Some sophisticated church people call the three days before Easter, the Triduum. While the first two days are often fully honored, the last Holy Saturday often get short shrift. it is usually a time of preparing for Easter, maybe getting groceries and coloring eggs. Every year during Holy Week, I try to fulfill a promise to myself” to re-read at least parts of Alan Lewis’s Between Cross and Resurrection. Reams of paper have been used to speak of good Friday and Easter, but few have looked with care at Holy Saturday.Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ made a fetish of the torture of Jesus prior to the crucifixion. we will hear a lot of brave words and songs about the defeat of death on Easter Sunday.
Lewis was one of a rare breed of theologians who have the courage, with Luther, to look directly at the cross without flinching. In so doing, they come to a remarkable conclusion, that we find God not only in times of blessing, but in the times of darkness and suffering. Indeed the cross is much less about some sort of criminal justice transaction than it is God willingness to suffer with us as covenant companion.
In the Creeds, we say crucified, dead, and buried. Holy saturday places its focus on dead and buried and pushes us to contemplate what that means in terms of the Christian faith. Lewis puts it starkly: God is in the grave; the Word Incarnate was interred.If you want a sense of how the hopes were crushed go back to the walk to Emmaus passage in Luke 24.
Crucified, dead, and buried is shorthand for underscoring that a good man died, jsut as we all do. this was not an apparition, not a demigod, not an illusion, but the full weight of the human experience met its conclusion.
Holy Saturday stops us in our tracks from making a rush toward Easter.Holy Saturday helps preserve the sheer shock of Easter: new life from the grave. The author of life can make the tomb a womb. Easter vindicates the life of Jesus for those who see the world bathed both in Good Friday shadows and in Easter light.
Alan Lewis did not live to complete his magnum opus. while he was writing it, he was stricken with the cancer that took his middle-aged life. In other words, he was facing Holy Saturday as he worked on his project As mortal, we all face Holy Saturday. In our time we have shown an aversion to facing the dead body and the reality of the grave.The gospel accounts go to great lengths to have Jesus buried, not left for the dogs and vultures on the cross or at its foot. People took the time to care for the body, mangled and bloody. Is it an accident that the resurrection appearances are placed for the women who went to care for and honor the slain Jesus? I have been reading pieces of Thomas Long and thomas Lynch, The Good Funeral. In terms of our reflection here, they wonder if our attempt to skip Holy Saturday moments provide a sufficient attitude of care toward the disposition of remains to their final resting place.
Resting place is a lovely phrase.Recall that a rush to bury jesus occurred as the Sabbath was approaching. In that day of utter rest, jesus lay in the grave. The Sabbath is our reminder that the world goes on without us needing to life a finger. Even in the darkness of the grave, God does not rest, but is present with us as the light of love, no matter what.
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