God of all things, grant us to follow in the
way of your Son this week, that through his Death, we might receive the riches
of your grace ☩ in the
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
From the book of Job, we heard “For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they? As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so mortals lie down and do not rise again; until the heavens are no more, they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep.”
What
we can say about death is very limited. We know that death comes with the
irreversible cessation of the circulatory or respiratory systems – meaning that
our heart or lungs aren’t working – or the irreversible cessation of all brain
activity. What it feels like to die – we don’t know because no one has ever
experienced death and told us about it. Yes, I know people have been revived,
but there is a difference between been revived and being dead. Death is the
great unknown. Once the spark of life is extinguished, nothing remains. The
body is a lifeless corpse, devoid of any potentiality. In death, we have as
much life in us as does a rock. This is what Job laments about. Yes, trees can
put forth new shoots, but when we die, we are dead, over, finished, done for.
Maybe we live on in memory, but that’s about it. Death is the end of us all.
And
that deep and despairing oblivion is what God in Jesus Christ entered into on
Holy Saturday. God died. Nietzsche thought he was being clever when he remarked
that “God is dead.” He was mostly right. The only thing he got wrong was the
tense – God was dead. But so often we overlook this. Very few Christians or
churches mark Holy Saturday, but I would say that this liturgy is as important
to the Passion of Jesus as is Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. It’s all one
story of salvation, and we can’t take a part of it out without losing
something.
Death
really is as final and hopeless as we fear that it might be. And that is what
God entered into: the nihilism and total nothingness of death. Jesus’ death on
the cross was not a minor setback on the road to Easter. Death truly is the
great enemy. No, it was the fullness and finality of death that God went into.
But something happened in that death. And I’ll hav ea lot more to say about
that tomorrow. Even the nothingness and finality could not overcome the power
of God. God’s love overcame death. All of those things that I said about death,
that death is a hopeless oblivion – they are true. At least, they used to be. But
even at the grave, we make our song that the power of God’s love is stronger
and more enduring than death.
All of the things that we fear about death, God experienced them. In 1 Peter, we hear of Christ’s descent to the dead where the Good News of liberation was preached even to those in death. For centuries, Christians have spoken of this event as the “harrowing of Hell.” The word “harrow” comes from a farming tool, something like a rake. So we might say that God was plowing hell on Holy Saturday. God was sowing the seeds of Resurrection into Death from the inside. Again, we’ll talk about that tomorrow.
But, for today, let us not forget the depths (pun intended) of God’s love for us in Christ Jesus. That Jesus really gave himself over to the brutality of the cross as a sacrifice on Good Friday and that he really died and descended into nothingness. So that just as God brought Creation out of nothingness and chaos in the beginning, that, again, God brings Resurrection life out of nothingness and death on Easter. Sometimes though to appreciate the grandeur of Easter, we have to look over the edge of the cliff into the depths of the pit on Holy Saturday. Though we might not see anything right now when we look into that chasm, before long, the sun shall indeed rise and make all things new. For today though, we sit and wait in the darkness.
