READINGS

1. Gospel: John 19:31-37; 38-42
2. Breaking of legs: Psalm 34:19-21; Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12
3. Piercing and mourning: Zechariah 12:10-13:1
4. Spices: Song of Songs 4:14; 5:1; 2-4; 6:2-3;
5. Linen: Leviticus 16:4,14-16 (Aaron)
6. Hebrews 9:12

HOMILY

Today there is no liturgy, no mass, and people can pray and read the texts. but it's the unliturgical day because it's before the dawn of creation, which is going to be celebrated on Saturday night.

Some friends have asked me to comment on the readings held as the Gospel for Holy Saturday.

Actually the readings are very short, it's just John 19:38 to 42, starting with Joseph of Arymathea, but I think that it's misleading to have just that and I'm going to use as the text for Holy Saturday the passage immediately before that, which is a strict parallel: the two are adiptic, they go together, they start the same way and they're due to finish the same way, they come to a midpoint, which is absolutely central and they both come immediately after Jesus breathing out the last.

If, on Good Friday, the celebration ends with Jesus's expiration as it should, then everything else is a predescription of what's going to go on Holy Saturday, the day of rest, the aliturgical day before the new creation.

So Jesus expires and immediately it says (since it was the day of preparation) that the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the Sabbath, because that Sabbath was a day of great solemnity.

It was a day of preparation, meaning that it was the day before the Passover, so it was the day on which the lambs were slaughtered, because the idea was that on the day before Passover, families took the lambs to be slaughtered, then took them home and prepared them with spices amongst other things to be eaten the next day.

So Friday was the day of preparation, the Jews didn't want the bodies left on the cross during the Sabbath and this was because, in book of Deuteronomy, it says clearly that you shouldn't leave dead criminals exposed, because it defiles the whole land, and they must be taken down before nightfall.

So, if that was something in the law anyhow, you can imagine how much more important that was on the eve of the Passover.

Now normally I could imagine that Romans executed people when they wanted to and left bodies where they wanted to, but on this particular occasion the Jews went to Pilate, the governor and asked him to break the legs of the criminals, so that they would die quickly, because the form of death by crucifixion was essentially suffocation, and for as long as your legs were able to support, you could still breathe; but, with broken legs, people died very quickly.

So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed.

Perfectly understandable request to the Roman authorities saying "Please on this occasion respect our feast."

Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him, but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs; instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and, at once, blood and water came out.

So this is not what normally comes out of dead people: not water and blood.

The blood signifies the atonement and the water that which was promised at the time of Ezekiel. They are flowing from the new temple.

This indicates that this dead Jesus is the new temple and, furthermore, it's a complete refounding of Zion, such that the coming out of the blood and water looks like afterbirth.

That's why Jesus's wound was often depicted in medieval art as a vulva, from which water and blood came out indicating that Jesus had given birth to the new Zion.

This is an extraordinary important moment in the Gospel.

It's John's most emphatic: he who saw this has testified, so that you also may believe his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth

He's saying:

Yes what I saw on the cross was God himself, the holy place opened up revealing to himself as dead Jesus, who had thus given us the Spirit, so that no longer was death something to run us or keep us away from holiness. 

The blood, so that we can be sprinkled and set free from all our sins and the water, in a way we can be part of the new temple together with him, extending to the ends of the earth, as in the vision of Ezekiel.

Then John gives a little hint as to what's going on here: these things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled - none of his bones shall be broken.

There's a wonderful irony in that, because the none of his bones shall be broken is sometimes perfectly assumed to be the sign that Jesus was the Passover lamb, because the instructions in Exodus and Numbers concerning the Passover lamb is you shall not break its bones, but the quote actually refers directly to Psalm 34 where it talks about the death of the righteous: not one of his bones shall be broken.

What John's doing here is to show simultaneously that dead Jesus on the cross is simultaneously the definitive Passover lamb and the definitive righteous one, the son, the only begotten son, thus fulfilling the whole sacrificial history of Israel in one go.

He brings this out again and again in another passage of scripture when he says they will look on the one whom they have pierced, which is from Zechariah.

It's hugely important not least because of a difference in the text, which we don't often get to see where it says: I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that when they look on me, whom they have pierced they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weeps bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn.

The only child, the firstborn, these are references to the Davidic son and heir understood as part of the prophecy that God will provide to Abraham the firstborn, the beloved.

Now Joseph of Arymathea, who was a disciple of Jesus (though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews), asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus.

