Holy Saturday

Jesus has descended to the dead. So we never have too, 

 Holy Saturday 2019

Mary Oliver writes: 

Someone I loved once gave me

A box full of darkness

It took me years to understand 

That this, too, was a gift

(Mary Oliver, “The Uses of Sorrow”)

Yes, friends this day of darkness. This day of absence is indeed a gift. 

Jesus is dead. He’s been laid in the tomb. He’s descended to the dead.

And this is good news. 

     Surely disbelief filled all those who loved him.

Peter plagued by his guilt of being the denier.

Judas dead by his own hand.

The beloved disciple, wracked with grief.

Mary of Magdala, inconsolable.

And then there’s his mother. Is there a pain worse than that of a parent who has lost a child?

Where is the Good News in that?

It is all so sad.

      But this morning we aren’t here to lament, we aren’t here to weep, we aren’t here to mourn.

No, we gather this morning to marvel at Jesus. Not at his miracles, his stirring rhetoric, his parables. No, we gather in our quiet exhaustion to marvel at Jesus the man. For today Jesus has made the most human of journeys. 

Jesus has plunged into the depths of death. He’s fallen into the abyss of nothingness, of desolation and of loneliness guaranteeing that we’ll never be alone. Because with his descent into the depths of death Jesus has been everywhere we will ever go.

    Think about it. Feeling abandoned? Jesus has been there. Spit upon? Jesus has been there. Denied by your own? Jesus has been there. Raged in frustration? Jesus has been there. 

Jesus, on this Holy Saturday looks death square in the eye and says, “no

more will death be a thing to fear, a thing to worry about, a thing to hate.” For on this day Jesus blows the gates off of death, escorting all who went before from eternal darkness into eternal light. And he did this for us. For you. And for me. 

Never again do we have to feel the loneliness of Mary. Never again do we have to feel the abandonment experienced by Job. Never again will we be shrouded in the darkness of Jonah. Never again will we wail our laments alone. Because today Jesus has filled the last of our emptiness, today Jesus has plummeted himself into the abyss of darkness, despair and death so that each of us, when we inevitably fall into those dark spaces of our minds, into those hells of our humanity, into the depths of grief, will not be alone. 

Jesus has been there. And Jesus remains there.

For Jesus, the son of the living God, the Word made

flesh, the author of our salvation, has been to the heights and the depths of our human existence.

Today, in the quiet solitude of this day of rest, be comforted in knowing that even as his body lies in the tomb, Jesus is with us. Tomorrow, next week, next month or next year when you feel the desolation of pain, the fear of abandonment or the despair of grief, know that you are not alone for Jesus, our Jesus, our Lord, our Savior, has been there too and will not, no matter how much we resist Him, abandon us. So today, our box of darkness is being turned into good news indeed.

Amen.