I had never thought much about the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Like me you might be wondering, what did Jesus do between his death on the cross and the resurrection on Easter? At the beginning of Lent 2020, my wife and I were reading Timothy Tennent’s book This We Believe! Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed. The book was insightful about how Christians always and everywhere have believed the doctrines expressed in the Creeds. What made me think about writing is because I believe many people were like me and do not know of the connection between Good Friday and Easter which is “Jesus descended to the dead”. This is written in the Apostle’s Creed, but what does it mean? I hope what I have learned can inspire you too.
The belief was when we died we would go to the realm under the earth to a place of the dead called sheol (in Hebrew) or hades (in Greek). In this realm are two places, one for the righteous called paradise and the other for the unrighteous call Gehenna (a place outside Jerusalem where things were thrown away and burned). We see this imagery when we look at the story of Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). We read about a wide chasm which separated the two areas. Jesus told one of the thieves, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Not paradise as in the third heaven like we usually think. Adam Hamilton in his book Creed says, “Paradise was not heaven but the place in the underworld where the righteous dead were comforted awaiting the final resurrection. It was heaven-like but incomplete.”
For some reason, my mind goes to Thor Ragnarok, a movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here is why. For hundreds of years people had believed revolutionary figures would overthrow their overlords. Revolutionary figures would rise up and the Persians, the Romans, or whoever would kill the leader and the revolution would cease. In the movie, Korg, a gladiatorial rock person nicknames Thor, “Doug”, because a previous person who had hopes of winning victory against the Grandmaster’s champion. Doug is defeated, and with Thor’s hopes of defeating the champion and getting out of this “prison”, Korg names Thor “new Doug”. This “new Doug” (Thor) looks defeated and is about to lose, when Korg says, “Another day, another Doug”. I think the disciples felt like Korg. They were expecting Jesus to be the Messiah, and to conquer the oppressor, whom at the time was Rome. The connection to the movie stops here. The disciples who had followed Jesus for at least three years, are now left leaderless. They have no anticipation, where us in the future know the events of Jesus’ resurrection will take place.
Satan thought he had victory over God’s Son when Jesus died on the cross. Something called the “Harrowing of Hell” is taking place on Holy Saturday. Jesus triumphantly goes into sheol to rescue the righteous dead. We read in Revelation 1:18 “I have the keys of Death and the Grave”. Jesus preached to those who were dead in sheol from the time of Noah and beyond (1 Peter 3:18-20). The idea of the second Adam, Jesus, rescues the first Adam is potent imagery.
This is all one event, death on the cross, descending to the dead, and rising on the third day. One single drama all unfolding.
So then could God have done this rescue any other way? Augustine in his writing On the Trinity basically says there was no other way to redeem humanity. Jesus being God and man needed to come, teach, die and rise again. Athanasius On the Incarnation writes Jesus took the curse of Adam for us on the cross and the curse’s punishment was death. “When I am lifted up, I shall draw all people to me.” John 12:31. Jesus had to suffer and take our punishment of the curse in Genesis which is death, so we might have life through Jesus.
Jesus dying on the cross, the events of Holy Saturday, and the climax of the drama on Easter are for a purpose.
The book The Day the Revolution Began, N.T. Wright writes that we are called to be image bearers of God. To worship our God by being good stewards of all God has given us. A hope for Israel and the rest of the world to have our sins forgiven. The rest of the world can choose to abandon it’s idolatry and be included by conforming to what Jesus’ revolution is aiming at. Repentance, turning back to God, being baptized, receive the Holy Spirit. All of this a blessing from the Trinity. Being image bearers ties into being part of a royal priesthood. We have a human vocation to worship God with our life. How we live is important. It is not moralism or deontology, being an image bearer is being a child of God, not what we do, but intricately who we are.
In Irenaeus Against Heresies, he writes God will not force us to conform to be God’s image bearers after the example of His Son.
In reflection of Holy Saturday, being tied to both Good Friday and Easter, we must choose each and every moment to be Resurrection people. Now knowing these things about Holy Saturday, we can be confident of our own rescue from sin and death. As the famous John 3:16 verse says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.” My prayer is the readers of this reflection would believe in Jesus, learn to be image bearers of God, and with all Christians expectantly wait for the final resurrection with a new heaven and new earth.
Millennial Methodist 