Job 14:1-14 or Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24; Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16; 1 Peter 4:1-8; Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42
Holy Saturday by Rev. Jerry Eve
After all the drama and busyness of Good Friday’s readings, today’s are quite different. Holy Saturday is a time for waiting, and this is summed up well in the last verse of our passage in Job:
“But I will wait for better times, wait till this time of trouble is ended.”
And as well as Holy Saturday, of course, this is also quite a good text for us at this time of lockdown. Job is a lengthy book. It’s a book of theodicy, which means that it’s an attempt to ‘justify God’. Otherwise known as the Problem of Evil or the Problem of Suffering, it’s an attempt to square the circle of an all-loving, all-seeing, all-powerful God who permits the existence and persistence of coronavirus.
There are loads of theodicies, and I tend to think of them as:
1) those that look to the past, and claim that, flawed though it may be, this is the best possible world God could have created.
2) those that look to the present, and claim that without malevolence we would never be able to fully appreciate benevolence, and
3) those that look to the future, and claim that God has created this world as a place of preparation and testing for us, before we can then live in a world to come.
None of these are entirely satisfactory, and so Job’s conclusion, which I prefer, is that the answer to all these sorts of questions is actually unknowable by us. All we can do, therefore, is to believe and trust in God.
So, what does happen on Holy Saturday? Well, the Apostles’ Creed tells us that He (i.e. Jesus) either descended into hell, or descended to the dead. This is a belief that comes from two places in the New Testament: Ephesians 4:9 as well as 1 Peter 4:6, which we’ve been asked to read today:
“That is why the Good News was preached also to the dead . . . so that in their spiritual existence they may live as God lives.”
And so we have an answer to the problem of all those good and righteous people who lived a BC existence without the benefit of the Gospel message (which we AD people have). Called the ‘Harrowing of Hell’, today is the day on which this all took place, as Christ went “deeper and deeper into darkness” (Lamentations 3:2), and all for the sake, for example, of all the patriarchs, in order that they too, on Easter Sunday morning, may acknowledge that:
“The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise.” (Lamentations 3:22-23)
Let us pray:
God,
one of our concerns at this time is the inability to do as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were able to, and to afford those whom we love, and who we do believe have now entered fully into your love, full rites.
We lament the physical absence of mourners at gravesides and crematoria.
So, help those of us unable, for good reason, to attend funerals in person, to be no less respectful attending in spirit,
Amen.