Jesus
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Most of the Reformers and the majority of pre-Reformation theologians interpreted these passages to refer to Jesus’ descent into hell. They regarded hades not to be the grave but to be the abode of the dead.57
Consider also Simon Peter’s classic boast: “Lord, I would lay down my life for You.” Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, where are You going?” Jesus replied, “Where I am going you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me afterward.”58
The obvious interpretation is Jesus means the cross. Indeed, most of the disciples did go on to martyrdom, a couple even being crucified. But there may be a deeper meaning of Jesus’ words that refers to His impending descent into hell. Because of that harrowing, plundering, final pilgrimage, none of us need go there. Through His atoning work, Jesus made full provision to save us from God’s judgment. Consequently, genuine disciples of Jesus cannot go through those doors, because Jesus has knocked them off their hinges. In a sense, the gates of hell are the reverse side of the gates of Eden. Jesus is the garden gateway, and in breaking down those gates, He reopens the garden, and binds all the sin and evil that inhibit the inhabitation of God in the Garden City called the New Jerusalem.59
JESUS’ DESCENT INTO HELL DEPICTED IN CREED AND ART
In light of the biblical texts on the subject, the descent into hell is appropriately proclaimed in the Apostles’ and Athanasian Creeds (Jesus “descended into hell”).
While the Second Testament gives us little detail about the event, the story of the harrowing of hell has inspired some of the greatest Christian literature and art ever created. And the narrative of such literature and art harmonizes (in principle) with the pre-Reformation and Reformation church’s understanding of the biblical texts on the subject. Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown, considered one of the greatest Scottish poets of the twentieth century, wrote a poem called “The Harrowing of Hell” about this day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.60
The day between Jesus’ crucifixion and His resurrection is known on the church calendar as Holy Saturday or No-Name Saturday. Also known as “the longest day,” it is when Jesus’ mission moved from the dark tomb into the womb of the earth and gate-crashed hell.
Every story needs a pause, and the pause in the Jesus story is the breathing space between the crucifixion and the resurrection, when Jesus was caught between earth and heaven. Sometimes all metaphors break down, and we sit voiceless in the presence of mystery. Sometimes “Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.”61 One theologian calls it a “significant zero, a pregnant emptiness, a silent nothing which says everything.”62 Some religious traditions even prohibit the celebration of the Eucharist on Holy Saturday.63
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[Hell] is in an uproar, for it is now made captive. Hell took a body, and discovered God.64
—JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
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The story of the “harrowing of hell” most often portrayed in Christian art and reenacted in liturgy goes like this: The condemned human race, from Adam to the time of the crucifixion, hears a voice calling out the psalmist’s words: “Draw back, O princes, your gates, remove your everlasting doors. Christ the Lord the King of glory approaches to enter in.”65 Satan isn’t worried because Jesus has died on the cross. But hell warns satan against overconfidence. Then the voice is heard outside, demanding that the King of glory come in.
“Who is this King of glory?” satan and hell chant in unison.
“The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle,” the psalmist responds.66
Then there appears a man with a cross on his back, knocking and demanding entrance. Since he is a robber, satan lets him into Sheol. But this robber is shining and bright, and as soon as satan stands at the gate, a voice outside the door is heard: “Open thou most foul one, thy gates, that the King of glory may come in.” As the one who seeks and finds enters, He breaks down the gates of hell, in front of which He had founded His church,67 binds satan in irons, and casts him down.
Then the last Adam, the Savior of all creation, greets the First Adam with kindness, saying to him, “Peace be to you, Adam, and unto your children unto everlasting ages. Amen.”
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If I ascend into heaven, You are there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
—A PSALM OF DAVID 68
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Then the First Adam casts himself at the Lord’s feet, rises up and kisses His hands, and sheds abundant tears, saying, “Behold the hands which formed me: testifying unto all.” And he said to the Lord, “Thou art come, O King of glory, to set men free and gather them to Thine everlasting kingdom.”
Then Mother Eve also in like manner casts herself at the feet of Jesus, rises up and kisses His hands, and sheds tears abundantly, and says, “Behold the hands that fashioned me: testifying unto all.”
Jesus leads Adam and Eve into Paradise, with the penitent thief who shared His agony on Calvary, “testifying unto all” that the power of Jesus and the love of God are not confined by time and space.69
THE SEEDING OF THE ETERNAL GARDEN
But there is another significance to Holy Saturday that, if fully understood, would make it the true Earth Day, the greening of creation and the eruption of the eternal garden, filled with the Word of the Lord and the beauty of holiness. First Anastasis should be one of the most important liturgical celebrations of the Christian calendar. In the words of theologian Daniel O’Leary, who has elaborated on this aspect of Holy Saturday most powerfully, on the silent day between His crucifixion and resurrection, “Jesus was still accomplishing his most precarious mission.”70 It was this mission that expanded the horizons of Easter hope to include all creation.
