In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Holy Saturday is very likely the most forgotten of all liturgies in the Church. For one, the Prayer Book devotes only one page to it. Holy Saturday is nestled between bigger liturgies like Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, and so often clergy and choirs are spent. Holy Saturday also makes us to face the fact that Jesus died. Obviously, we know this, but often we treat his death as a minor inconvenience or speed bump on the way to the Resurrection. And so sometimes the faithful place a greater emphasis on what is known as the theology of glory instead of the theology of the Cross. That is, we make the Cross merely a mechanistic requirement for Easter. Some might say “Well, you have a crack an egg to bake a cake,” suggesting that the Death of Jesus is as minor as cracking an egg to get to its contents. But this is not only heresy, but its unhelpful. There is also the fact that on this day, we remember that Christ experienced the fullness of human death, and so the Creed notes that “he descended into hell.” Many Christians do not wish to deal with this Biblical and theological reality, and so the remove it from the Creed and ignore it liturgically, to their own detriment.
But the case can be made, and I’m making it, that in the context of the Triduum, which is one liturgy that unfolds over several days, the Holy Saturday portion of this liturgy is just as essential as the Good Friday or Easter portions. There was a heresy in the early Church called “Docetism.” That name, “Docetism,” come from the Greek word dokein, which means “to seem.” In the latter portion of the 3rd century, there were some groups that claimed that, while not using this metaphor, Jesus was a sort of divine hologram – it seemed as if he was really here on earth with us, it seemed that he really ate and slept, and it seemed that he really died on the Cross. The rationale behind Docetism was struggling over the question “How is it that God, the sustainer of the Universe, died?” Indeed, that’s a big question. And their solution was that it only seemed as if God was fully incarnate in Jesus, but that God remained safely in heaven and therefore did not really die. This belief was unequivocally rejected as heresy at the Council of Nicaea in 325. But this heresy remains alive and well today in versions of Christianity that skip over Holy Saturday and do not acknowledge that “he descended to the death.”
The truth of the matter is that it should not seem as if Jesus died on the Cross, he actually did die. And if he really did die, then he really did go into death. What looks like, we can’t be sure on this side of the grave. Was it the Hebrew Sheol, the Greek Hades, or the Hell portrayed by Milton in Paradise Lost? We can’t be sure. But whatever Death is, Jesus fully entered into it after his Crucifixion.
And this matters because it clearly and definitively proclaims that there is no aspect of human existence that Christ did not experience. On early Church theologian wrote “That which he has not assumed, he has not healed.” Meaning, if Christ didn’t really die and descend to the Dead, then his saving grace has not gone as deep and as far as the grave. But this is not the case! Jesus Christ truly and fully died and therefore truly and fully raises us to new life out of the depths of God forsakenness, sin, and death.
Sure, there will always be questions about Hell. What is it like? How long does it last? What makes it such that you go there? The simple answer is that we don’t know. Is someone like Herod or Hitler in Hell, or are they saved by the grace of God? We can’t say for certain. But we do know definitely that Jesus Christ went to Hell on our behalf. And we also definitely know that Jesus Christ came out of the gates of Hell and harrowed that place of Death in his wake. And so the hope our participation in the Resurrection is rooted in Holy Saturday and Christ’s descent into Death.
I’ll close by reading the words of Martin Luther, as explained through Jürgen Moltmann, a 20th century theologian: “Regard not hell and the eternity of torment in thyself, nor these things in themselves, nor yet in those who are damned. Look upon the face of Christ, who for thy sake descended into hell and was forsaken by God as one who is damned eternally, as he said on the cross: ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ See, in him thy hell is vanquished… Because Christ was in hell and endured its torments, there is hope in hell for redemption. Because Christ was raised to life from hell, hell’s gates are open and its walls have been broken down. ‘Though I make my bed in hell, you are there.’ And then hell is not hell any longer. ‘O hell where is thy victory? But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen.
