by CCW | 20 April 2019 11:00
We gather at the grave of Christ in silence. It is the quietest of times, the most peaceful day of the year in a way. All is done. “It is finished.” To be sure. All that belongs to the reconciliation between God and man is accomplished on the Cross. Today marks the peace of Paradise, as it were.
And yet the readings for Holy Saturday suggest something more that belongs to the radical nature of Christ’s sacrifice, to the radical nature of God’s desire to be reconciled with our humanity and world. Holy Saturday marks the creedal mystery of the Descent into Hell. What does that mean? It means the fullest possible extent of God’s desire to be reconciled with the whole of our sinful humanity.
Drawing upon imagery from Zechariah, our readings from 1st Peter this morning point to the idea of Christ going and preaching to the spirits in prison, in the darkness of Sheol. The work of human redemption extends far beyond our assurances about ourselves, far beyond the narrow limits of our world-view. The great icons of the Resurrection in Eastern Orthodoxy envision for us something of the great mystery of this day. Christ is depicted as drawing Adam and Eve and a train of others out of the grave, out of the pit of darkness. Such is reconciliation writ large, we might say.
At the very least, our gathering at the grave of Christ allows for the possibilities of something more. Of hope. Ultimately the reconciling grace of Christ for the whole of the world, for the whole of our humanity – such after all is its universal scope without which it is nothing – moves us to watch and wait expectantly. It will lead us to the vigil of Easter and to the radical outcome of that reconciling love in the Resurrection. Already in John’s Gospel we are made aware of that idea and the plans taken by the Chief Priests and the Pharisees who petition Pilate for a watch and a stone. Such is the fearfulness of our humanity in the limitations of our imagination and our reason. Such too is our folly in thinking that we can ultimately contain and restrict the will and actions of God. Already in the quiet mystery of Holy Saturday, Christ, the Word and Son of the Father, shows us that his reconciling sacrifice on the Cross is always something active and alive, and something, too, which speaks to the whole of our humanity. There is, we might say, the constant doing of what is done.
We watch and wait at the borrowed tomb of Christ, the tomb borrowed from Joseph of Arimathea. We watch and wait upon the Christ who “borrowed a body that he might borrow a death” (Athanasius), our death. That changes everything.
Fr. David Curry
Holy Saturday 2019
Matins & Ante-Communion
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2019/04/20/sermon-for-holy-saturday-6/
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