Jesus’ first action after His death was not to go up, but down, the Word sown. Jesus descended before He ascended. Before Jesus sky-rocketed out of the universe, He sowed it with His divine life, seeds of expectation to germinate in the heart of creation so that one day it might be raised to glory as a restored creation. In short, before leaving the earth, Jesus completed the incarnation, the nonhuman as well as the human one. He went into the heart of the earth and seeded its core with His resurrection presence, with the Word of His Spirit. In this way He freed creation itself from its depravity. He restored its original beauty and goodness. He transformed the earth from the inside out, making possible that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God”71 and the fulfillment one day of “a new heaven and a new earth.”72
We are free to speculate on the prediction of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel about spending three days in the heart of the world so as to inhabit it intensely and drive it forward from within. Maybe Jesus did not step out of the tomb and head for heaven. Maybe He went deeper into the broken reality of life, where death itself is so powerful, so as to redeem it from within. Having once become human in the body of His mother, Mary, He now actually becomes the whole world in a more comprehensive way than He ever could when He walked its roads and climbed its hills.
Jesus didn’t so much leave this world behind Him as bring heaven to earth in our space and time, even the depths where the powers of death and the princes of darkness claim dominion. There is no place where heaven cannot break forth in the most promised manner.
Some theologians see the resurrection on the following day in the image of the first eruption of a volcano that reveals God’s fire now burning in the innermost bowels of the earth. Jesus’ resurrection was a real and cosmic rhythm of glory, dancing out the good news that this new world had already started turning, that the divine power of a transfigured earth was already leaping from the inner heart of the world—the world that Jesus had invaded to complete what His Father had begun.73
In terms of where we are in history and the backcloth against which we see time, we live on the other side of Easter Sunday. But it’s still Holy Saturday. When we take on the resurrected Christ, we take on His
mission in the world, a mission to carry that resurrection light into the darkest of places and to break down the gates of hell. As the resurrection of Christ is ongoing, our harrowing of hell is ongoing. The church conspires against the powers and principalities of this world who wage their last-ditch campaigns of crimes against humanity and sins against the Holy Spirit.
We live in the light of Easter Sunday but against the weight of Good Friday. Even as we row against the current, and strain from the errors and horrors of this no-name stream, we know that the wind and tide are in our favor. These harrowing times that often seem to be winning have already been defeated. The power of the resurrection overcomes all darkness. Those who walked in darkness have seen a great light—the light to the Gentiles and the glory to Israel. As best we can, we prophesy our way forward to that final, universal Easter Sunday.74 Until that day, we are either “for” or “against.” There are no noncombatants.
CHAPTER 15
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The Resurrection, Ascension,
and Pentecost
We are living in a time of great transition.
—EVE, TO ADAM, IN A CARTOON DEPICTING
THEIR EXODUS FROM EDEN
THE GREAT DIVIDING LINE IN HISTORY, “THE MOMENT WHEN Before Turned into After,”1 is not the BC/AD division, or the page that separates the First and Second Testament. The great dividing line in time is the BR/AR line of demarcation: Before Resurrection, After Resurrection. Resurrection is the theological singularity of all singularities, ushering in new realities that change everything. The resurrection isn’t something that came about. The resurrection is something that opened up.
The richly diverse early church was united in one thing: an allegiance to Jesus and a belief in His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ is the “center of gravity” in the story of the One who was, who is, and who is to come. The resurrection is not a doctrine about Jesus. The resurrection is an ongoing life with Jesus. The resurrection is our rejoicing in the voicing of the risen Messiah in our midst and our sharing in His resurrection life and love, the life of One we love. If Christ is alive, death is dead. The finality of death is finished. All life’s undertakers are put out of business.
The story of Easter Sunday shocks us out of our No-Name Saturday sadness and fills our broken hearts with joy, our souls with hope, our mouths with praise. Even after two thousand years, Easter morning still packs a powerful punch of awe and astonishment every year we are privileged to celebrate the gift of resurrection.
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Anyone who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.
—DAVID BEN-GURION 2
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Try to imagine, then, how utterly mind-boggling and adrenaline-pumping that first Easter morning must have been for the women who suddenly found themselves confronting the most unexpected of scenes. The greatest story ever told rests its first case for the unbelievable on the eyewitness testimony of a group of women (Mary Magdalene; Mary, the mother of James; Joanna; and Salome) at a time when women’s testimony was seen as “rash and frivolous,” “irrational” and “untrustworthy.”3 Only two of the disciples (Peter and John) deemed the women’s testimony worthy of checking out.
Mary Magdalene had trudged out to the barren, cold tomb of her Master even before daylight had managed to warm the ground or light her way. But in that dim first light of day, Mary saw well enough to discern a disaster: the stone had been rolled away from the mouth of Jesus’ tomb.
For Mary, this was a sure sign that someone had tampered with the tomb, emptying it of all contents, including Jesus’ body. Even without the presence of jewels or decorations, a dead body was well worth robbing. Thieves would find Jesus’ body, wrapped in fine linen clothes that were filled with expensive spices, a valuable commodity.
A shattered Mary ran off to bring this final piece of bad news to Peter and John. Not only had Jesus’ followers lost their living Master, but now they had lost His dead body and thus any chance to honor and tend His grave site. Everyone’s terror was palpable.
Racing to the tomb to see for themselves, Peter and John had enough daylight to see into the gaping hole. John was the faster runner but balked at entering. Peter burst right in, bowing to gain entrance and intent upon seeing firsthand the extent of this tragedy.
The women had told the truth. Jesus’ body was gone.
Strangely, both disciples noted a telling detail, even fixating on its particulars. They found the expensive linen wrappings and head shroud still there. What is more, they mentioned how these remnants were heaped in two separate locations. The head cloth was “rolled up” in the upper corner of the limestone slab, while the linen body wrappings lay tossed aside and crumpled in the bottom corner. Why, in the midst of the greatest story ever told, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, are we reading verse after verse about dirty laundry? And why do we overlook this, as surely as we fail to recognize the depictions of fabric that cover oil painting canvases more than any other image from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century?
SWADDLING CLOTHES AND BURIAL LINENS
The story of Jesus begins and ends with swaddling clothes and burial linens. Priestly undergarments worn under no-longer-used robes were cut up for swaddling garments and burial clothes. Some considered them too holy to burn or throw away. Swaddling clothes were later used to wrap the scroll from which the child would read at the bar mitzvah.
Perhaps John, the “beloved disciple,” had done more picking up after others in his life than Peter. He seems better able to read the laundry signs left in the tomb and come to the astonishing conclusion that these were signs of life, not death. He “saw and believed.”4 A head shroud, plucked off by a living hand, would be taken off first, then laid down by itself where the head had reclined. The linen wrappings, unwound, pulled and kicked off by living arms and legs, would end up in a heap somewhere down where the feet had rested. The living body was gone—only the telltale laundry remained to show its actions.
The disciples departed. But one wonders if John had to explain the joke to Peter: the first thing Jesus did after He was raised from the dead was to fold His clothes. Mary had taught Him well. But the eagerness that rushed in His veins of “being about His Father’s business” was also there as well. One pile of dirty linen was neatly folded. The other was scattered, as if He were suddenly in a hurry. Note the difference in how Lazarus and Jesus emerged from the tomb. Lazarus came out still wrapped—signifying his continuing mortality and need to face death. Jesus emerged unwrapped. All three people Jesus resuscitated from the dead still died. Jesus was resurrected, not resuscitated. With Jesus there is no more death.
It was Mary Magdalene’s turn to look into the tomb. But for Mary there were no piles of laundry. Instead, there were angels!
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Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface, Stamp thy image in its place, Second Adam from above, Reinstate us in Thy love.
—CHARLES WESLEY 5
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Where the disciples saw dirty linen, Mary saw angels.
Again, with great care, the narrative reports in detail the physical location of what was found in the tomb—two beings dressed in white. Like the laundry piles the two disciples saw, these angels were situated one at the head, one at the foot of where Jesus’ body had rested. In the exact place where the disciples saw only discarded cloth, Mary saw heavenly messengers!
Mary at first didn’t get it. The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”6 These messengers were not wondering why she was so overwhelmed with emotion. They were asking why tears? Why sorrow on such a joyful, miraculous day? Their very presence proclaimed Jesus’ absence from the tomb: “He is not here; for He is risen.”7
It’s almost as if the gospel writer is asking us, “How many piles of your di
rty laundry, sometimes even hidden in closets, are really angels unaware, wanting to deliver you Easter messages?” We know Christ is risen, not only because it is a verifiable fact but because it is a story that proves true and rings real in the deals of life.
ANGELS IN THE TOMB
Why did Mary see what was really there, angels at the head and at the feet where Jesus’ body had lain, where Peter and John only saw stacks of dirty laundry? At a time when women were not credible witnesses, when their testimony was suspicious, what did Mary do differently that enabled her to become the first messenger of the resurrection, the “apostle to the apostles,” as she is known in the Roman Catholic Church? There is no way this would have been part of the story if it hadn’t happened that way, since no one would have written the story this way.8
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Sing, my tongue, how glorious battle Glorious victory became; And above the cross, his trophy, Tell the triumph and the fame; Tell how he, the earth’s Redeemer, By his death for man o’ercame. His the nails, the spear, the spitting, Reed and vinegar and gall; From his patient body pierced Blood and water streaming fall; Earth and seas and stars and mankind By that stream are cleansed all.
—SIXTH-CENTURY HYMN WRITER VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS 9
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Mary did two things differently that enabled her to see angels’ robes rather than graveclothes. First, she stopped running and became still. She waded into the midst of the chaos and waited patiently for a clearing of the mist. Second, she cried. She entered the pain of her confusion and despair, and through the prism of her tears saw what was really there in the dimensions of the divine, not the plains of the physical.