Pastor Matthew Kruse - Holy Saturday - April 4

Child of God, by water and the Holy Spirit, God gives you a new birth, and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God forgives you all your sins, strengthens you in all goodness, and keeps you in eternal life.  Amen.  (ELW Individual Confession and Forgiveness)

A Prayer for Holy Saturday

Stay with us in the tension, Lord.  

Reveal glimpses of heaven to us on our chunk of earth.

Don’t leave us, Christ—

Down here where the Spirit meets the bone.

Where the promise of life splashes on our foreheads

and the reality of death stares us straight in the face—

Stay with us in the tension, God.

Stay with us in the mess, Lord.

Where the pains and stains, the hurt and hate, the shame and guilt and burden of sin 

Are healed and cleansed and transformed and illumined and freed and lifted 

crossed out 

by God’s grace. Free Gift

Risen He will be.

Accompany us, Christ

not only to the cross, not only to the tomb

but afterwards

Stay with us in the muck, God.

Not yet new heaven and new earth.

Already—God’s agenda is about life.

Absorb our muck, our mess, our tension—

and raise it up, too

to new life.

Pastor Matthew Kruse