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. She’s in a literal pit, a decaying shell that looks like the home she once lived in with Chris.

But she doesn’t know where she is, doesn’t recognize Chris, she’s locked, imprisoned in her grief and

despair. Chris is warned beforehand that if he stays with her inside too long, he’ll lose his mind too. So he

tries to reach her, to draw her out but he cannot break through. He goes out to tell his guide he’s failed

but, instead of leaving, he rushes back in and locks the door. He explains: it’s better to be with her in hell

than to be somewhere else without her.

The love here displayed is of course romantic love (which is the closest that Hollywood knows the

divine), yet it nevertheless gives a powerful and evocative picture of the love that Jesus has for all of us.

Indeed, Chris is portrayed as a Christ-figure. Just as Chris was willing to spend eternity with Annie lost in

hell, Jesus is willing to lose himself in hell to be with us. He is willing to go to hell to be with us.

The Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar states it bluntly when he writes that Christ

“disturbs the absolute loneliness [that is] striven for by the sinner: the sinner, who wants to be ‘damned’

apart from God, finds God again in his loneliness… God in the absolute weakness of love enters into

solidarity with those damning themselves.”

Jesus is committed to us so strongly that he is willing to go to hell, willing to be damned, to be with us.

Christ does not regard the borders of death and hell as barriers blocking him from saving us. He comes to

us, meets us wherever we are, whether in the literal hell of death, or in the midst of the “hells” that we

experience here on earth. Even when we feel furthest away from God, when God’s absence is most

strongly and painfully felt—indeed especially in those times—Jesus is with us. As Paul said, “neither

death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor

depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus

our Lord.” That is what we can take from this teaching of Christ’s Descent to the Dead. Christ is with us

always, even in hell! That’s how far he goes for us. Trusting in that, in Jesus’ commitment to us even in

death, we can then go to the most hopeless of places, and to do so without fear. For Christ with us, even

there.

For Further Meditation

1. Christ’s victory is not confined to this present life alone but has conquered death and hell, and has

made captivity captive, as Paul said. John Chrysostom, the “golden-tongued preacher” from the 4th

century, proclaimed this truth powerfully in this way:

Do not fear death; [he says] the Savior’s death has brought freedom.

He endured death and thus destroyed it.

He descended into Hell and destroyed it.

Even as Hell tasted his flesh he threw it into chaos.

…

Hell was in chaos because it was annihilated.

It was in chaos because it was cheated.

It was in chaos because it was done away with.

It was in chaos because it was defeated.

It was in chaos because it was led away captive.

Hell swallowed humanity and discovered divinity.

It swallowed earth and experienced heaven.

It swallowed the visible and was defeated by the invisible.

O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?

2. Listen to Matt Mahers’ Christ is Risen Again, which has put the verses of this ancient sermon to

modern music.