April 4: Jesus is Buried
Saturday, April 4, Holy Saturday
Scripture: Luke 23:50-54
Now there was a man named Joseph, from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, who had not consented to their decision and action; and he was looking for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid him in a tomb cut in stone, where no one had ever yet been laid. It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning.
JESUS IS BURIED
True Confession: If I am reading for pleasure, I don’t enjoy reading American Literature. It’s unsettling. People make bad choices and have to live with the consequences. I feel as though I should be ashamed to admit it, but I want my pleasure reading to be an escape from reality. I can handle a bit of discord as the story reaches its climax, but I long for peaceful resolution in the end.
I was reminded of this truth about myself as I reflected on today’s video. When the choir first began to sing, my spirit recoiled from the discord. The voices rose and fell in their requiem and I found myself waiting and longing for the resolution that I knew had to come eventually. It never did. My eyes registered image after image of our Lord dying, dead, and buried…and I was left there. On this Holy Saturday, the crisis of the crucifixion has passed; the resolution of the resurrection is not yet.
Is that not where we find ourselves, with Joseph of Arimathea, “looking for the kingdom of God?” We live caught in the tension between the already and the not yet. We know the hope of an eternity in the presence of God, unmarred by sin and its effects. Yet we live in a world where sickness claims the lives of those we love, where people commit unspeakable acts of violence against one another, where besetting sin leaves us in despair. We know that in Christ’s death and resurrection “He breaks the power of canceled sin,” and yet we see and experience the effects of its residue in the world daily. Does this not cause us to groan with creation in longing for the day when Christ will return?
We are living in our own day of preparation. Tomorrow we will celebrate the glorious resurrection of our Lord and look forward to the eternal Sabbath rest that we will enjoy in His presence. But that day is not yet. Today we still mourn, not as those who have no hope, but recognizing that all is not yet as it was intended to be. Today we honestly acknowledge the anguish of living in a broken world. We grieve over the sin that sent Jesus to the cross on our behalf. But this should not drive us to despair. Today is the day of preparation, where we daily seek to obey the Lord’s command to abide in Him. Even our cries of anguish reflect His glory, because in them we acknowledge a world that is not rightly ordered, but that will one day be made new. Today our hearts are being prepared for eternity.
PRAYER
O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, may we await with him the
coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Amanda Cronin, Operations Coordinator, Humanities and Social Sciences
About the Video
The nightmarish sounds of György Ligeti’s Requiem are here combined with traditional paintings depicting the crucifixion, death, descent from the cross and burial of our Lord. Ligeti’s composition was inspired by apocalyptic art from the Renaissance. The resulting sounds produce a distinct feeling that Christ has taken upon himself the sins of all humanity, as the forces of Hell are unleashed upon him.
About the Music
Kyrie lyrics
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
About the Composer
György Ligeti (1923–2006) was a composer of contemporary classical music. He was born in Romania to a Hungarian family, studied in Hungary after World War II, and eventually became an Austrian citizen. He has been called “one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century,” as well as one of the most “innovative and influential” – his music can be heard in a number of popular films, such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ligeti’s Requiem is a setting of the traditional Latin mass for the dead, though at only 30 minutes, he does not include all of the text. This selection is the Kyrie. It calls for low, guttural rumblings and fractured vocal lines from a chorus of at least 100.