ISSUES OF FAITH: Times to come

Published 1:30 am Friday, March 27, 2026

Readings: Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent of the Revised Common Lectionary

O Lord, you relieve our necessity out of the abundance of your great riches: Grant that we may accept with joy the salvation you bestow, and manifest it to all the world by the quality of our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

WELL, AT THIS time of the year, we have a bit of an oddity, liturgically speaking. Most days, the lectionary is blank, nothing going on, nothing happening except for the occasional feast day. This close to Easter, though we’re towards the end of Lent, we start having daily services.

Well, actually, daily readings (not to worry, worshipers, there’s another daily lectionary for every single day of the church year, you won’t have to worry about what lesson you have to use.) But if you were to take a look at it at https://lectionarypage.net, you’d see what I’m saying here. Lent has daily lessons (so has Advent near Christmas), but for most months, blank pages with no readings.

So what’s Lent look like for today, the Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent? I have to say, it’s Jeremiah and pretty gloomy, and a Christ pictured near his death, in the Church’s time.

Jeremiah is as grumpy as ever: on the one hand, “I have become a laughingstock all day long; / everyone mocks me. // For whenever I speak, I must cry out, / I must shout, “Violence and destruction!”

I just bet you have, Jerry. There’s no joy to be found here. Most of the poetic sections of the Hebrew Scriptures consist of two modes if they go towards the dyspeptic. First you hear that the world, or the Gentiles, or the Nations, or your friends, whoever, are speaking out against you. That can go on for a few verses, like those quoted here. And then, there’s a great bit of turnaround, what in Italian would be called a “volta,” literally, the turn, when sorrow turns to joy.

But not quite yet. Here we stay in sadness.

Instead, “For the word of the Lord has become for me / a reproach and derision all day long. // If I say, ‘I will not mention him, / or speak any more in his name, // then within me / there is something like a burning fire // shut up in my bones…”

Our complicit silence in God’s testing of us becomes something like a medical condition. “Doc,” we feel like saying, “I feel a burning in my bones.” We want to contain our sorrow, but we can’t.

Here we see a very real sign of the way Christianity does sometimes feel, when God’s own self feels distant, “I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”

See that sudden stop? Bam. We hit the wall. We know the subject: hold it in, keep it quiet, shhhhh, shush, don’t fuss. Don’t cry out, don’t complain out loud (the psalmists and the prophets are never afraid of making a huge noise of grief and desolation). Instead, the simple realization: “I cannot.”

That’s exactly right. God’s absence, or apparent absence, is painful, the sickness unto death.

Another name of that time away from God is that of St. John of the Cross: “the dark night of the soul,” when we wail out to God, when we blame God for what’s going on.

And why does it hurt so bad, so deeply? Because we are in crucifixion time, when our sins are passed on to God, and, to change metaphors, God starts the renovation process. We just had our main floor bathroom renovated while the construction company gutted the old shower and put in a new one.

For us, it was extremely inconvenient. For our house, if it could feel, I’m sure the process was extremely painful. Nails pulling out, walls being pulled off, new panels glued on. Our souls feel that pain of God’s renovation in the same way. It hurts. And God feels very, very far away because God’s so deep within us, wrenching out our hearts and giving them a spring cleaning.

Another time is around the corner, though, trust.

As Jeremiah says (after complaining some more about his neighbors), “Sing to the Lord; / praise the Lord! // For he has delivered the life of the needy / from the hands of evildoers.”

Yup, those old walls maybe hiding water damage or mildew or mold are gone. And therefore there is a new life for us, when we’ve been needy, and for the poor always. Everything’s white and clear, new and refreshed. We’re ready to go on.

In this case, we’re heading for Easter and the Great Weekend we call the Triduum is upon us, three services right in a row, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Great Vigil of Easter in which we read out lessons and sing hymns and eat at God’s table. It’s been a long wait, but here we are.

What Christ found out to be true when those around him doubted him and made him go to another country, that then “[m]any came to him, and they were saying, ‘John [the Baptizer] performed no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.’ And many believed in him there.”

We should believe in him as well, and let his light shine upon us in the candles and the Easter morn. We’ll tell each other our histories and sing the old songs and feel joy again, God be praised.

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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Previously a deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, Dr. Keith Dorwick is a lay person continuing his walk with God who is a community member of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Port Angeles. He’s also the executive director of e-space (https://e-space.website), his next holy adventure.