We reach Saturday on our Holy Week journey. The world calls this “Easter Saturday” but it isn’t Easter yet...
I ended my Good Friday liturgy yesterday with silence. I’m not sure that was expected. What do you do after you’ve encountered the cross? There are no words. I wonder what Jesus’ friends did on the Sabbath. Those who had fled in fear were presumably in the upper room with the door firmly bolted. I suspect there were few words but a collective numbness. Jesus’ mother had presumably gone home with John, having been entrusted to his care. I suspect they just held each other. The authorities presumably breathed a sigh of relief. They had managed to destroy this heretical rebel as a example to others who might dare to challenge them. And what of the women? They presumably spent the day planning to make the sad journey to his tomb to pay their respects and share their memories and mourning together.
Where is Jesus on this Saturday?
Jesus was crucified, killed, yesterday. His body was placed in a tomb. A great stone was placed over the tomb. Then comes the next day, Holy Saturday, and the tomb is sealed, guarded, and made secure. (Matthew 27:57-66)
On Holy Saturday we want to know what’s next or if there will even be a next. Is the tomb the end? We want to know like the characters battered by this week if there is life after this loss. Is there life after Holy Saturday? Holy Saturday is a day of tears and prayers. Where is God? Where is Jesus on this Saturday?
Remember what the Apostles’ Creed says. “He was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead.” Or as another translation says, “He descended into hell.” And that is so beautifully portrayed in the Church’s iconography. It’s called the Harrowing of Hell. That’s where Jesus is on the Holy Saturday of your life.
Look at the icon what do you see? It’s Jesus breaking open the graves, bringing out Adam and Eve, the images and representatives of all people. And there at the bottom is the personification of death tied and bound up. And the locks and keys and chains of death have been broken and scattered.
In the Holy Saturday of our life Jesus descends into the dead and hellish parts of your life, “trampling down death by death, and giving life to those in the tomb.”
I found this reflection:
In life Holy Saturday is also the next day, the day after.
It is the day after the funeral.
It is the day after the body has been buried.
It is the day after the relationship ended.
It is the day after the dream was shattered.
It is the day after we tried and failed.
It is the day after the diagnosis.
It is the day after the tragedy.
It’s the day after we admitted our life was a mess.
It is the day after we realised life is not going the way we planned or intended.
It is the day after we made the wrong decision.
It is the day after our life was forever changed in ways we neither asked for or nor wanted.
Holy Saturday is the day after. It’s a day of silence, stillness, and waiting. There’s not much to say or do on Holy Saturday. The tomb has been made secure and the only thing certain is that things have changed and something has been lost. Holy Saturday is a day of not knowing. There are no answers; only a question, but it’s a day we hold on to hope. No one can take away our right to hope.
I was grateful to Jan, a member of our church at Boroughbridge church for ringing me up at lunchtime yesterday and telling me Premier Christian Radio were having a Good Friday service from Lindisfarne. In that service, the vicar, Sarah used the poem “Double take” by Seamus Heaney. Part of the poem goes like this:
History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.
Believe! Even in the darkness and in the tears and in the waiting and in the questioning and in the rawness. Today is for people living the reality of the day after. And sometimes the day after turns into the week after and the months after and the year after. The events of life can be mentally challenging for a long time. They say don’t hope on this side of the grave. But while we struggle in the unknowing today, Jesus is working away harrowing the gates of hell bursting them open for ever. Death will be no more!
We will see that. But I’m glad today we have a day in our liturgy when those of us who need to know we are remembered in days after or in long periods of waiting and in deep darkness aren’t forgotten. We will make our journey from where we are today to where God would have us be.
The day of resurrection remember begins while it was still dark.
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