But about the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.” - Hebrews 1:8-9

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 31, 2018): Hebrews 1

Jared Brock in “A Year of Living Prayerfully” comments that “there is a season for everything under the sun—even when we can’t see the sun.” Dark nights of the soul exist in every life. We have no defense, no behavioral trait that will make us immune, and no drug that can completely remove the times from our lives. The frequency may change from person to person, but not the existence of those moments when we can no longer see the sun.

Today is Black Saturday. It is the day that Jesus spent in the grave. Today is Christianity’s “dark night of the soul.” For this moment in time, there simply is no sun – or son. The Son of God for this moment lays in a cold grave. The disciples are scattered and scared. Each one of them is experiencing their own dark nights of the soul when the sun simply refuses to shine. It almost seems inconceivable that on this day of all days our scripture text takes us to the author of Hebrews’ quoting of a wedding Psalm written by the Sons of Korah- and a passage that C. S. Lewis considered to be an appropriate Christmas reading.

The author of Hebrews quotes from Psalm 45. And the Psalm, as already mentioned a wedding Psalm, starts out speaking of a remarkable young man. Through the first few verses, the Psalm could be speaking about a man, admittedly a special man, yet still an example of the human species. But with the words the author quotes here, all of that changes. This Psalm about a remarkable young man becomes unintelligible if it is still a man, and not God, about whom the writer of the Psalm is speaking. Sometimes it is easy to imagine that the early Christians went randomly through the Tanakh searching for references that might point toward Jesus. But this is often not the case. The change in the tone of the Psalm has long made Psalm 45 a Messianic reading, even centuries before the birth of Jesus. What the author of Hebrews does is take this text which has already been declared by Jewish expositors as Messianic, and makes the application to the life of Jesus. He reminds his readers that there is a grand set of reading from the Tanakh that applies to the Messiah, and therefore should apply to Jesus.

For us today, it is a reminder that even on this dark day, Jesus still reigns. It is a salve to heal our “dark night of the soul” by reminding us that there is still more to come, more that starts tomorrow.

But that should also be left for tomorrow. We, like the disciples, have a hope that is based on all that has been written. Today we have faith in the prophets and in God. But today we are also reminded that in every life there are days when the sun does not shine. But the existence of those days do not change our reality. Even with the Messiah lying dead in the grave, we have hope for tomorrow. We can go on with the strength that God has given us, and believing in every word written by long dead prophets.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Hebrews 2