Lent Day 40: Holy Saturday and the Harrowing of Hell

"Christ in Limbo" by Fra Angelico, c. 1430.

When I was a child, Holy Saturday was very much "in-between time." Lent was not over--the self-denials and disciplines that made up the life of faith in our household were very much in place until after the Easter Vigil. * 

But something had shifted. The experience of Good Friday worship (which, for us, included the Stations of the Cross, complete with incense and Gregorian chant) had moved us into and, to a certain extent, through the grief which is ritualized in Holy Week observances. I remember walks on the boardwalk with my mother, the soothing sound of the ocean always a sign to me that something bigger was happening than I could ever understand or control.

As an adult I encountered other ways of thinking about Holy Saturday. Many years ago my friend Yvonne preached one of the Seven Last Words on Good Friday, and her meditation was entirely about Christ in his tomb. She envisioned it as a womb--that something was gestating, something would be born--but we could only, so far, see death.

Later still, I encountered the theology of the Harrowing of Hell. Merriam-Webster defines "harrow" as "a cultivating tool with spikes, teeth, or discs, and used primarily for breaking up and smoothing the soil." This makes sense in terms of the usual use of the word today: "...a harrowing experience," something that digs at you, roils you. But in the theological usage, it refers to Christ's descent into hell (or limbo, or whatever the land of the dead might be) to bring salvation to souls stuck there from the beginning of time.

This is problematic theology, to say the least. That God would create human beings with a finite lifespan and subject them to unavoidable eternities of torment (or even a neutral holding pen for millennium upon millennium) prior to salvation... I'm not buying it. This is the kind of thing that gives rise to crazy assertions like "Moses was a Christian," because he must have been because otherwise God would never have let him into heaven.

Bollocks.

And yet, Good Friday does matter. It is important. It's important to us. 

Rev. Daniel Brereton (@RevDaniel), a wonderful Twitter colleague, posted this on Good Friday:

Jesus didn't go to the cross to change God's mind about us, but to change our mind about God.

In the crucifixion Jesus demonstrates for us the nature of God's love for us--a love that gives extravagantly, gives its very life, that experiences what we experience, that suffers with us, that doesn't leave us alone in our suffering and grief. 

Another wonderful online colleague, Rev. Maren Tirabassi (https://www.facebook.com/maren.tirabassi), imagined Jesus in the underworld on Holy Saturday, preaching the Good News to our favorite biblical heroes, heroines, antiheroes and antiheroines. And there is something here about the kindness and tenderness of God's love for us that moves me beyond the unfathomable theology of the harrowing to remind me, in the words of Rickie Lee Jones, 

...there is no sorrow heaven cannot heal
a fire within, no cross, no crown...

Here is Maren's poem.

Prayer for an Illumination of the Harrowing by Maren Tirabassi

God, I can just see them there
listening to Jesus preach
that mighty Saturday sermon –

Sarah and Hagar leaning in to each other
on a dusty old pew.

Ruth is hand in hand with both
Boaz and Mahlon,
like children at a Sunday school picnic,
but she has eyes only for Naomi.

Absalom with his amazing hair,
untangled from the oak tree,

desalinated Lot’s wife, Ham, Bilhah,
Rahab with her red cord, 

Cyrus of Persia,
and a prostitute’s baby whose true home
was Solomon’s judgment call --

they are next to John the Baptist,
who hasn’t been gone that long.

We see David and Jonathan,

Elijah reunited with the widow
he liked so well,

Saul, Samuel and the witch,
an eternal triangle,

Miriam and Moses’ wife not quite BFFs --
but no room for prejudice in hell.

Most of them have names
we do not know and never will –

but they were some daddy’s baby,
some grandma’s pride --
best at the hundred yard dash
through the Red Sea,
singing psalms, stamping grapes,
playing whales-and-jonahs
till they were called in
for a bedtime story of long ago.

They are all listening
like the people we love who have died,
hearts hanging on his every word,
like their death depends on it.

Whatever my concept of this day is, it is good to be reminded of signs that something bigger is happening than I could ever understand or control.

Whatever your concept of this day is: be gentle with yourself. Grief can be a lifetime project, and it may need your attention today. And enjoy this song. It really is the right song for Holy Saturday.

* Easter Vigil was the first mass of Easter. Observed now in many Christian denominations--including Presbyterians-- it is a service that takes place on Saturday night, in which the first flame of the resurrection is kindled. It told the story of salvation through a series of readings beginning with the story of disobedience in the garden, ending with Magdalene encountering the Lord in another garden.