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Holy Saturday
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of thy dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Holy Saturday
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A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
✛
Finally Glad
Ash Wednesday seems so long ago, although it was really just a bit over six weeks. At the beginning of Lent people take up “Lenten disciplines,” which come in various forms but traditionally are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In his sermon that day, our rector professed his affection for his disciplines. He also used an image that I will never forget. He said they are like putting a little stone in one’s shoe, a pebble that reminds you that you are walking toward the cross. Our lives are not aimless stretches of eating and working and spending and sleeping. We are going somewhere. Lent shows us that the Christian life is a pilgrimage, an ongoing road on which we follow Jesus and carry our cross which is also his cross.
Tonight we come to the end, alleluia! Lent is over, the trumpets sound, and the feasting may begin.
But before we dig into the feast, I’d like to look again at the pebble in the shoe, the pebble that, insofar as it stands for our Lenten discipline, tonight we shake out of our shoe and hand it over. What does that pebble stand for, really? It’s not the particulars of Lenten disciplines, the money we give away or the food we abstain from eating or the prayers we say; although it includes all that. The pebble in the shoe is a poetic way to talk about carrying the cross of Jesus. And it’s only going to be in our shoe if at some point we picked up that cross. And having picked up Jesus’ cross, the point will come in our life when we lay it down. Life has the shape of Lent: at the beginning we put the pebble in our shoe, and at the end we take it out.
But it only starts—the Christian life only starts—if at some point we grasp the beauty of Jesus. If he were not in some way (and truly) beautiful, we would never have gone after him, never fallen in love with him. He was of course beautiful as a baby (like Adelaide, just baptized!), and beautiful as a young man; but he was also strangely beautiful when he was all beat up and did not strike back. There was beauty when he talked with crazy people; beauty when he touched dirty and sick people; beauty even in his rare angers. None of us here has seen Jesus in the flesh, and yet we all know this beauty of his. Once we see Jesus, we just can’t get him out of our minds.
And we want to go with him. We ask, “Can you take me with you?” You know what he says—if you want to follow me, you have to take up your cross and walk. “I’ll put a pebble in my shoe,” we say, “and watch me walk: I can walk!”
That’s a line from Godspell. The lyric continues: I will call the pebble dare. (I will take up your cross.) We will talk together about walking. Dare share be carried (the Christian pilgrimage). And when we both have had enough, I will take it from my shoe, saying, “Meet your new road.” Then I’ll take your hand, finally glad that you are there by my side.
It’s the big picture of our life. We fall in love with Jesus, we walk our pilgrimage, and then we come to this night, the last night, and we throw away the pebble—we let others, in their ongoing pilgrimage, carry the cross—while we, at the moment of our death, squeeze Jesus’ hand, as he takes us, cross and pebble left behind, from the darkness of the grave to the light of the banquet.
Now, of course, this hasn’t happened yet to any of us, or else you wouldn’t be here listening to me and I wouldn’t be here to speak to you. For us, at this point, it is just a picture, and Lent is just a season. But those others that we’ve known, others whom we loved, others who loved Jesus, others who have reached the end of the road of their pilgrimage and shaken off the cross: as they let go of our hand, did they grab hold of Jesus’?
There is reason to hope so, good reason and sound faith. For us and for them, pebble in our shoe, carrying the cross, we follow a road that millions upon millions have also walked. Yet the line of pilgrims does not extend backwards infinitely. There was one who walked the road first. He, Jesus, literally carried his cross, literally was painfully nailed to it, literally breathed his last breath. His body was placed in a tomb. Darkness descended. And although no one saw him exit the tomb, his body did not stay there: death was not the last word for him, and in a resurrected body, a body changed, a real yet deathless body, he appeared to those who loved him and gave them sure tokens of the hope that they would someday be with him where he now is.
Tonight’s liturgy is a dramatic picture of what happened to Jesus. The church building starts off like his tomb, and he is inside in the dark, and then light comes, and he is not here, he is risen, and from the far side of death he comes with faith and hope for those who love him.
But please do not forget: tonight’s liturgy is a dramatic picture, also, of your own coming to the end of the road. You pass on the pebble and all it represents—pass it on to those who continue their earthly lives. You enter into the darkness. It is your tomb. Mysteriously, light enters. It is Jesus. You take his hand. You literally take his touchable, tangible, human hand. And you are, yes, finally glad.