So, first of all, the Jewish authorities had gone to Pilate, now Joseph of Arymathea, a secret disciple, but clearly someone who wanted to show his love and respect for Jesus, even in Jesus's death.

He clearly thought of him as dead, but he plucked up courage to do something which was very brave.

He was going to take down the body, which would mean that he would be impure, he would not be able to celebrate the Passover.

Did he know that the definitive Passover had already arrived and that therefore it really didn't matter that he wouldn't be able to celebrate the Passover? We don't know.

It's the sense of somebody on the border.

However, remember the disciples who had followed Jesus in the light had all run away in times of tribulation.

So Joseph of Arymathea (not at all a bad person, but on the contrary) shows as much faith and love as he can.

Pilate gave him permission so he came and removed his body, so he's prepared to be impure so as to honor Jesus.

In addition, we have Nicodemus, who had first come to Jesus by night.

He was someone from the Jewish authorities, but who himself was frightened of them and also came bringing a mixture of Myrrh and Alos weighing about 100 pounds.

Here we have again one of these wonderful ironies:

Nicodemus, who would first have been frightened, then later during a row in the temple concerning Jesus had actually stood up for Him and demanded due process according to the law.

Now, Nicodemus brings no small supply of Myrrh and Alos.

It wasn't common for Jewish people to embalm the bodies of people who had died, but if they were going to these were the spices that with which they would do so.

Why? because when you wrapped the body in the spices as the body began to decompose, their smell was released and their embalming effect began to occur and they would glue the shroud to the body so it would become a hard sticky mess which would keep down the smell of decomposition.

This was something that was very expensive and it was only done for very rich and important people.

So here Nicodemus is actually making a very great show of devotion to Jesus in embalming him, but of course Myrrh and Alos also appear in the Song of Songs as that which is put into the bedroom to prepare for the nuptial gathering: the bride prepares the bridegroom's suite in this way and vice versa.

Myrrh and Alos are part of the preparation for the marriage, so two things are going on at the same time here, with the suggestion that Nicodemus and Joseph don't really get what's happening.

Whether they are aware of it or not, they are doing something much much greater than it seems.

They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen clothes according to the burial custom of the Jews.

As for the the bounding, the idea is that it was how you got the spices firmly against the decomposing body, so that it would counter the smell and solidify the remaining uh flesh.

So this is being bound, but linen again would be very special.

Remember that even with Lazarus had linen. He had been bound, the same word in swaddling clothes which Jesus then told other people to unbind from him.

Of course no one had bothered to embarmm Lazarus, so there was the fear that he would smell.

Linen clothes was also what the high priest would wear in order to go into the holy of holies, starting with Aaron.

He, the High Priest, would take in incense so as to give a special smell.

This is exactly what's happening here: the High Priest, who has not sacrificed, not taken in the blood of bulls and sheep or goats, but his own blood, as it says in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is now going into the Holy of Holies.

Now there was a Garden in the place where he was crucified, which is a reference to the Paradise (another way of referring to the Holy of Holies - the paradise, the garden).

Notice that the book of Ezekiel speaks of Eden as a reference to the Holy of Holies, and an evil priest who was thrown out.

The Holy of Holies was something in which the Priest could go and then hcome out of to feed the flock.

Now there was a garden in the place where Jesus was crucified and, in the garden, there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.

In other words, here this completely new place, which no human had ever been in it before, that's going to be the Holy of Holies, the definitive Holy of Holies, the one into which Jesus takes the by his own blood the offering.

This is the living out of the atonement.

Because it was the Jewish day of preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

See how there's a deliberate air of casualness about this.

There happened to be a garden close to the place of crucifixion and there happened to be a new tomb and amazingly, yet again almost carelessly, the Holy of Holies was opened up very close to the cross, in such a way that the one true great High Priest was able to be laid in what might be a tomb, but might also be the nuptual bed with Myrrh and Alos.

Also, the linen robe and the binding is going to be hugely important on Easter morning because one of the things that enabled John to realize that they saw the clothes laid.

And what did that mean? It meant that the person who had been bound had himself taken them off and furthermore there was no stickiness, so there had been no corruption, which meant that the Psalm had been fulfilled: thou will not let thy holy one no corruption and endless verses from the Song of Songs had been fulfilled.

Moreover, one of the glories of this passage is the scene with Mary Magdalene on Easter morning: here my beloved has gone down to his garden, to the bed of spices, to pasture his flock in the gardens and to gather lilies.

So one of the ways we can celebrate today is to think of the Lord as going down to his gardens to pass to his flock, which is usually referred to as the harrowing of hell, and so opening up for us the beginning of our peace.