A Holy Saturday Reflection
John 18
38 After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. 39 Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. 40 So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. 42 So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.
--
If you’ve ever buried a loved one, you know the bizarre feeling when the focus shifts from your loved one to your loved one’s body. Death has taken your loved one away, and all you have left is a body. And if you’ve ever buried a loved one you might also remember the great care and honor you want to show that body. In the absence of full communion, proper care for the body is the only way you have left to love that person.
Sometimes, the attention and energy it takes to make all the necessary arrangements can distract you from the actual work of grief. So you give yourself to the tasks of bereavement but it’s not until the funeral is over and everyone has gone home that the finality of death hits you.
This is Holy Saturday. It’s the adrenaline crash, the letdown, the moment after the tomb is shut and Jesus’ disciples have nothing left to do but wait.
What are they waiting for? We know, but they don’t. Jesus had predicted his resurrection many times but none of them really comprehended him. Even ancient people understood the finality of death. In his affliction, Job wrote, “For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease...But a man dies and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he? As waters fail from a lake and a river wastes away and dries up, so a man lies down and rises not again.” (Job 14:7-12)
In a similar way, we also fail to fully grasp the promise of resurrection. We believe it, we proclaim it, we anticipate it. But we still live in a world full of tombstones. We still live in bodies that break down and decay and die. We still wait.
Jesus was buried in anticipation of the Sabbath, the seventh and final day of the week. For this reason some Christian traditions call Holy Saturday “the great Sabbath,” the day God rested after his finished work on the cross. Tomorrow then becomes “eighth day,”— the dawn of something totally new.
As Christians, we live in the eighth day. We are Easter people; our lives are marked by resurrection and new life. But we also live in Holy Saturday, waiting— some of us in graves— for new creation to fully dawn. We sleep and we weep and we wait, with hope.