St. Peter's Lutheran Church Clinton, WA

04/04/2026

If you have small bells lying around, bring them to church. We need them for all the Alleloos. Key chains work as well. Bells, bells, bells.

04/04/2026

Holy Saturday: The Day Nothing Happens

There is a day in the story where God does not speak.

There’s no thunder.
No angel.
No voice tearing the veil of the sky.

His body is already in the tomb.
The stone is already sealed.
The mourners have gone home.

And the world—astonishingly—keeps going.

Holy Saturday is the day after hope has failed
and before hope is reborn,
though no one even entertained the thought that hope could be reborn.

Not really.

We know the ending because we live centuries later.
But they did not.
They lived inside this day as an unanswerable question. But the journey isn’t all that far for us, we all have entered a space of grief that hollows us out so completely, that

Even prayer seems embarrassing
What do you say
when God is silent
and the one you trusted is dead?

This is the day when faith feels thin,
almost dishonest,
because every promise seems to echo back…

unanswered.

The disciples are not brave today.
They are not visionary.
They are hiding.
They are remembering what they risked
and wondering if it was all a terrible mistake.

The women who stayed
are not composing resurrection hymns.
They are counting spices.
They are bracing themselves to touch death.

And God—
God is doing nothing that can be seen.

The sun still rises.
Which feels almost cruel.

Birds still sing.
Which feels like mockery.

Holy Saturday is the day the universe refuses to mourn properly.

This is the day that asks the hardest question of all:

What if this is it?

What if the story ends in a tomb?
What if love does not interrupt violence?
What if sacrifice does not transform anything?
What if the ache we feel is not labor—but loss?

Holy Saturday does not allow answers.
It only allows waiting.

Waiting without assurances.
Waiting without signs.
Waiting without language.

This is the day we try not to move too much,
as if motion itself might shatter what little remains.

The church is almost afraid of this day.
We rush past it.
We rehearse the alleluias too early. We dye eggs, and hide them for the little ones to find
We sneak resurrection in through the back door as we’re preparing the Fellowship Hall for the Pancake Breakfast. But isn’t that what we do when we mourn? The simple busy work that keeps our hands busy and feet on the ground?

But Holy Saturday also insists:

Sit here.

Sit with the sealed tomb.
Sit with the unanswered prayer.
Sit with the possibility that the world may remain broken.

Because this day tells the truth about human life.

There are Saturdays that do not resolve.
There are losses that do not transform.
There are silences that stretch on longer than we can bear.

There are times when faith is not belief—
it is endurance.

If resurrection comes,
it will come as gift, not guarantee.

And so tonight we do not proclaim.
We do not celebrate.
We do not explain.

We keep watch.

We sit in the gray.
Not light.
Not dark.
But the long, aching in‑between.

Holding the breath of the world.
Waiting to see
whether God will speak again.

04/02/2026

Maundy Thursday marks the night of Jesus' last supper where He instituted the Lord's Supper and when He was betrayed. The word "Maundy" comes from the latin mandamus which means "commandment" because on this night Christ instituted the final commandment to love one another as He has loved us.

04/01/2026

Matthew 26: 1-16
The Scent of Grace

Every year on Ash Wednesday, someone presses their thumb to my forehead and leaves a cross of ash and oil. And every year, the scent stays with me longer than I expect. Balsamic. Piney. Earthy. A little sharp. A little sweet. It lingers on my skin, in the collar of my shirt. I catch it hours later, sometimes the next morning, and it reminds me:
You are dust, yes—but you are also held.
I’ve been thinking about that scent this week, because Matthew tells us that just before Jesus walks toward betrayal, toward Gethsemane, toward the cross, a woman breaks open a jar of nard and pours it over him. Pure, costly, extravagant. And nard doesn’t fade quickly. It clings. It seeps into the pores. It follows you.
So I imagine Jesus—
still smelling of her hands,
still carrying the fragrance of devotion,
still marked by tenderness—
as he steps into the night.
As he steps toward the cross; the tomb.
The disciples don’t understand what she’s done. They call it waste. Judas calls it too much. But she knows what time it is. She anoints him as if she’s preparing a body. She blesses him while he’s still breathing. She gives him the last kindness he will receive before the world turns violent.
And that scent goes with him.
Into the upper room.
Into the garden.
Into the trial.
Onto the cross.
Into the Tomb.

A fragrance of love that refuses to leave him.
And suddenly I realize:
Ash Wednesday and Holy Week are telling the same story.

A thumb on a forehead.
Oil on skin.
Hands on feet.
Hair wiping tears.
A cross traced in ash.
A cross raised on a hill.

All of it intimate.
All of it embodied.
All of it scented with love that lingers longer than fear.

Maybe that’s what carries us through Lent—not our discipline, not our resolve, not our perfect observance, but the scent of grace that clings to us even when we forget it’s there.

We walk toward Easter still smelling of the One who has already touched us, already blessed us, already claimed us.

And that fragrance—stubborn as mercy—goes with us all the way.
Shalom
Steve

03/30/2026

03/29/2026

Praise God! St. Peter's has Sunday School. We are blessed and give thanks for our new Sunday School leaders.

03/22/2026

For Peace throughout the world
🙏