19 April 2025 – Holy Saturday

Presbyterians have traditionally marked this day with silence. There is no service, no preaching of the Word, no gathering together to mourn the crucified Christ. Just silence and the rest which comes to all those who close their eyes in death.

I have rarely read St. John’s account of the burial of Jesus at a funeral but I have requested it to be read at my own along with St. Paul’s great argument about preaching the resurrection. The burial is moving with the  witness of two rich men who alone were in a position to ask Pilate for the body of Jesus.

Nicodemus, who had come to see Jesus by night, finds courage to see Pilate in the day. Joseph who comes from that enchantingly named place, Arimathea, is the one who has a garden and in that garden, a new tomb where no-one had ever been buried.

Because it was the day before the Sabbath and the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. The words defy articulation. For the one who was before time  and who created all that is in time, has been killed and silenced on this Holy Saturday.

In Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, the final recitative is broken up by the words of the Chorus, ‘My Jesus, now good night.’ They sing sweetly as if Jesus is a child going to bed for the night. They sing their little lullaby in response to a deeper theological summary, ‘The toil is o’er which all our sins have laid on him.’ It is comfort for us all in the final chorale:

We lay ourselves with weeping prostrate

And cry to thee within the tomb:

Rest thou gently, gently rest!

Rest, O ye exhausted members!

This your tomb and this tombstone

Shall for ev’ry anguished conscience

Be  a pillow of soft comfort

And the spirit’s place of rest.

Most content, slumber here the eyes in rest.

Silence ensues.

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