147

Evening Psalm

• Psalm 148
• Psalm 149

Old Testament

• Exodus 13:3-10
• 1 Corinthians 15:41-50

New Testament

–

Gospel Reading

• Matthew 28:16-20

Morning Psalm

• Psalm 97
• Psalm 99

Evening Psalm

• Psalm 115

Old Testament

• Exodus 12:40-51
• 1 Corinthians 15:29-41

New Testament

–

Gospel Reading

• Matthew 28:1-16

Morning Psalm

• Psalm 103

Evening Psalm

• Psalm 111
• Psalm 115

Old Testament

• Exodus 12:28-39
• 1 Corinthians 15:12-28

New Testament

–

Gospel Reading

• Mark 16:9-20

Morning Psalm(s)

• Psalm 93
• Psalm 98

Evening Psalm(s)

• Psalm 66

Old Testament

• Exodus 12:14-17

New Testament

–

Gospel Reading

• Mark 16:1-8

As you prepare to worship the Easter morning, spend some time in quiet worship. He loves you, wanted to adopt you, and offered a costly sacrifice to pay your penalty.

Rest in that love this morning.

From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’ clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ~Matthew 27:45-46

…continued from yesterday

No, God is who He will be. God is where He will be. The Father loves the Son. The Father abandons the Son to a call, a mission, a vocation that He willingly took up. We seek to figure out why it had to be this way to our own peril. In this act, in the declaration of God forsaking God, we are stunned and scandalized by a God whose glory is beyond our comprehension, whose good sometimes appears as what we would call bad, or dare I say, evil.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” is a declaration that no idol would ever dare make. False powers and manipulative power-mongers cower in fear at being exposed for what they are. They shrink when their impotence is held to the light. But our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit put on display for the world in this moment on the cross a reality that we might not be smart or brave enough to handle. This is no tribal god, no false god, no failed revolutionary, executed for his brazenness…

It is the singular Christ, the Messiah, with arms outstretched to embrace and bring life to a broken world. And in this Messiah, a broken world sees itself. Broken people at their absolute lowest: strung out, beat down, disappointed or a disappointment themselves. Shivering, shaking, begging, weeping, feeling completely alone…these people can see

hope on that cross because this Christ, this God, has experienced the abandonment that they know so well. And when we see ourselves on that cross, when we see our wounds born by the Son of God, it does something in us. Conversion. New birth. Getting saved. Whatever you call it, it took a God brave enough to forsake and be forsaken. It took a God brave enough to take on the accusations of murder and cruelty from people throughout history.

But we serve a God who was more interested in giving us life than in protecting His own reputation.

That’s right, a God more interested in giving us life than in protecting His reputation. Ours is a God who sacrificed everything, who faced forsakenness Himself so that we might not be forsaken. All praise to this God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

• As you read this Good Friday and Holy Saturday meditation, how do you feel?
• Take time to express gratitude to God for the beautiful mystery of Christ’s work on the cross…and the empty tomb.

Read Matthew 27

It’s been said that “Jesus is God’s psalm for the world.” This is why we love the Psalms so much, pray the Psalms, read, recite and memorize the Psalms. Every one of them was written before Jesus ever took an incarnate breath, yet His character drips from them. We could say that we pray Jesus when we pray the Psalms.

When we read the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” Who leads us through the valley? Who eases our fears, but Jesus?

But it’s not so comforting to see Jesus in the 22nd Psalm, though it is Jesus we see, and clearly. From the cross, Jesus utters the unthinkable opening line from that gut-wrenching psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

We’ve studied the Trinity, the mystery of the God who exists and has always existed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We confess and believe that Jesus has just as much claim to the title “God,” as the Father or the Spirit, and yet we hear Jesus uttering this God forsaken plea. It’s too much for us to wrap our minds around that the One who abandons and the One who is abandoned is God.

The One who abandons and the one who is abandoned is God.

This sounds like utter nonsense. We’d like to resolve this tension, give God His armies to reign like a proper king, but that would rob Jesus of His authority. To resolve the tension is to confess a God other than the one we see in the face of Jesus on the cross.

Continued tomorrow…