O Lord, stir up in us the flame of that love
which burned in the heart of your Son as he bore his passion, and let it burn
in us to eternal life ✠ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord” opens Psalm 130. After yesterday, where else could we be? We gather in a darkened and stripped church for the barest of liturgies in the entire Prayer Book. There is no Creed, no extended prayers, no Eucharist, it takes up only half a page. This is not because the composers of the Prayer Book were out of ideas or lazy, but rather because we are in depths, and what is there to say after the bitter betrayal, the painful crucifixion, the horrendous murder that we witnessed yesterday?
The
Psalms have been our guide this Holy Week and the 130th Psalm is
fitting for today. From the depths, the Psalmist calls for God to hear his
voice. There is an ancient tradition that Jesus is the author of the Psalms.
Not that Jesus of Nazareth literally wrote them down, but rather that the
Wisdom of God, which would become incarnate in Jesus, is the true inspiration
behind all of the Psalms. If you want the fancy word for this to impress
people, it’s “prosopological” interpretation. As St. Luke records, the Risen
Jesus appears to two people on the road to Emmaus and interprets to them the
things about himself in all the Scriptures. No, Jesus of Nazareth did not put
ink to parchment and compose this Psalm, but it is no less a Psalm about Holy
Saturday.
And
so we begin with depths, wherever exactly that is. The depth, in the Hebrew
mind, is the place of death. We might call it Sheol, or Hades, or the
Underworld, or the valley of the shadow of death, but the ideas are all the
same – it is a place of despair. Sometimes the dead there are referred to as
“shades;” mere shadows of what once was. The depths also remind us of ocean
depths. The seas were a symbol of chaos to the Hebrew people – a place of
uncertainty and godlessness.
From
this place of oblivion, we hear the cry of the Messiah who has been killed. It
is a cry of hope and unimagined possibility. The depths had always been seen as
a destination, never a place of departure. Journeys end in the depths, never
arising from them. But Jesus has said that unless the seed is buried in the depths,
no life will come of it. And so he is buried into the depths, descended into
hell. And from there, as we heard in the seventh verse, “With him there is
plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.” There is
hope of something coming out of the depths.
And
that hope is the Messiah’s voice that comes from the depths of death. As we
have seen throughout his incarnation, ministry, and Passion, Jesus is the love
of God incarnate. From the depths, it is the voice of love that calls and this
is what gives us hope and confidence that the depths are not an eternal night,
but that like the watchmen, we know that the morning is coming. With the Lord
there is mercy and we wait on Holy Saturday for love’s redeeming work to be
done.
Traditionally,
this is known as the “harrowing of hell.” A harrow is a farming tool with a
handle and a heavy frame that holds a set of teeth that is raked over the hard
soil to break up the soil, remove weeds, and cover seeds. As a verb, we still
speak of “harrowing experiences” as those that are disturbing and disruptive.
This is what Jesus is doing on Holy Saturday – literally, he is raising hell,
bringing the first fruits of the Resurrection to the depths. He is disrupting
chaos and disturbing death. This is why in traditional icons of the
Resurrection, Jesus is depicted as pulling two figures out of their graves as
he emerges from the tomb. The figures are Adam and Eve – he is raising all of
humanity from the depths. But in order for Jesus to do that on Easter morning,
he first goes all the way to the depths on Holy Saturday.
Most
churches ignore Holy Saturday, and without any sense of condemnation in my
voice, that is unfortunate. It’s unfortunate because it misses out on the glory
that we will see when the light of Easter dawns. When we’ve been to the depths
into which Jesus goes, his rising from the depths of hell is all the more
majestic, all the more powerful, all the more beautiful, all the more awesome.
So thank you for being here to accompany me as we mark this sacred time of Holy
Saturday.
One
translation of Psalm 130 opens with “The bottom has fallen out.” We’ve all felt
that way at times. What Holy Saturday assures us of is that there is no bottom
that God does not know, no depth to which Jesus has not gone. In Christ, God has
been to the very pit of hell, to the depths of oblivion, to the edge of
despair. And there he harrowed it – breaking it up and planting the seeds of
Resurrection with this very body and blood. No matter what our situation, we
know that Jesus has been that low and he raises us up with him. When we soon
gather for the Great Vigil of Easter, we will do so all the more prepared to
rejoice in his victory for we have heard his call of love coming out of the
depths. Amen.
