Holy Saturday is not silent. It is the King announcing victory in enemy territory.
I love an Easter vigil service. The congregation I serve has done an evening service for years. It is standard American Lutheran fare (a worship service that is most years closer to one hour than it is to an hour and a half), lessons and rubrics following our hymnal and altar book, dramatic dynamics of darkness to light, silence to shouts of acclamation, and death to life as we mark the burial and sanctified rest of our savior, and the glorious confession of the resurrection of the Son of God.
On the more stamina-demanding end of the scale is the Orthodox Pascha, which as a Lutheran sort of Christian I have had the great good fortune to enjoy (since we often celebrate on a different date). This is one of those silver linings to appreciate attending the dark cloud of major historical and ecumenical disagreements among the church catholic, even the serious business of ascertaining and observing the date of Easter. Commit to an Orthodox Easter service, and you are in for a night: 11:00 pm until sunrise, standing most of the time, a handful of different liturgies to keep watch through the dark hours of the sanctified night, incense and chanting joined by the priesthood of the faithful (refer to Psalm 134), polyglot praise at the end proclaiming Khristos anesti! Christ is risen!, and a sumptuous feast that has been roasting with the traditional lamb served up for an early, weary, but uniquely joyful breakfast with the Lord and His risen sisters and brothers (I could include many other memories branded on my senses from the first time I attended with my friend Michael twenty-five years ago or so in Saint Louis and others since).
Preacher, if you are not familiar with a Holy Saturday service or have never organized a vigil because it is just not part of your particular denominational or confessional tradition, do a little research into the theology and history (and into the gathering of the faithful who support your preaching) and aim at including this in your regular rotation for Holy Week. If it is too late to get it together this year, work at doing it next. You can do it in the morning (Holy Saturday), you can do it at night (Vigil), or you can do something in between! You need not do a six-to-seven-hour service (always introduce new worship services and times with caution, knowing you are committing yourself and others for years to come!). You can do it for an hour. You can do something in between! But you should not do nothing. Do something, because the Lord has something to say about Saturday, about His Sabbath, yes, about His life, death, and resurrection, but also about His blessed rest in the tomb. It is a distinct teaching of the ecumenical creeds of the Church! And sermon craft is there to get this particular message out too (I will be saying the same thing in a month and a half when it comes to the Ascension of our Lord as well... stay tuned).
Most years, but not every year, the sermon space for our Holy Saturday service is satisfied by (a selection from) a homily composed and delivered 1600-1700 years ago, the “Great Silence” sermon of Epiphanios (bishop of Salamis, Cyprus, circa 310-403). You can find this sermon online with minimal effort. It is worth reading in preparation even if you do not employ it specifically for your own service! The readings assigned in the Three-Year Lectionary never change for Holy Saturday, and include Daniel 6 (the lion’s den narrative, which occurs nowhere else in the lectionary), Psalm 16 (the same psalm assigned for Easter Day), 1 Peter 4:1-8 (also unique to Holy Saturday), and Matthew 27:57-66 (the burial and guarding of Jesus’ tomb).
Holy Saturday invites us to celebrate particularly the burial of Christ and His three-day rest in the tomb, the fulfillment and (literal!) embodiment of the Sabbath rest over which the Son of Man is Lord. It is not a burdensome command twisted into slavish if not superficial devotion, but, rather, a gift given, gift received (Sabbath made for man, not man for the Sabbath; Mark 2:27-28). Study ahead of your sermon manuscript preparation should include not only the texts assigned for the day but also all the Sabbath teaching in the scriptures, viewed through the lens of Christ’s historic burial and rest (for example, pay attention to creation and torah in Genesis 2:2-3 and Exodus 20:8-11, rest for all in Exodus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 5:14, our Lord’s actions on the Sabbath in Matthew 12, Luke 13, John 9, and others, and New Testament practices and teaching like those in Colossians 2:16-17 and Hebrews 3-4). Christ as literal fulfillment of Sabbath is a beautiful lesson to impress on your hearers. It also resonates with the prefatory prayer of Augustine in his Confessions, that God “makes our heart restless until it finds its rest” in Him.
It is not a burdensome command twisted into slavish if not superficial devotion, but, rather, a gift given, gift received.
As a preacher considering the assigned texts for the day, the low-hanging fruit here has to be the Gospel, since it is the direct narrative of the burial of Christ. There are so many themes to play with here. There is the piety of Joseph (like that of Nicodemus; faith which swims against the flow), a borrowed tomb (like the borrowed crib, the borrowed donkey, and the borrowed cross – I have heard this sermon with variations over the years and it still gives me vicarious atonement chills; thank you Bill Cwirla), the few witnesses at the burial (Mary and Mary) in the dynamic of many at His crucifixion to the few, which will grow from few to many at the resurrection, the role of the women at burial (and resurrection), the adversarial witnesses to the truth of God’s Christ, and the straight-up evidentiary apologetic that rolls out of this, to affirm the falsifiability of the Christian proclamation and the reasonableness of faith. Of course, there is also the sealing of the tomb: Jesus tucked in securely. It is the precondition of the miraculous bursting of the seal to revisit at tomorrow’s Easter service.
