Holy Saturday Reflection and Meditation
Reflections by Rev. Shirley Porter
Growing up in the Episcopal Church, I don’t remember much to do about Holy Saturday until we went to church at 10:00 pm. The church would be dark and have a somber, un-holy feel to it. All of the clouds of incense did not help the setting at all. I still cough and gag with incense today.
The book I have been referencing this week, The Last Week by Borg and Crossan, noted that the gospel of Mark also has no mention of Holy Saturday. The verbiage they present is a bit much as they try to explain possibilities why Mark left any mention of the day out of his written work, but I did come away with two thoughts that I had not had before re-reading them today.
The first was that the Kingdom of God was brought to earth by Jesus and so remains on earth through his presence, then death, and remains until the Kingdom is validated, perhaps at the second coming of Christ back to his earthly home.
This is how the author’s present their theory.
“… the kingdom of God [has] already begun through Jesus, the Son of Man [has] already arrived in Jesus, and the general bodily resurrection [has] already started with Jesus, intertwine with one another, serve to interpret one another, and, taken together, reveal the heart of Mark’s theology.” (p.186) You really need to read the book to get the full gist of understanding.
My take away is that God’s plan in sending Jesus at Christmas, living three years or so with human disciples, and then having them witness his horrific death was all a plan to ensure that one in all and all in one remains a constant as we relate to God as beloved.
The second piece that struck me is that Jesus did very little completely on his own.
Even when he left the crowds to pray or have some peace, he often took someone with him. He could have eaten his last meal alone, but all twelve were present. When Jesus walked to Golgotha, there was a crowd with him to witness and minister to him. Was that the norm? I do not know.
As he was attached to the vertical pole in the ground, two others sentenced that day were with him. They shared the same patch of ground on that hill. When he breathed his last breath, he promised one of those crucified with him a place in the Kingdom. The Kingdom he brought that would remain when he was lifted up. As he professed: I, if I be lifted up will draw all [people] unto me.
So as he rises from the dead, he does not rise alone. He gathers up the one next to him on the cross. He stops by the graves of those who have died before him and escorts them into the heavenly Kingdom of divine presence.
The authors say it like this:
“It was not, as it might have been imagined, an instantaneous flash of divine light, but an interactive process between divinity and humanity. A joint operation between God and ourselves. It is not us without God, or God without us. It is not that we wait for God, but that God waits for us. That is why from one of Mark to the other, Jesus does not travel alone, but always, always with those companions who represent us all, the named ones who fail him and the unnamed ones who do not.” (p. 187)
When Jesus was raised up, I believe in my heart that Judas was lifted as well. There are times when I am one who fails Jesus, and then there are times I am one who defends him in strength and vigor.
What does resurrection mean to you? How are you a part of your definition? How will this Saturday---Holy Saturday---be different this year, than other Saturday’s in other years? With Covid-19 still at our thresholds, what will Alleluia mean to you on Easter Day? And still we rise….
More thoughts about death and resurrection, from the Rev. Katherine Sonderegger -
Meditation for Holy Saturday
‘But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they?’
On Holy Saturday we consider directly the mystery of death. It ties all humankind together: all of us mortal, all of us moving each day toward the grave. In truth it ties us all to every living thing, the grasses of the great prairies, the towering greenery of the dense New England forests, the sea creatures at the ocean’s depths, the kinds and sorts of creatures who have utterly disappeared from our earth, and those that will in our day –we are tied to them all, as mortals who will one day expire, and we know not where they are.
It seems that it has pleased our LORD God to fashion the world with creatures who spring up one day, and in the next are cut down, and the place knows them no more. The Creator brought into being the astonishing array of living beings that have adorned this earth, and has endowed them with a life-span, a season of flourishing; but also of frailty and death.
There is an old tradition in the Christian lexicon, also Scriptural, that speaks of death as an enemy; indeed as something not God but only sin could fashion. And perhaps the great Resurrection Day that glistens at the horizon of Holy Saturday, will persuade us that death cannot be the work of the Victorious God. But on this day, Holy Saturday, we are invited to consider death in this direct and God-ward way. Because it is on this day that our Lord tasted death, once for all, and was laid in the cold tomb. The Word falls silent on this day; and Life hands Itself over to death. Every dying then, from the spent blossoms to the mighty army of martyrs, to saints and to each of our beloveds: they are all hallowed by this One Death, the death of the Son of God in the flesh.
We stand very near Him this day, and He in His lavish love and mercy, stands in deepest intimacy with us. We do not go to our deaths alone! Always they are wrapped in the golden shroud of the Incarnate Son, who entered our death this day, for our sake and for our salvation.
The Rev. Katherine Sonderegger, Ph.D., is the William Meade Chair of Systematic Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary. She is the author of That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew: Karl Barth's "Doctrine of Israel"