I love the Reformed tradition, and it only gets better when we admit when we’re wrong or are missing something. So, dear reader of the Reformed Journal, I’m here to suggest that we Reformed folks have a grave hole in our Holy Week observance: We’re missing Holy Saturday. 

It’s not just that we’ve missed Holy Saturday, like forgetting to get ice cream on National Ice Cream Day. No, I’m pretty confident we’ve never even stopped to consider it, at least not as a fixture for congregational worship during Holy Week. And from what I’ve learned about Holy Saturday and experienced in its observance, we’re missing out. We’re missing out on a particularly deep dimension of the gospel of Jesus Christ: a profound pastoral gift for those who find themselves in a wilderness of grief, in-betweenness, or a living hell. 

That’s because a worship service centered on the biblical and traditional themes of Holy Saturday would acknowledge our bewilderment in the miseries of life, and let God lovingly speak a good word into the midst of it.

So, what is Holy Saturday? At its very simplest, it’s the Saturday right before Easter Sunday. However, biblically speaking, it’s two clusters of themes:

1. Having been crucified and died the day before on Good Friday, Holy Saturday is the day Christ’s truly dead body laid in the tomb, awaiting resurrection on Easter Sunday.
   
   Probably the clearest reference to this is Luke 23:50-56, specifically when “the women…saw the tomb and how Jesus’ body was laid in it, then they went away and prepared fragrant spices and perfumed oils. They rested on the Sabbath [Holy Saturday], in keeping with the commandment.” Christ’s body also rested that day.
   
   This “lamentation of Christ” always makes for stunning art:

Holy Saturday is also, probably, the day when, according to 1 Peter 3:19 and 4:6, as well as Ephesians 4:7–10, Jesus—dead in his body but alive in the Spirit—descended to the dead, preached the gospel to those trapped there as “prisoners,” and then “climbed up” out of it.

Now, Christians throughout the centuries have interpreted this as Christ “harrowing hell.” That is, Christ not only defeats death, but hell or Hades, too, and does so by preaching the good news that the ransom for sin has been paid. Afterall, Christ did say “…and the gates of Hades will not prevail against [the church]” (Matthew 16:18b). Maybe this is why many Christians believe that if Christ preached the good news and then climbed up out of hell, maybe some folks went up with him, too?

Now, having been raised Baptist and evangelical, I was genuinely stunned to encounter these words in Scripture and also discover this aspect of the Christian tradition. And yet, it grows directly out of these biblical passages and this line from the Apostles’ Creed:

…was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again…

In the traditional English translation that one line is, “He descended into hell.”

At the very least, this descent makes for great art, too. Here’s a painting from 1442, attributed to someone working in the style of Fra Angelico, titled Raising of Hell: Adam and Abel. It depicts Jesus bursting through the gates of hell, crushing a demon beneath the gate, preaching the gospel to the dead, and then, with an outstretched hand, leads Adam and Abel out of hell, all while demons cower in the corner.

Now, I share all of this partly because it’s just plain beautiful. But, I mostly share about Holy Saturday because who among us hasn’t experienced the bewildering reality of being alongside a deceased loved one, or felt like we were in a wilderness of our own—a hell of our own—longing for a good word and way out?

And, maybe there’s also good news in the reality that the first preachers of the gospel are also the women who the Bible shares as actually lamenting and processing their bewildering grief, too?

And, maybe it’s life-giving to hear “hell” understood differently than a common understanding: Not as a place God abandons or tortures us, but yet another place God will go to reach us?

Could you imagine how pastorally profound such a worship service could be: That, between the horrors of Good Friday and the exuberant joy of Easter Sunday, we stopped and acknowledged our bewildering realities and let God speak to us in the midst of it?

So, Reformed folks, what could this look like? How would you write a service for Holy Saturday? What would you focus on? 

It’s hard for me to choose what to focus on, but I do know that there’s a lot of bewilderment and wilderness out there, and as the Church, we have a special opportunity to let God speak into it. So, why don’t we?

P.S. Practically speaking, this service would be on a Saturday, so for those who can’t make a Maundy Thursday or Good Friday service, it might offer another opportunity to gather during Holy Week, not on a weekday. It could also be ecumenical!

P.S.S. In past Holy Saturday services, I’ve tried connecting the banishing of a goat that had the sins of the people on it into the wilderness (Azazel) in Leviticus to Christ going into the “wilderness” of Golgotha (outside the city) AND also the wilderness of death. But, to be honest, it always felt like a stretch.