Holy Saturday, forwards and backwards

We can reflect on Holy Saturday, the day the Lord Jesus spent in the tomb, in two different directions.  Both are instructive, and each brings out a different emphasis.

Firstly, we can think our way into the story, and work forwards in time through the events.  Friday has happened.  The Lord is crucified.  Everything about Friday screamed finality.  Jesus breathed his last, gave up his Spirit.  "It is finished" - think about how you might have interpreted that on the Friday, before you knew what was going to follow.  The spear, the blood, the water.  And then the dead body laid out in the tomb, the heavy stone rolled across the doorway.  The last light disappears.  That's the end.

Reading the final verses of Lamentations at Evening Prayer yesterday, I was struck by the fact that it might really have been the end:

Lord, bring us back to yourself, so we may return;
renew our days as in former times,
unless you have completely rejected us
and are intensely angry with us.

It might be all over.  The mercy of God is new every morning - but...  Karl Barth asks at one point whether the mercy of God might not have taken the form of making a final end to us.  Would it not have been mercy for Christ to bear away our sin - remove the threat of eternal judgement - and yet just draw a line under the whole existence of humanity?  Like the mercy of expelling Adam from the garden, so that he would not eat from the tree of life and become an eternal sinner...

Thinking forwards from Friday into Saturday, we hold our breath.  Is it all over?

But second, we think backwards, from our position after Resurrection Day.  We know that Saturday is not the end.  Thinking forwards has taught us not to take the resurrection for granted, but thinking backwards we nevertheless know that it is coming.  Tomorrow will be Easter Sunday.  The Lord Jesus is alive, and reigns with the Father and the Spirit in the unity of the One God.  Though he was dead, he lives.

And yet he really was dead.  That needs to be remembered.  The one who lives for us really died for us.  That is gloriously good news!  He died bearing my sin; he died to put my old self to death.  And he really did.  There is no doubt about it.  His body lay still in the tomb.  My sin - my liability to judgement, my corruption, my uncleanness - is dead with him.  I can live now free of that, by the Spirit of the living Lord Jesus.  The stone that rolled across the door of the tomb is the final goodbye to my old sinful self.

Thinking back from Sunday to Saturday, we say: yes, it is all over.  And now everything is new.

Behind this heavy stone

What have we buried here, behind this heavy stone?
Why the effort, why the seal?
What is it that we've buried here?

We buried sin,
and death and curse and hell.
We buried wrath.
The end of everything is buried here,
behind this heavy stone.

Is that all that we buried, behind this heavy stone?
Is that all?  Nothing more?

We buried all mankind, each one,
still and dead.
We buried you and me.
All folk are buried here,
behind this heavy stone.

Just us?  But why the guards?
The stone is heavy.  What need for them?

We buried God.
The Creator lies entombed.
We buried Sinai, we buried Zion,
the glory and the cloud.
We buried God,
wrapped sheets around his face;
we looked on it and did not die.
But he died.
We buried him behind this heavy stone,
and placed the seal,
and set the guard.
We buried God.

Well that makes sense.
We wouldn't want him getting out again.

The unique sorrow

When Israel lamented the destruction of Jerusalem, that terrible event was portrayed as incomparable.  "Look, and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow..."  "What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Zion?  What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you..?"

Is this just grief-stricken hyperbole?  From what I know of the ancient world, the fate of Jerusalem was far from unique; from what I read in the news, much the same is happening around the world today.  It could, of course, be hyperbole.  The authors of Holy Scripture were men fully caught up in the national life of Israel and Judah, and felt keenly the national grief at the loss of Zion.  It would be no surprise if they gave vent to that grief in their writings.  But I think there is more behind it.  The suffering of Jerusalem is unique because two unique circumstances stand behind it.

The first is that the sin of Jerusalem is unique.  Jeremiah writes:

For cross to the coasts of Cyprus and see, or send to Kedar and examine with care;
see if there has been such a thing.
Has a nation changed its gods,
even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
for that which does not profit.

 No other nation has so rejected its gods - and those gods were just their own inventions, which could easily be changed at will!  But Israel has uniquely turned away from God, the Living God.  The sin is unique.

