The first time I heard the term “Holy Saturday” I shrugged my shoulders. Nothing in my evangelical background prepared me to think of the Saturday before Easter as anything other than ‘move up’ day in the Masters Golf Tournament. Then the church I pastored decided to do a Saturday Easter Vigil service. Early Easter! Bring it on! Anything is better than all of this waiting! Who wants to wait? Get to the good part, please.
Inquiring whether "expectation" is the fundamental and crucial aspect of Christian experience, Father Alexander Schmemann prompts us to consider the meaning of Holy Saturday.1 This day is a miniature representation of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, characterized by anticipation, waiting, and hope. As Schmemann describes, this "middle day", this “quiet of Holy Saturday” symbolizes our existence in this world, as we prepare for the day without end – the reign of God proclaimed by Jesus. I think Holy Saturday is meant to provoke in us an impatience with the world as it is, wondering if resurrection will ever break through.
The early Christians thought a LOT about Holy Saturday. They didn’t just see it as a day to kick rocks and live in sorrow. Nor as a day to shine your shoes for Easter morning. Something was happening on this day that was monumental. It actually made it into the Apostle’s Creed no less! And it’s not the first gear-grind every evangelical has with the Apostle’s Creed i.e. ‘‘holy catholic church” requiring the obligatory evangelical reassurance to congregants (usually in a footnote) “this isn’t Roman Catholic, this is catholic like universal, so chill”.
Rather, it’s the other phrase that made you cringe the first time you saw it as an evangelical: “he descended into hell”. Jesus did WUT!? I mean there are those two zombie-weird verses in Matthew 27 when it says the tombs in Jerusalem cracked open and dead people walked around and were seen by many. Haven’t heard a whole lot of preachers trotting that one out for a sermon. But Jesus spending a short weekend in hell before he resurrects? Again, WUT?!
Those earliest followers of Jesus saw an epic rescue taking place. They saw Jesus going into the heart of darkness, the other side, the mysterious ‘hell’ if you like, to shut the place down. To defeat the power of death, to bind Satan, to turn death into the portal to eternal life. Brad Jersak puts it this way: “in Christ’s death, the power of death is broken. You don’t need to be afraid of it anymore. Death cannot separate you from the love of God and in fact, death as non-being or perpetual torment no longer exists. In Christ, death has become a doorway to eternal life.”2 Perhaps this is why Mother Theresa, when asked if she believes in hell said somewhere, “yes, I just don’t believe anyone is there.”
This is the Great Exodus, where Jesus descends through the gates of Hades, shattering them, and leaving them in ruins as he takes its prisoners to freedom. Talk about drama!
To apply this one could say that just as Jesus went into the depths of darkness to overcome death and its hold on us, so today Jesus is unafraid to enter into any hellish, gloomy, despondent, or anxious state we may be experiencing in this life. Jesus told us the Spirit of God would be sent to walk alongside us through it all. That’s part of what the ascension is all about, Jesus can now “play in ten thousand places”3 through the Spirit. And She will be with us, so that we may experience however many resurrections we need in this life filled with “harrassed and helpless”4 folks like ourselves.
For some of us, we need to sit with these ideas because they are new. And disruptive, as new ideas tend to be. For others, we are on a journey of rethinking all of it, so even this part needs to be put to rest before we can consider it again. And still others are just really confused about all of it and don’t see a need to fill in any blanks about what’s happening on Holy Saturday. All good. Whatever the case, you have to admit, it’s a better story, a more beautiful gospel if you will, than a passive Jesus waiting on a resurrection miracle all day.
It might be ‘move up’ day on the Masters, but for Jesus, it is “move down” day. The Great Descent. He had work to do.
This graphic is from the link in the footnotes to Brad Jersak’s excellent article.
A few Holy Saturday Musical Offerings
The first of these is what I consider U2’s least known best song. As you listen to Bono, know that he’s channeling Judas Iscariot. I can hardly watch this without tears. A Holy Saturday anthem if you will.
The second of these is Andy Gullahorn singing “Even Hell Is Not a God Forsaken Place” (what a title!)
“Is not expectation the basic and essential category of Christian experience? We wait in love, hope and faith. And this waiting for "the resurrection and the life of the world to come," this life which is "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:34), this growth of expectation in love, in certitude; all this is our own "Great Saturday." Little by little everything in this world becomes transparent to the light that comes from there, the "image of this world" passes by and this indestructible life with Christ becomes our supreme and ultimate value.
Every year, on Great Saturday, after this morning service, we wait for the Easter night and the fullness of Paschal joy. We know that they are approaching — and yet, how slow is this approach, how long is this day! But is not the wonderful quiet of Great Saturday the symbol of our very life in this world? Are we not always in this "middle day," waiting for the Pascha of Christ, preparing ourselves for the day without evening of His Kingdom?”
https://www.schmemann.org/byhim/matinsholysaturday.html
https://www.ptm.org/holy-week-resurrection-morning-a-harrowing-exit-brad-jersak which is also the source of the graphic in this post.
Thank you Gerard Manley Hopkins. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44389/as-kingfishers-catch-fire
Matthew 9:36
Holy Saturday was a big deal in Jerusalem. Still.