Reflection for Holy Saturday
By the Rev’d. Allison K. Dean
You can listen to this reflection here.
You can find the Holy Week message here.
As I noted in the reflection for Holy Week, we in St. Luke’s Parish have been on a weeklong journey to the cross. In scripture, in sermons, in hymns, in the liturgy, in prayer, we have considered at some length the meaning of the cross. For the cross is the defining sign and symbol of Christianity. Without the cross, apart from the crucifixion, the gospel, the Christian faith, loses all of its sense and power because there can’t be resurrection without death.
It is the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross which has won for us our salvation. His life was given for us; his blood was shed that we might be ransomed from the dead.
Jesus humbled himself even to death on a cross – out of love for us and obedience to the Father. And he calls us to come and follow him; calls us to renounce ourselves and instead have the mind of Christ. It is a mind that sees in every person, however wretched, however sinful, however wicked, however miserable and disgusting, an object of love. Jesus knew Judas would betray him, yet he still ate with him, still washed his feet.
We really should thank God he still loved Judas, because we are all Judas. On Good Friday Jesus hung dead on the cross. On this Holy Saturday he lies in the tomb. And we have put him there.
Yes, it was Judas who handed Jesus over to the priests. Yes, the priests handed him over to Pilate. Yes, Pilate handed him over to the soldiers. Yes, it was the soldiers who drove the nails into his hands and feet. But the prophet Isaiah still speaks to remind us, “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (53:4-6).
All of us, every time we turn away from God, every time we sin, every time we act contrary to the will of God, every time we yield to temptation, we crucify the Son of God again, holding him up to be mocked by the world. That’s what the writer to the Hebrews tells us (6:6).
John Stott was right when he said, “We too sacrifice Jesus to our greed like Judas, [we too sacrifice Jesus] to our envy/greed like the priests, [we too sacrifice Jesus] to our ambition like Pilate.”1
The old negro spiritual asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they nailed him to the tree? Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?”
The answer is: yes, yes, and yes. We were there. Therefore, we should repent.
That’s how we began our Lenten journey – with repentance in the face of our mortality as we were marked with crosses of ash and reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return. And it is how we end our Lenten journey – with repentance in the face of our guilt and complicity in the death of Jesus. It is important, essential even, that we acknowledge and admit this because as Canon Peter Green writes in his comments on the Seven Last Words, “only the [person] who is prepared to own [their] share in the guilt of the cross may claim [their] share in its grace.”2 In other words, the benefits the cross brings – mercy, grace, forgiveness, redemption, salvation, and so on – belong only to those who know that it was their sin that made the cross necessary in the first place.
On the cross, our sins hung in the person of Jesus.
On the cross, eternal death and damnation hung in the person of Jesus.
As Jesus’ body lies in the tomb, we sit in silent wonder at the extent of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, who died while we were yet sinners. And by God’s grace, may that wondering lead us say with all our heart:
More love to Thee, O Christ,
More love to Thee!
This all my prayer shall be:
More love, O Christ, to Thee,
More love to Thee,
More love to Thee!
1 John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p. 63
2 Peter Green, Watchers by the Cross: Thoughts on the Seven Last Words, p. 17. (As quoted in Stott).