Old Testament: Job 14:1-14
or Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24
New Testament: 1 Peter 4:1-8
Gospel: Matthew 27:57-66
or John 19:38-42
Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16
Muslim cosmologists described a universe between the zenith, its highest possible point, and its counterpart, the nadir, the lowest possible point in the universe. Today, we relive the lowest point in our remembered history as Christians — the day that our crucified Lord lay dead in a borrowed tomb.
Today evokes memories of two days when I stood in the tomb of Jesus. Pilgrims to the Holy Land quickly learn to distinguish between the places where events happened and the places where these events have been remembered by pilgrims for ages.
In the diminishing Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, I stood in a queue of UN soldiers waiting before the towering structure in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher — waiting to stand for a moment in the ancient sepulcher remembered as the tomb of Christ since Constantine. At the bottom of the stairs, illuminated by dozens of candles, a stone slab covered the ancient tomb.
Years later, with a group of tourists, I went to a garden on a hill outside the walled city. In the late nineteenth century, General Gordon decided that this hill, overlooking the Old City across the central bus terminal, was actually Calvary — Golgotha. An ancient tomb, resembling the description in the Gospels, was named the Garden Tomb. After an unhurried look into the old rock cut tomb, we gathered for a Presbyterian sermon preached in a proper Scotch accent.
More important, in the rhythm of our liturgy, we stand at this nadir every year — now, on this day, in the midst of chaos and conflict. The lesson from Job echoes our darkest anxiety: “A human that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.” In such a world, Job’s only prayer on behalf of humankind is “turn your eyes from us, leave us alone, like a hired laborer, to finish our day in peace.”
However dark our present reality is, as this day moves to sunset and then to the rise of a new day, St. Paul’s words from the epistle for the burial of the dead undergird us for all tomorrows: “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.”
The Rev. Dr. Roy Wells
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