Next in line would be the Daniel 6 lion’s den reading, which can be a fruitful and effective preaching of Jesus only if you draw tight the typological ties to Christ. Daniel is sealed and under guard. Christ is sealed and under guard too. Daniel suffers as an innocent under a pagan monarch, just as Christ does. Neither of them succumbs to the grave, as it says in Psalm 16, “You will not let Your holy one see corruption” (also see Acts 2:27). Both rise from their rest in the morning. There are also two profound differences among the many that I would encourage you to exploit and deliver: Christ’s wounds remain (that is where we find our salvation) and Christ’s death and burial are on behalf of all, for your hearer, for the world, and even for His enemies (even those who use the laws of the Medes and Persians to persecute exiles). But the consistencies are wonderful. Our God, indeed, saves from the mouth of the lions, from the mouth of Hades, and He will not let His holy one see decay.
But what to do with 1 Peter 4:1-8? This one is a little funnier. The strongest ties to the burial of Christ seem to be associated with the question, “What was Jesus doing during those three days (or twenty-five hours, plus or minus? How do we do that math again?) between His death on Good Friday and His resurrection on the third day? 1 Peter 4 comes hot on the heels of 1 Peter 3:18-22, the bits where the apostle describes Christ’s descent into Hell in language that 1 Peter 4:5-6 seems to respond to. Christ’s preaching to the souls imprisoned long ago in the day of Noah is the same proclamation delivered to those alive today who are dead in Adam, but alive through faith in Christ, dead in sleep, but awakened by resurrection (awake O sleeper and rise from the dead, Christ will shine on you; Ephesians 5:14). The proclamation, the preaching, is no more nor less than the victory of Christ over sin, death, and Hell. While specific interpretation of 1 Peter 3:19 and 4:5 may be subject to some debate across history and tradition, we can rest confident in our assertion that Christ is not experiencing suffering. He is not descending into Hell to undergo torment or test. The proclamation of Christ’s victory will have its effect. It is resurrection joy for those who rely on His gracious, sacrificial death and glorious resurrection for their salvation, and shame and defeat for those who persevered (or still do) on their own righteousness, in defiance of God’s love.
Consider the following outline for a message on the epistle text this Holy Saturday. I hope you celebrate with the whole church on earth!
I. Christ Suffers in the Flesh and Enters Our Death
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- 1 Peter 4:1: “Since, therefore, Christ suffered in the flesh...”
- Holy Saturday confronts the reality that Christ truly died.
- His body lies in the tomb. His work of suffering is complete.
- The Son of God entered our mortal condition fully, not just pain, but death itself.
- 1 Peter 4:1: “Since, therefore, Christ suffered in the flesh...”
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- Christ for you: He suffers in the flesh so your flesh might live again.
- The grave that claims every body claimed His body first.
- But it cannot keep Him.
- Christ for you: He suffers in the flesh so your flesh might live again.
II. Christ Descends: Not in Defeat, but in Victory
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- Refer to 1 Peter 3:18-19 and 4:6.
- While His body rests in the tomb, Christ descends to the dead.
- Not to suffer more...
- Not to be conquered...
- But to proclaim victory!
- Refer to 1 Peter 3:18-19 and 4:6.
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- This is the triumphant proclamation:
- Sin is defeated.
- Death is broken.
- Hell is conquered.
- This is the triumphant proclamation:
- Holy Saturday is not silent. It is the King announcing victory in enemy territory.
III. The Gospel Is Proclaimed to the Dead
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- 1 Peter 4:6: “For this is why the Gospel was preached even to those who are dead...”
- The proclamation Christ makes is the same Gospel preached today. The world is full of people who are:
- Dead in Adam.
- Dead in sin.
- Dead while they live.
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- Yet, Christ’s proclamation is: The crucified one is now the living one.
- Whoever believes:
- Receives forgiveness.
- Receives life.
- Receives resurrection.
- Yet, Christ’s proclamation is: The crucified one is now the living one.
- The dead hear His voice.
IV. Those Who Belong to Christ Now Die Differently
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- 1 Peter 4:7-8: “The end of all things is at hand...”
- Because Christ has defeated death, Christians do not approach death as the world does.
- Instead:
- We live soberly.
- We love deeply.
- We endure suffering.
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- And when we die, we do not collapse into darkness, we fall asleep in Christ.
- Just as we go to the sacrament as if to our death, that we might go to our death as to the sacrament, so also, we daily go to our sleep as if to our death, for we go to our death as if to our sleep.
- And when we die, we do not collapse into darkness, we fall asleep in Christ.
- And those who sleep in the Lord, our parents, spouses, children, friends, rest now as Christ once rested in the tomb, awaiting the same awakening.
V. The Body Resting Today Will Rise Tomorrow
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- Holy Saturday points forward:
- Christ’s body rested in the tomb, but the tomb was not the end.
- Easter morning is coming.
- Our easter – our resurrection – is also on its way.
- Holy Saturday points forward:
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- Our bodies:
- Washed in baptism, nourished by Christ’s body and blood.
- Laid reverently in the earth.
- Are seeds of the resurrection (refer to John 12:24-25).
- Our bodies:
- Because Christ died for you and rose for you, your grave will not be your prison. It will be your bed until the trumpet sounds.
VI. Our Victory
- Christ has entered death. Christ has proclaimed victory. Christ now calls even the dead to life.
- Believe the gospel. Rest in Christ. Await the resurrection.
- The one who lay in the tomb is the one who will raise the dead.
