Saturday of Holy Week Hell Prayer Almighty Lord, whose Only Begotten descended to the place of the dead and emerged victorious from the grave: we ask you to grant to all your faithful, buried with Christ by baptism, also rise with him to eternal life; who lives and reigns with you. Amen. John 8:1-11 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit….After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. John 19:30, 38-42 Reflection It is complete, finished. The drama of the past week is over, the emotional grip of the Passion has been released. Jesus is dead, brutally killed by the Romans, his body taken down from the cross and deposited in the tomb. The ordeal is over. The stone has been rolled in front of the tomb, sealed. It’s over. The Resurrection may indeed be on the horizon. But right now, there’s… nothing. Time has been suspended. The earth has been emptied of all landmarks. Even God, it seems, is silent. For those of us who walked with Jesus during Holy Week, witnessing each stage: the trials, the flogging, the taunting, and finally the gasped words, “it is finished,” this time is a welcome break, a chance to catch our breath. “Now,” we tell ourselves, “we can enter the solemn liturgical intermission that is Holy Saturday, a time when we can retreat from the trauma of crucifixion to that numb, post-funeral state that Christians inhabit while we await the dawn of Eater Sunday.” But before we settle into such a post-passion repose, this is not where the Christian tradition intends to leave us at the conclusion of our Good Friday worship. Our ancestors in the Church did not want us to put our faith “on pause” simply because Jesus breathed his last. For as Alan Lewis claims in his book Between Cross and Resurrection, our tradition clearly states that there is something going on in the life of God between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We are asked to attend to that “something going on in the life of God” by confessing, in the words of the Apostles’ Creed, that after Jesus’ death, he “descended to hell.” “And he descended to hell”. No other clause of the Creed elicits more unease—and confusion—among Christians than the affirmation that Jesus Christ “descended into hell.” Many Christian denominations choose to replace it with the less daunting phrase “descended to the dead”1 in their creedal recitations. And others, incredibly, choose to leave Christ’s descent out of the Creed altogether. Yet during the Reformation, when nearly everything was up for grabs in the church, John Calvin cautioned, “If any person have scruples about admitting this article into the Creed, it will soon be made plain how important it is to the sum of our redemption: if it is left out, much of the benefit of Christ’s death will be lost.” Likewise, the Church of England, following its own reformation, emphatically affirmed “Christ’s going down into Hell”: “As Christ died for us, and was buried; so also it is to be believed, that he went down into hell.”2 Indeed, the descent into hell plumbs the depths of our Redeemer’s vocation and destiny, and thereby that of the redeemed as well. What remains at stake is nothing less than the “sum of our redemption.” Even though the doctrine, and even the event itself, is questioned today, it is clear that the early Christian theologians, and subsequently most of historic Christianity, have affirmed that Jesus descended to the dead and accomplished something there. The monk Rufinus, a monk of the 4th century describes the teaching well: It was not in order to accomplish salvation through the weakness of flesh that his Divine nature went down to death in the flesh. The intention was, not that he might be held fast by death according to the law governing mortals, but that, assured of rising again by his own power, he might open the gates of death. It was as if a king were to go to a dungeon and, entering it, were to fling open its doors, loosen the fetters, break the chains, bolts and bars in pieces, conduct the captives forth to freedom, and restore such as sat in darkness and in the shadow of death to light and life. In a case like this king is, 1 Note how in our own Book of Common Prayer (1979) “hell” is retained in Morning Prayer: Rite 1(p53) but has been changed to the more palatable “the dead” in Morning Prayer: Rite II and both services of Evening Prayer 2 Book of Common Prayer (1979), p868, Article III of course, said to have been in the dungeon, but not under the same circumstances as the prisoners confined with it. They were there to discharge their penalties, but he to secure their discharge from punishment. Jesus was “dead and buried.” He went to Sheol, both in going to his grave and going to the place of the dead. In this realm Jesus Christ acts both as proclaimer and as liberator. Here then Christ’s “descent” is not just a synonym for his burial, but a new dimension of his resurrection—one which is in direct relation to human redemption. Jesus Christ follows humanity’s descent into death and the grave, so that humanity may then follow his lead in rising up to freedom, light and light. He is not only the victim of death; he is the victor over death. Rather than the final act of the passion, then, the descent into hell can be taken as the first act of the resurrection! With the vivid imagery of loosened fetters, broken chains, and captives led to their freedom, we find in Rufinus the familiar features of the “harrowing of hell” so prominent in later Western Art, literature and hymnody. “Harrowing” refers to the practice in agriculture of dragging a harrow, something like rake, through a field, picking up stones and clods of earth, sweeping the field clean. In the same way, Jesus swooped through he halls of the underworld to gather up all the faithful souls who did not have a chance to hear the gospel in the time before Christ came. Here are some vivid examples of the “harrowing of hell” in art: Fra Angelico, Christ in Limbo, 1441-2 Andrea Mantegna Christ's Descent into Limbo, c. 1470 Andrea di Bonaiuto, Descent of Christ to Limbo, c1365 Jan Mandyn (c.1500-1560), The Harrowing of Hell (detail) In the Harrowing of Hell fresco in the Chora Church, Istanbul, c1315, the raising of Adam and Eve is depicted as part of the resurrection icon, as it always is in the East. In this modern Resurrection icon, the symbolic elements are clearer: the dynamic Jesus pulling Adam and Eve up from their coffins; the locks and chains that one kept Adam and Eve now broken and strewn on the ground; the Old Testament prophets and kings surrounding them; the mountains behind, making the action take place in a valley (“valley of death”?); old man Satan beneath Jesus’ feet in chains. However, besides helping us to answer our questions regarding how God deals with those who never knew Jesus, the reason Christ’s descent to the dead is so important, why it’s so important to me, as a priest and Christian, is that it shows us in most dramatic way the extent that Jesus will go—has gone!—to save us. Jesus went literally to hell for us. He identified with us and our plight so much that he was willing to die, to go down to the dead, to suffer spiritual as well as physical death, to be wholly cut-off from God, to be with us. He went that far, all the way. He didn’t just touch his toe in the water, he plunged in, going all the way down. This awful sacrifice, this horrible act of love was brought out for me years ago by the Robin Williams movie, What Dreams May Come. In this otherwise syncretistic, theologically confused film, Williams’ character, Chris gives a dramatic demonstration of what a love that is willing to suffer hell looks like. Here’s the set up: Chris and his wife Annie lose their two children in a horrible automobile crash, then Chris himself is killed in an accident, leaving Annie alone and consumed by grief. When the weight is too much, she takes her own life. Upon learning this in the afterlife, Williams’ character Chris embarks on a Dante-esque journey through heaven and hell to find her. He survives a shipwreck, passes through fiery hulk of a tanker and crosses a sea of tormented human heads embedded in the ground, before he finally finds Annie.