Holy Saturday 2025
Holy Saturday Message
1 Peter 3:18-4:6
April 19, 2025
Holy Saturday is often a quiet day in many Disciples congregations—marked by a kind of liturgical pause between the sorrow of Good Friday and the joy of Easter morning. Yet, in some Christian traditions, Holy Saturday is a day alive with profound meaning, especially as it relates to the sacrament of Baptism. I once attended an Episcopal church that held a baptism on Holy Saturday, and the experience left a lasting impression on me.
The most accessible and powerful meaning associated with Holy Saturday is its connection to baptismal commemoration and remembrance. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, writes, “We were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Paul’s words provide the theological foundation for understanding baptism as a participation in Christ’s death and resurrection—a descent into the grave and a glorious rebirth.
This symbolism is not abstract. In the congregation I attended during college—the same congregation where my wife was raised—baptisms were celebrated with a choreography of grace, water, and worship. The pastor, Brother Jim Hancock, would say as he immersed the candidate, “We are lowered into Christ’s death in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life.” These words, spoken in rhythm with the act of immersion, made the theology tangible: dying to an old way of life and rising to a new one. As the newly baptized emerged from the water, a ripple of “Amens” would move through the congregation—not loud or in unison, but spontaneous and reverent. Those rippling amens remain for me one of the truest acts of worship I have ever heard. They were a communal affirmation of new life, a witness to the transformative power of baptism.
In the Baptism I witnessed at the Episcopal Church 25 years ago, what I remember most was that the Priest moved down the center aisle throwing water on both sides of the congregation. Not cupfulls but sprinkles, but everyone should touch Baptismal water when one is baptized. Baptism is not a solitary event.
Years later, I started doing something that had been inspired by the water splashing in the Episcopal Church. I have a footwashing basin from a footwashing Baptist Church. It does not belong to me. It was loaned to me over 25 years ago and the person who loaned it to me knows I have it and the sort of ways it has continued to participate in ministry. On the day of Baptism, I would go an get water from the Baptistry. Then, before the service the Baptismal candidate(s) would gather with their family and friends and one by one their family and friend would come to the basin, I would use a shell and pour water over their hands and back into the basin. As I did, I said, “Remember your Baptism with Thanksgiving and Love.” The persons being baptized dried off people’s hands with a towel—reminiscent of Jesus washing his Disciples Feet. Holy Saturday invites us to remember our Baptism with thanksgiving and love—thanksgiving for what God has done, and love for the new life we are called to embody.
A ministry friend of mine encourages people a little differently. She says, “Remember you are baptized.” Where “Remember your Baptism” invites people to look back and offer gratitude to God; “Remember you are Baptized,” nudges people to look forward and consider the meaning of baptism for the way we treat other, the way we live with one another. The character of Christ that emerges from us. Both, remembering the past and the discernment on the present are important. Things that can mark our Holy Saturday.
I remember that the sanctuary where we were worshiping had a fire pit built into the Narthex. My understanding is that it was only used on Holy Saturday. But, that service 25 years ago in the Episcopal Church had another impactful element. I believe it was called the “Noise of Easter.” The “The Noise of Easter,” or strepitus, is an old tradition. At a particular moment in the service, the congregation—having brought bells and other noisemakers—joined together to make a joyful, rowdy noise (or at least as rowdy as Episcopalians tend to get). This lively practice, though rooted in ancient tradition, is not particularly widespread, even among the more liturgical denominations from which it originates. I am sure that my host shared with me the theological significance of the Noise of Easter. But, it’s meaning has resurfaced for me this year. I’m not sure why.
As I understand it, it was meant to reflect an ancient tradition known as the “Harrowing of Hell.” The Apostles’ Creed famously speaks of Jesus’s descent into Hell, stating, “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried and descended into hell.” For many of us who come from non-creedal traditions, the idea that Jesus “descended into Hell” can be a bit unsettling. Perhaps a better term would be “Sheol,” from the First Testament. It was originally understood not as a context for punishment but as a holding space for all who had died--the abode of the dead. Sheol may more accurately capture the ancient understanding of where Jesus went after his death.
What we may not realize is how many biblical texts are connected to this affirmation. For example, in Matthew 12:40, Jesus refers to the “Sign of Jonah,” comparing the three days Jonah spent in the belly of the big fish with the “three days and nights” the Son of Man would spend “in the depth of the earth.” Peter’s Pentecost speech in Acts 2 also points to an understanding that Jesus truly died and was fully entrusted to the earth, and it is from that place that God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24ff). Paul’s letters contain at least two significant references—Romans 10:7ff and Ephesians 4:8-9—that contribute to our understanding of Christ’s descent into death.
