04/04/2026
Our passage that commemorates Holy Saturday today and a reflection.
John 19:38-42 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. 41 At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. 42 Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Holy Saturday is an invitation to attend to death. What terrified us on Thursday is dismissed as mere insult in the face of death on Saturday. Death shifts priorities. It is a whiplash that centers what is real and raw.
One minute you are worried about how to deal with uncle Jake at dinner when you arrive in Detroit, perplexed about which detour to take through the construction zone on 1-75, heart racing over the SCOTUS ruling announced over the radio. Then the engine blows. Smoke billows. The car revolts and screeches and spins and stops. Your whole body reorients: “Deal with this. Only this. Right now.”
Death is thirsty for attention like that.
One day, Joseph is afraid to sacrifice belonging—death’s closest competitor for attention—if he confesses, “I think this Jesus might be the one.” The next, he’s calling in a favor with the powers that be to hide death in a garden. Nicodemas wrung his hands over being seen with Jesus in the daylight. Now he’s hauling seventy-five pounds of spices to make death smell good. The women, his mother with dreams of his smile across the room at her eightieth birthday, now only alive because her heart rebelliously refuses to quit pumping blood loudly and aggressively. They carry this dead weight to a place where they can be with it in private. The closer they move to the quiet place the louder they hear the knock of the messenger. The one who, if you dare open the door, holds your hand, looks you in the eye and declares, “The one you knew as Jesus is no more.”
No one is answering that door today. Love is too angry. A violent hurricane of love is making breath howl and blood swirl. All that love that didn’t make it out yesterday and the day before and the day before is demanding to rain down now. All of it. Right now.
“Be careful!”
“Don’t let his foot drag on that rock!”
“Lift up his right side higher to not scratch that bush.”
“He’s allergic to that ivy-bring him in this way…”
“Roll him over gently so I can pack the myrrh under his back.”
“Let me rub more aloe into his calf before you turn him.”
“Wait. Stop. It’s happening too fast. Everyone, just be still for a minute.”
Once the post-death imminent attention is complete, and that first nothing-left-to-do moment passes, the whole world collapses into a black hole under your diaphragm that makes your heart shudder and strange sounds come out of your mouth.
Holy Saturday says, “Feel that.”
We tend to death on Holy Saturday as practice for the Saturdays when we won’t have the luxury of ignoring it. We remain with it, feel it, on Holy Saturday because there are millions today just outside of Detroit, in Ukraine, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, and Ethiopia who are hauling linens to wrap up death.
Holy Saturday is the culmination of the reminder that “from dust we have come, and to dust we will return.” Nothing is more important today than putting our hands on death. The gesture keeps us human. Our lives veer off course without the whiplash of its reorientation. The shiny prizes and petty arguments trick us into believing they are truth without smelling the truth of death today. Do what we may with it: adorn it, perfume it, carry it, flower it, caress it, wrap it, hide it, we must attend to it.
Our courageous neurons know, despite the siren’s plea to ignore it, “This death space is the real of the real.” Death is not…life.
The not-life will kill you if you look at it too deeply too quickly. But the courageous neurons and all-that-is-life demand us to look. To touch. To smell. The angels call it holy.
Loving presence with death is holy.
It’s holy because God is there. Holding hands with God to scrub blood off of ashen skin is holy. Brushing matted hair with God before making it shine with oil is holy. Leaning down with the breath of God to verify breath is gone is holy. Considering turning the k**b to open the door and hear the messenger declare, “The one you knew as Jesus, you son, is no more” is holy because it is true, and truth is holy.
But.
Mothers know.
They know that “no more” can also mean “changed” because nothing is ever “no more.”
Mothers see the glitter of light through the crack in the wall.
Mothers feel the presence of not-death as they beg for death as their rebellious hearts won’t obey and just quit beating.
Mothers hear another voice breathe over death as they gently tuck one arm in linen and cup his face to turn his head to make sure his neck doesn’t get a kink on the stone.
“You’re right. This is too awful to be the really real. There is more. I promise.”
Is it life? That’s too much hope in the horror. But there is not-death.
And so the mothers pour love over death. They participate in the holy work as the storm wreaks havoc in their bodies and threatens to take them down too. Death demands attention and they give it. They know the truth: holy work and no more do not exist together. The messenger is a liar, and they brush off his words as a mere insult. Attending to death is holy because God is here, and God is life, and this cold skin is not-life, but this love is not-death, so this is the truth. The really real beyond the real.
Love, in the presence of death, demands life.
But for today, that mystery is glitter through a crack in an impenetrable wall. Not-life is too heavy and real and prolonged; it demands everything. So for today death gets the attention it requires while not-death breathes for us, and the black hole pulses in our chest.
(Painting: The Deposition, by Bartolomeo Schedon)
