It’s Holy Saturday, and we wait with Jesus

Today is Holy Saturday, the day after Good Friday, and Jesus lies now in the garden tomb. 

Psalm 88, appointed in Morning Prayer for this day, helps me understand the spiritual meaning of why this day is holy and how it brings wholeness to us. 

The Psalmist describes his “depths” of forsakenness by God. Darkness surrounds him. He cannot escape to the light. He feels abandoned, lost, and alone. No wonder he is in tears. 

“Lord,” he asks, “why have you rejected me? Why have you hidden your face from me?”

Psalm 88 gives me insight into what it must be like for Jesus at this moment, on this Holy Saturday. 

Yesterday, Good Friday, Jesus suffered and died on the cross, Thee, he absorbed the consequences of our sin,  like, if you will, a soldier throwing himself between the blast of shrapnel from an Improvised Explosive Device and his comrades in arms. 

As that soldier sacrifices his life to save the lives of others, so Jesus gives up his life and saves us from our sins and spiritual death. 

For now, though, and because of his death on the cross, Jesus lies in the tomb, “counted as one who goes down to the Pit, in dark places, and in the abyss….” 

He is “lost among the dead,” as the Psalmist writes of his own state of being, “like the slain who lie in the grave...for they are cut off from your hand.” 

Jesus is in his own depths, cut from God, not because of his sin, for he is without sin, but there, where we are, because of our sins. 

His mission from his Father is to reconcile us to God, or to bring us home to him. And he succeeds: Because of his offering of himself in love on the cross, we are now one with God, and that at-oneness, or atonement, as this Christian doctrine is called, is our salvation, our healing or wholeness, our peace.

From his own depths, the Psalmist asks God, “Do you work wonders for the dead? Will those who have died stand up and give you thanks?”

On this Holy Saturday, Jesus rests in the tomb, and we rest with him, and we wait together for God to answer that question on the third day.

And answer it, he will for Jesus and for us. Thanks be to God!

Our Holy Week journey begins in Jerusalem, ends in the New Jerusalem

May God bless you this Palm Sunday and your Holy Week. Today, we remember Jesus’ into Jerusalem. We remember; that is, we both recall this event, and we re-member it: we connect once more to it. We are there with that crowd in the holy city, joining the others in the excitement as we greet the King, who has long been prophesied. In the Daily Office reading for today from Zechariah 9.9-12, we read the prophet’s words: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Lo, your king comes, triumphant and victorious is he, riding on a colt the foal of an ass....” The prophet goes on to describe this kingship: the ending of violence and war, the freeing of captives (and we can interpret that word broadly to include all who are captives to whatever denies human beings their full freedom as God’s children, including poverty, oppression, and all the other ways that we humans diminish and destroy one another out of our sinfulness) and the establishing of global peace. “...he shall command peace to the nations.” As I read this text this morning during my prayer time, I felt as if the Lord were opening my blind eyes to his truth, and out of that truth, I experienced a surge of hope and joy. King Jesus is different from every king, every ruler who ever wore the crown or held the scepter. He inaugurates a unique dominion, a kingdom unparalleled in human history, for it is one of love, which is our looking not to our own interests but to the interests of others, to their complete wellbeing. We put God and others first. Out of that Jesus-style of love, all it, come justice, freedom and peace. His love, not force, is the only way to establish such a kingdom. Every act of love—every act of physical distancing and every protective mask created for use by a health care professional during this COVID-19 crisis, every phone call to check on an elderly neighbor or church member, every essential trip to the grocery or pharmacy for someone in need, every contribution to our own churches, to ministries feeding the hungry and housing the homeless and advocating for justice for the poor—every act of love is an act of building up Christ’s kingdom in this world. And we go on loving until we greet our Lord once again at his return to complete his saving work in this world. Then, we shall see the New Jerusalem of the 21st and 22nd chapters of the Book of Revelations. God bless your Holy Week journey with Jesus from his entry into Jerusalem, to his death on the cross, which is, symbolically, his kingly crown and scepter, to his burial and, then, to his glorious resurrection.