Among the Dead
Holy Saturday
Yesterday the sky went dark.
Jesus cried out and breathed his last. The earth shook. The curtain tore. A spear pierced his side just to be sure.
Joseph wrapped the body in linen. They laid him in a borrowed tomb. A stone sealed the entrance.
And that is where the story rests today.
Jesus is dead.
Not almost dead. Not unconscious. Not hidden. Dead.
For one full day, the Son of God lies in the earth.
The Gospels give us almost nothing about this day. No miracle. No sermon. No angel. Just silence.
The disciples are scattered. The women keep the Sabbath and wait. The world goes on as it always has.
Rome still rules. Death still reigns. The grave still keeps its dead.
And somewhere outside Jerusalem, in a garden tomb, lies the body of Jesus.
The church confesses something strange here: he descended to the dead.
The incarnation does not stop at the cross. It goes all the way down.
The Son of God does not only share our life. He shares our death.
He enters the silence of the grave. The stillness. The place where breath has stopped, where words have ended, where nothing more can be said.
There is no human depth he will not enter. Not even this one.
This day is not only about his death. It is about the smaller deaths we know already: the future you had imagined, the life you thought you were walking toward, the moment you realize that story is over and the stone is already in place.
And one day, the greater death that waits for all of us.
The church does not rush past this.
That is why this day is holy.
Because even here—in the stillness of the tomb, in the silence where hope seems buried—God has already gone.
Tomorrow the stone will move.
But today we remember: Christ has gone down into the grave before us.
And because he has been there, death is no longer godforsaken ground.
These midweek devotionals aren’t sermons. They’re meant to complement the Sunday homily. I’ll share the sermon below after it’s preached: