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!