Holy Saturday – what do we do we this day and how do we preach on it.
In many ways, we struggle to know what to do with this day. If you are like me, I arrive at Holy Saturday tired. This Saturday is a day I could do without. I think in many ways it is because it is a day of nothingness, and therein is its uncomfortability.
It is easy to make it a day of waiting. In one sense that is nonsense. I am not sure those who had followed Jesus from the Galilee to Jerusalem were waiting. If they were waiting, they were waiting to see when they might escape. Their dreams had been shattered. They were not reflecting on the last week. It would have been excruciatingly painful to do so. And there was not yet anything to look forward to. Dead messiahs did not rise from the dead, especially ones who had so clearly been deserted by God. (In a week that has seen the report of further discoveries of scrolls by the Dead Sea, I am reminded that there are references within the scrolls of a Messiah being hung on a tree and cursed. Of course, this is something developed by Paul and was probably used by Jewish apologists arguing that Jesus was not the Messiah).
For Mark, Holy Saturday is none day, Luke and John follow him – only in Matthew has some activity. It is not however done by the disciples, rather it is by those who had sought Jesus’ execution. It is the bizarre case of the party of purity working on the sabbath by speaking to the Gentile (and presumably unclean authorities) to ensure that there is a guard set on the tomb. It is about control. In some ways this makes me smile, the authorities still need to control Jesus to ensure that Jesus body remains where it is.
If it is not about waiting, is it about harrowing? I love the theology of Jesus vanquishing hell and am captivated by some of the iconography around it. There is a tantalising reference also in 1 Peter of Jesus preaching to imprisoned spirits (fallen angels, watchers), and there is reference to the Messiah doing this in Jewish literature written between the Testaments. Harrowing is not found within the Scriptures.
What if nothing is happening? What if it is a day when it looks like those opposed Jesus had won? I am not sure there is a problem. What if this day is a day when we live with the fact that God does not appear to be potent, but the opposite.
Rowan Williams suggested that we should not let ‘the alleluias of Easter Day drown out the cries of the crucified’. Similarly, we dare not just skip over Holy Saturday. To do so, almost pretends that Jesus was not actually dead. The early Christian statements of faith were always terse. The one found in 1 Corinthians notes, ‘he was buried’. There is a finality about that.
Many years ago, I wrote a piece called ‘Invisible Pain’ reflecting on a particular journey with childlessness in which I included a reflection on Holy Saturday. I argued that there was a sterility about the sealed tomb. The God of Holy Saturday (before the Easter Vigil) is ‘broken and wasted’ (Ellis, 2013, p. 143).
In some respects, it is a day that asks questions that do not call for answers. The disciples were silent. The tomb is too, but somewhere in the battered corpse in a Palestinian tomb the levers of redemption are working. We do not have the words though to explain this, and perhaps the sting for the preacher is that should lead people to silence and stay there with them.
- Who, if anyone, is waiting on Holy Saturday?
- What would Easter mean if on the Saturday God is simply not potent?
- What do you do on Holy Saturday?
lurchersontheedge 