The Case for renaming Easter Saturday

Easter Saturday needs a facelift. It’s the forgotten day. The quiet day between Good Friday, a holiday for many, and Easter Sunday.

If we look past Good Friday, Easter eggs, egg hunts, and the like, we know what is there: the crucifixion of the Messiah, Jesus, and on Easter Sunday, an empty tomb and the appearances of the resurrected Jesus, first as a gardener to Mary Magdalene, then to his disciples, and then to the two disciples on their forlorn, hope-shattered walk, to Emmaus.

My story is that I abandoned the agnosticism of my teenage years for faith in Christ. For me, the moment of belief was a moment, an instant of time, as I intoned the Creed ‘I believe in God…’ which, up until that point I had stopped repeating as I did not believe. But my arguments against Christianity had been eroded over a period of a year or two having carefully considered the compelling evidence supporting the historicity of the New Testament and for the resurrection.

I had accepted that Jesus was a true historical figure and that the New Testament was a reliable document and was certain that the disciples were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ crucifixion and were convinced that He had risen from the dead. But there is still an immense gulf between believing historical facts and making a personal commitment to follow Christ.

As a young child, I was always struck by the simplicity of Jesus’ invitation to the disciples: ‘Come, follow Me. And they left their nets and followed Him’. Now, I was faced with the same choice.

As I said those words ‘I believe…’ I found to my astonishment that I did.

On Easter Sundays, I am reminded that Jesus overcame death, as He said He would, appeared to His disbelieving disciples, and ate fish to prove that He wasn’t a ghost, or a figment of their imagination. That they took some convincing was further evidence to me that the New Testament was an honest account of the events of that day. None of the apostles are shown in a flattering light; they all abandoned Him when He was arrested, and none believed in the resurrection without a fight!

But all this leaves Easter Saturday.

The Jewish day starts and finishes at sunset, so to be true to the New Testament, Jesus died at 3pm on Good Friday, and His body was placed in the tomb in the evening. The Sabbath, Saturday, started at sunset and lasted through to the following sunset. On Sunday, just after dawn, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other women went to the tomb and found it empty, followed by Peter and John. Jesus then appeared to the women, the men, and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The third day.

None of the apostles are shown in a flattering light; they all abandoned Him when He was arrested, and none believed in the resurrection without a fight!

What happened on the Sabbath? Was Jesus ‘asleep’?

When I said the Creed, there was one line that mystified me:

was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;

Descended into hell? Really? What does this mean? Is there any evidence in the New Testament to support this? How was this phrase included in the Creed? Why do various more modern versions either delete this sentence or retranslate it as ‘descended to the dead’? Is this descent referring to Good Friday i.e. experienced by Jesus on the cross as part of His suffering, or after His death and before His resurrection – i.e. during the Saturday? Questions. Questions.

There are interpretations aplenty. Look at the following article for a detailed biblical analysis  (e.g. 102-04_303.pdf (biblicalstudies.org.uk) )

One of the issues for us is the use of metaphor and spiritual language alongside the more familiar vocabulary of our three-dimensional material world. Good Friday and, to some extent, Easter Sunday, can be analysed ‘materially’, on Friday Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. On Sunday, he appeared albeit differently, but physically to the disciples. For Easter Saturday, however, the normal material tools at our disposal, are of no use. The body is in the tomb, hidden from view – the New Testament clearly states that Jesus rose on the third day, that is after sunset on the Sabbath, Saturday, and before dawn on Sunday.

For the materialist, then, relevant questions about ‘descending into hell’ include what is meant by the term ‘hell’, where is it located, and when exactly did Jesus descend there?

Spiritual thinkers, on the other hand, look beyond the physical events e.g. the arrest, the nails, the blood, the death, and the physical suffering, to consider the significance of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God in heavenly realms.

·        Material interpretation – ‘hell’ refers to the realm of the dead i.e. Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek rather than Gehenna – the place of judgement and fire. This explains why many modern versions of the Apostles’ Creed replace the rather ambiguous word ‘hell’ with ‘the dead’.

·        Spiritual interpretation – the spiritual agonies Jesus suffered on the cross were as real as the physical. When He cried out ‘My God! My God! Why have you forsaken/abandoned me?’ He suffered the ultimate darkness of separation from His heavenly Father, taking our sins upon Himself, and descending into hell, for us.

So…if called upon to recite the Apostles’ Creed, I can still repeat ‘he descended into hell’. Had he not descended into hell, He would have avoided taking upon Himself the fulness of the spiritual suffering in the human race, infected, as we all are, with sin, so that we may be forgiven. And there is a more profound truth to be found in the crucifixion, we are included and taken into the death of Christ as Paul states ‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me’. Christ not only took our sins so that we could be forgiven, but took us on the cross, so we could be delivered and made into new creations, replicas of Christ.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty…

In doing so, He opened up the way for God to raise us up, just as God raised Jesus from the dead. Not something we can achieve by ourselves, by any ‘religious’ or moral efforts of our own.

Two criminals were crucified with Jesus, on either side. Initially they both ‘reviled Him’ but the thief later changed his tune and said to Jesus: ‘Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise’. The destiny of the other criminal is less certain. Like with the early disciples, Jesus says ‘Come, follow Me’. It will never become more complicated than this. Leave everything and follow Him.

Physically Jesus died and descended into hell (the place of the dead) but, spiritually, He turned hell into paradise (a beautiful garden) for Himself and the thief. Perhaps we should rename Easter Saturday ‘Paradise Saturday’?

I’ll leave the last word on this to St Paul:

‘Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God…made Himself of no reputation…and being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of the earth, and under the earth, that every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.’  Philippians 2 v 6-11