Holy Saturday.
It is the most holy of liminal spaces. The space between the Friday and the Sunday.
The day after all the gore of the Friday. Forsaken, Jesus was disfigured so as to be unrecognisable. He became sin for us and our salvation, six hours suspended above the world that he so loves, surrounded for the last three of those hours by every kind of darkness in the agonies of hell. He meets us in our sufferings and carries away our shame. He freely drinks down to the dregs the cup containing the wrath of God poured out against sin because God, the Trinity, was destroying death by death. But behold! Look at what our sin does to God and to ourselves. "Behold the man!"
Saturday. The day before the glories of the Sunday. Where saints long dead are seen alive in the streets, the prison gates of Sheol flung wide never to be closed again. We captives are free. All this because of his triumphant life, death, and rising. The guards bolt, fleeing from the brilliant and unstoppable glory. Oh yes, those night watchmen take the hush money, but imagine, are they not haunted for the rest of their days because of what they saw that day? The second Adam! Mistaken for being a gardener because the Angels have put away their flaming swords, and the way back into something even better than the memory of Eden is at hand. The angels, instead, are sighted one sitting on top of the stone rolled away. Another two behave like perfect book-ends to where he lay but is to be found there now more. Yes, those angelic light sabres are well and truly back in their belts, and the trumpets are out, for their message is in the medium of their appearance and body language. God himself has sat down. All is at rest. And there is a double portion of peace even in the fear-filled places, like inside graves or behind locked doors. All things are being made new. Shalom. Shalom.
Saturday is just as peaceful. The picture of complete trust is contained within that tomb. It is a day of holy rest and an active waiting for a word to come to pass. It is the hours before a promise fulfilled. Jesus is all wrapped up in the linens, held fast first by rigor mortis before dead muscles relax, and gravity and time will carry on the work of holding on tightly back to the dust. He is cold on the slab, still smelling so sweet from the lingering, now faint, memory of the contents of that alabaster jar poured out.
In the mystery of it all, there is more going on in this place of quiet trust than meets the eye. For somewhere inside Holy Saturday, Trinity is kissing her Neo, telling him to get up. The Matrix is collapsing, and Agent Smith is learning that his bullets are no longer fit for purpose. Gandalf the Grey is becoming Gandalf the White, and woe betide that Balrog. The little mice of Narnia nibble on the ropes that hold fast Aslan slain on the stone table because they sense the deeper magic. One like Aslan will roar, and he will have the keys to death, hell and the grave. Yes, that deeper magic! One more wonderful than Wonka is here, and "you have never had chocolate like this." But for that chocolate to flow into the town's fountains, he must liberate the hoarded supply deep underground. It's an ingredient in a brand-new recipe. Truly, a world of pure imagination thought up before the foundation of the world.
Holy Saturday is also a container, where back above ground on the other side of that stone, still sealed shut, all hope seems to be dashed, all courage gone. The ringing horrors of the day before played back ad nauseam. For right enough, a rooster crowed. Denial happened despite the best of heroic intentions. The shepherd struck, the sheep scattered. Dreams of liberation likewise vanished. What now, ask the disciples? What was all that anyway? We had thought that the increase of God's government would rest on his shoulders. Instead, we watched from afar and saw his shoulder dislocated, stretched out, a cursed man dying on a tree.
Holy Saturday is the holy confluence of all of these themes, the meeting place of Friday's effects and Sunday's redemption. It is a microcosm of where the now and the not yet of the Kingdom of God meet, and all our Holy Saturdays participate in that first Saturday. So amidst the currents of trust meeting distrust, hope not disappointed, meeting a hope deferred and a heart made sick, there is a wonderful place to go. Your holy baptism points to it and participates in it, journey with Jesus into that grave. Lay down your rights, your agendas, all the pain of a life lived where self is Lord. Take up your cross. Follow him. Come and die to self. And wait to be raised, where the self receives itself in the eyes of another. Where a nail-pierced hand, made new and making all things new, is placed on your stony heart, paddles charged to 200 volts. The voice of many waters, he speaks,
"Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
and come away,
for behold, the winter is past;
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land" (Song of Songs 2:10–12)
Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.
May you all have a blessed Easter.