And the second circumstance stands behind that one.  Israel was a people uniquely privileged with knowledge of God, uniquely party to a gracious covenant with him.  "Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live?"  "He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his rules."  Israel's unique relationship with God means that their rejection of God is a unique sin, and their suffering is the unique punishment of God on that unique sin.  No matter the historical resemblances to other situations, the internal logic is utterly different.

When one man died on a cross, his historical circumstances were far from unique; indeed, two other crucifixions occurred on either side.  But this man was unique, because he uniquely bore the guilt of all human sin.  And he was unique because he only stood in total unity with God, as God the Son incarnate.

Is there any sorrow like his sorrow?

Really dead

The day Christ spent in the tomb is all about this: he was really dead.  It wasn't a trick.  The Romans didn't half-execute anyone.  He was dead.  He had utterly succumbed to the brutality and horror of life in a sinful world.  More: he had experienced in full the curse of God which lies on a rebellious race.  He was dead.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.  He descended into hell...

Today is the proof that he tasted death.  And here's the thing with death: you don't get the full flavour unless you drain the cup, right down to the bottom.  There is the bitterness, in the last swallow.  There is the vile taste that catches in the throat.  He tasted death.

For everyone.  He drank it down for everyone,

And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.

Isaiah 25:7

Disappointment

So, this is it.

I am not sure, now, exactly what we were expecting.  Some sort of new beginning, I suppose.  It always felt like a new beginning, to me at least, whenever he spoke.  There was something fresh about it, as if I was listening to a voice that wasn't touched or tinged by all the dirt of centuries of human language.  But then again, sometimes I thought it was an old voice - sometimes, perhaps, it felt more like days of old than a new beginning.  Like Elijah, or one of them; those men who spoke so fearlessly to kings and thundered the word of God to Israel.  Except when they came for Elijah, he burned them with fire from heaven.  I cannot hear from anyone that our Teacher put up any fight, or spoke to the governor with any words of power.  It would have been different in the olden days.  They had fire back then.

We had fire, for a little while.  We were hot with it.  But now he is cold in the grave, and we have gone cold with him.

I don't suppose there is any point in hanging around.  Somehow we all gathered together, afterwards, but it was more out of fear than anything else.  Not sure what we would have done if they had come for us.  Probably nothing.  The fire has gone out of us.  We huddled together as if we could maybe - just maybe - feel the last warmth of the dying embers.  But now I think even that has gone.  There will be no farewells, I think.  We are embarrassed in each other's company.  In truth, I do not know these people.  They are not the same people we walked in with, just a week ago.  I dare not look them in the eye; thankfully, they avoid my gaze as carefully as I avoid theirs.

No, we will just slip away, as I suppose every one else will in time, when the truth sinks in, and they see that it is ended once for all.  The world didn't change as we thought it might, and now it's time for us to get back to the world.  Let the dreams die.  At least there will be no packing; he called us to follow him with nothing, and now nothing is all we have with us.  For today, the empty Sabbath, the restless rest.  Tomorrow we will slip away.

It's a long walk back to Emmaus.

Holy Saturday

I think Holy Saturday is the strangest day of the year. I also think it is the day most representative of the whole of the year.

Yes, I do have a slightly odd brain.

Let me explain. Holy Saturday is strange because it is neither here nor there. Liturgically, it is stuck somewhere between "Christ has died" and "Christ has risen". It's this curious waiting time between the cross and the resurrection. What does it mean? Is the world fixed? It doesn't look like it. Did the Messiah win? It doesn't look like it...

But then, Holy Saturday is also the day that most resembles my daily experience of life. Somewhere inbetween. Not anymore in the darkness of the past; not yet in the glorious brightness of the future. The whole of life is lived knowing that something decisive happened in the past, and something decisive will happen in the future. But I live in the meantime. And if I'm honest, I still look around at the world, and indeed at myself, and sometimes ask: is it fixed? Did he win? Because honestly, it doesn't look like it.

Holy Saturday is the day of holy angst.

For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened--not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 2 Cor 5:4
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Rom 8:22,23