The following is adapted from a chapel service I wrote and led at Princeton Theological Seminary. While it wasn’t written for Holy Week, it resonates with the sense of working and waiting in a holy darkness that Christians observe on Holy Saturday—the only full day Christ spent away from the world’s light. Click here for a video recording of the service.
Scripture: Psalm 134
Look, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord.
who stand in the Lord’s house through the nights.
Lift up your hands toward the holy place
and bless the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion,
the Lord who made heaven and earth. (trans. Robert Alter)
Meditation
On the first day of creation, God gave us a gift called day. Daytime brings warmth and light: it fuels our bodies, awes us with blue skies, and illuminates the path before us. We proclaim and hope for “the day of the Lord,” we sing that God’s mercies are “new every morning,” we gather at noontime services like this one and say to each other “this is the day the Lord has made!”
But God gave us another gift on that first day of creation: night. In the language of our worship and even of scripture, “night” and “darkness” often become metaphors for suffering, sin, or evil. Night is something to endure, something to survive or escape. Night is where God is not.
But Psalm 134 has a different idea. In this psalm, night is a time of worship, of standing in the temple and watching for God’s presence. Night is for gathering around fires and lamps and screens, for watching candles throw dancing shadows against the wall, for doing the divine work of caring and caretaking that can’t wait until morning. Night is for listening to the songs of owls and crickets, for telling the stories of old loves and old tragedies, for straining to remember which impossibly tiny, impossibly distant point of light is Sirius and which is Vega.
Night is also scary, of course. It brings danger, especially when we’re alone or unfamiliar with our surroundings. Lions hunt at night. So do war-makers. Conspiracies form at night. So do revolutions.
In this service, our goal is not to ignore night’s trials and fears, but to recognize the nightly rhythm of darkness as a means of God’s presence. Along with the psalmist, we insist that God is with us whatever our nights look like—whether we’re sleeping soundly or tossing and turning, whether we’re on a sunrise hike or working third shift for minimum wage. To live at night is to stand in God’s house, to bless the Lord who made heaven and earth, day and night.
In his poem “Burnt Norton,” T. S. Eliot writes, “I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you / Which shall be the darkness of God.” As we sing about the divine gift of night, this is my invitation to you. Imagine that it is not noon but nightfall. Be still. Let the darkness come upon you. It is the darkness of God.
Reading
One way to honor the gift of night is to watch as it arrives. Notice the sky changing colors, the stars emerging from the void, and the nocturnal animals waking from their sleep. From our beds, we can hear the world moving, as winds and insects and trees offer their praise to God. All of this life is proof that God doesn’t turn away from the world at night, but keeps watch even when our eyes close.
Song: “Night Has Fallen” (a short refrain from Malawi featuring only the words “night has fallen, night has fallen, God our maker, guide us sleeping”)
Reading
Animals have been watching the nights long before we have, and they have much to teach us. In this next song, which comes from the Philippines, God’s love is pictured as a mother hen keeping her brood safe during the night. Like the hen, God shares God’s very being with us—we spend the night surrounded by God’s warmth and God’s breath, and this presence makes it possible for us to rest. As we sing, think of the hen’s nest, a clump of dirt and sticks transformed into a home by the everyday love of a parent.
Song: “When Twilight Comes”
Reading
Our next song is a familiar hymn: “Abide With Me.” At first glance, this song seems to be one of many that associate night with evil. The fifth verse, for example, asks God to “shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.” But what if we think of God’s light not as a flashlight that dispels the darkness but as a star that we can only see because of the darkness? Similarly, the third verse speaks of Earth’s glories “growing dim” in “change and decay.” But as farmers and scientists and ecotheologians remind us, decay is not just destruction; it is new life. As we sing this hymn, let’s practice this kind of resistance to the meanings of darkness that we’ve inherited. Let’s imagine God with us not in spite of the eventide, but because of it.
Song: “Abide With Me”
Prayer
God who made the day and the night, we thank you for the gift of daily darkness. We thank you for the psalmists, poets, and composers who have reminded us of the holiness of night. We thank you for sunsets, constellations, lunar eclipses, and fireflies.
We ask for your presence in the night as we rest, labor, or gather. We ask for your protection as we lie down, vulnerable as baby chicks in a hen’s nest. And we ask for courage as we walk on unlit paths, where we can only see a few feet in front of us.
In the name of Jesus, who came not with the sun but with a star, amen.
Benediction
May God be with you as you work or sleep or worry tonight. May God fill your nights with wonder, with laughter, with adventure, and with contemplation. May you share the gift of night with others. And may the peace of Christ be with you.
Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with majors in English and music, and he is currently a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Virginia. When not writing, he can be found learning the alto recorder, watching obscure Disney movies, and making excruciating puns.
2 Comments
Submit a Comment
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
It was a joy to participate in this chapel service, and a joy to return again to this liturgy in the dark hours stretched between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, quiet except for the very early birds that like to sing outside my window. Thanks, Josh.
Thanks for sharing this Josh, very fitting for Holy Week!