What these texts collectively affirm is that Jesus really died. His resurrection was not an illusion or a magic trick, nor was his death some “mostly dead” state from which he could easily recover. The Church has consistently affirmed that Jesus not only died, but was also buried. Because of this, Jesus can truly empathize with the entirety of the human experience, even in death.
The most often cited text regarding this idea comes from 1 Peter, where the author writes, “Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey” (1 Peter 3:18-22). This passage also offers an interpretation of baptism, as a few verses later we read: “For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does” (1 Peter 4:6). Each of these texts deserves much greater contextual interpretation than I can provide here, and I would need to do much more study to fully explore their meaning.
But the New Testament makes these sorts of glancing references, the Church tends to fill in the blanks. An example is the 4th Century Apocryphal work known as “The Gospel of Nicodemus.” The Gospel presents itself as being written by the Pharisee who visited Jesus at Night (John 3) and who collaborated with Joseph of Arimathea to bury the Lord (John 19). I do not believe Nicodemus wrote it. There are also problems with it. It is places too much blame on the Jewish religious leaders. We know from church history that such blaming theology led to Christian persecution of Jews. It also functioned as something of an Apology for Pilate and I think obscures the degree to which Rome participated in Jesus’s Death. But, it also offers a vivid portrayal of a theology we would later call Christus Victor—the believe that through his death and resurrection, Jesus not only atoned for our sins but also defeated death and hell itself.
In the storyline, two men who had been released from their graves when Jesus died on the cross (Matthew 27:51-53) wrote a testimony of what took place before their release. Their story features a cast of witnesses from Adam and Seth to Isaiah and the repentant thief on the cross. Isaiah testified that this is what he meant when he referenced the people who had lived in darkness (i.e., Sheol) had seen a great light (Christ coming to deliver them).
For me, the most fascinating part of story came in a dialogue between Satan and Hades (Hell), in which they debate and ultimately recognize the power and authority of Christ as he arrives to liberate the righteous souls. Sheol actually accuses Satan of leading them astray in believing that they could kill and contain the Savior. Sheol prophecies that when Jesus won the victory, Satan would be imprisoned in Sheol to take the place of those released by Jesu’s s victory.
The story culminates with Jesus breaking down the gates of Hades, taking the hand of Adam, and leading a procession of the faithful—from patriarchs to prophets and saints—out of death and into paradise, a scene often depicted as a joyful line stretching toward heaven. There’s some debate as to whether that would include both the righteous and the unrighteous. I like to think it was everybody. In the Philippians Christ Hymn (Philippians 2:5-11), we declare that “Every knee will bend, in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
If we literalize the narrative, I think we miss the point. The point is not the mechanics of the afterlife, but the proclamation that Christ’s victory over death is complete and extends to all, offering hope and liberation. It declares that God’s plan doesn’t unfold from the Resurrection and extends forward. It was one that includes all time and all space. I love the image of Jesus taking Adam and Eve by the hand and leading out of procession of souls who had died—walking both single file and hand in hand like we did as Kindergarteners walking out of the abode of the dead and into eternal life. The noise we made that day was supposed to mimic the noise they would have made—the harrowing of hell. The shouts of Hallelujahs as the dead were freed from death and entered into life.
I believe the imagery of Jesus bringing the Good News to those who had died says something about God’s sovereignty over all the world—all the cosmos as John 3:16 affirms. God’s love isn’t just for the people who are alive right here, right now. God’s love doesn’t’ begin at birth and abruptly end at death. Not even death can stop God’s love nor the plan for all creation that forms out of God’s love. I believe that one of the pendulum swings that helps Christians keep kairos time the pendulum movement between saying God loves “each” of us and God loves “all” of us. Between God’s particular concern for individual persons and God’s providential care for the entirety of creation. It’s a pendulum swing between each and all, you and y’all, me and us, the each atom and the whole cosmos. In their own way, with their own “three story universe” with those “on the earth, above the earth, and below the earth” (Philippians 2:5-11), the earliest Christians affirmed that God’s plan does not exist on simply one plain, but on all of them. Throughout the whole of creation. I wonder if this isn’t the tick-tocking pendulum swing that helps us keep kairos time—that Discipleship walks with the ebb and flow of knowing God’s love in the specificity of a single life, for each single life, and God’s love for all.
One of the meanings (one among many) that I associate with the cross is that the cross is a symbol of God’s divine love. “God demonstrated God’s love for us in this that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). If the cross says, “There’s not a place on this planet where Jesus will not go to show God’s love for you,” then I believe the burial of Jesus says, “There’s also not a place in this cosmos where Jesus will not go to communicate God’s love for all.”