Holy Week, like the rest of the church calendar, gives us a multi-dimensional perspective on our present lives. We exist in tensions; tensions between what is already accomplished and what is yet to be accomplished, what is true but remains in a condition of relative immaturity and what will be true when God’s promises come to complete maturity in and for us. There is, for instance, one sense in which we live in a perpetual Easter. Christ is risen and ever lives to make intercession for us. He will never die again and, therefore, be raised again. Our bodies are in union with his body, so we have died and been resurrected with him (Rom 6.1-11). But there is another reality at work at the same time. Because Christ is the head of a body, the church, there is a sense in which he still suffers (Ac 9.4; Col 1.24) and waits for resurrection on the last day (1Cor 15). He moves with us through history until we come to have bodies like his glorious body (Phil 3.20-21). In union with Christ, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday are all present and continuing realities for the church as she moves through history, anticipating the resurrection of our bodies when union with our head will reach its fullest expression.
Holy Saturday is one perspective on our existence as the church in which we follow our head throughout history anticipating the resurrection. There is much to learn in the quiet stillness of Holy Saturday.
The body that was ripped apart by sin on Friday lies silent in the grave waiting. To all observers, the hordes of hell who put it there have apparently won. God vindicates his faithful people through destroying their enemies and delivering them. Consequently, it is obvious at this point whom he declares to be his faithful people: those who killed Jesus. If he were the faithful Son of God, the true king, God’s anointed, God would have delivered him from his enemies. The mocking jeers of the passers-by at the crucifixion expressed this clearly (Mt 27.43).
Where is God? Why has he forsaken his Son, the one who faithfully obeyed him throughout his life? Why has the Father given his Son into the hands of the enemy to be killed? Why does he lie dead in a grave while his enemies rejoice?
For those with ears tuned to the Scriptures, especially the Psalms, this melody should sound familiar. These are the cries of God’s people who are waiting; waiting in exile while the Sauls and Absaloms rule; waiting while Muslims and atheistic Communists around the world imprison, torture, and kill Christians; waiting while the innocent blood of Christians is shed in war-torn countries; waiting while death works through all of our bodies, breaking us down with disease and finally lays each one of us silently in the grave. Our enemies run roughshod over us while God is silent. We are not delivered but destroyed.
Holy Saturday reminds us that the Christian faith is anything but escapist. Extended periods of suffering, pain, wrestling with doubts, fighting fears, and death itself are realities of our lives. We don’t move from glory to glory quickly, without suffering, and without waiting. Easter can’t be rushed. Easter won’t be rushed. God doesn’t work that way. He promised that we will be raised, and we must trust that promise while we wait, even through the grave. We must learn to live in the waiting tension of silence that is Holy Saturday.
