Scripture holds so many precious passages, and more than a few of them I regret never having preached. So indulge me while a turn back the church calendar to Holy Saturday with a scene from the Gospel of Matthew. It feels apropos for our moment. Which is always the case when you’re listening for the Word of the Lord –
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus, then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.
The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception would be worse than the first.”
Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone. (Matthew 27:57-66)
Jesus is dead. His body is in the tomb. All hope seems lost.
And we all know the feelings the sprout when life takes you to the edge – a demarcation of knowing that you cannot go back to the way things were. Life has changed and not for the better: A loved one dies. A relationship ends. A broken dream lies forever shattered. A life plan so carefully crafted falls apart. A job is lost. A diagnosis is grim. A veneer of security is breached. What was is no more, and there’s nothing to which you can return. And the way forward knots your stomach.
That’s life on the edge. The disciples knew that edge. And so do you and I.
The Church names life on the edge “Holy Saturday.” The bloody death of Good Friday borders one side; the hope of Sunday Easter life and resurrection bookends the other. But it’s not yet Sunday. It’s Saturday – a time of waiting anxiously for the third day. And stuck knee-deep in the muck of profound grief and loss, Easter Sunday rather feels a long way off.
Holy Saturday is silent, still, and unknowing.
The silence of Holy Saturday says there are no good words to be spoken. The waiting of Holy Saturday signals nothing is happening. The unknown of Holy Saturday foretells a dark future.
The women in today’s lesson say nothing. They do nothing. They just sit. Joseph of Arimathea surely makes his move – doing what must be done, asking for Jesus’s body, tending to it, and caring for it. And that’s it! Because there’s precious little else to do – or that can be done.
Yet you know that what needs doing is moving on. But how? There’s nowhere to go! Your entire world, it seems, has become a tomb, and the tombs of our lives always look so impenetrable, secured not so much by sealing the stone and posting the guards but by our own overwhelming sorrow, pain, and despair. Those things tell us that nothing is getting out of the tomb.
Indeed, life on the edge of nothing.
Yet beneath the deathly silence and rocky stillness of Holy Saturday, hell cries out in fear, and the devil quakes in his boots. A letter of the apostle Peter signals that, on Holy Saturday, something definitely is brewing under that sharp dropoff where life feels so on the edge. Peter writes –
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. (1 Peter 3:18-20)
The Apostle’s Creed puts it more succinctly: Jesus descended into hell.
He descended among the dead not as punishment but to proclaim an affirming message to the imprisoned souls and spirits – and to the evil forces holding them captive. And the summons still echoes true: No matter how securely we build our tombs, no matter how mightily our tombs are built for us, no tomb will ever sequester the love of God. The depth of God’s love is every bit as deep as our tombs.
In the Holy Saturdays of our lives, where life absolutely feels on the edge, Christ descends into the depths of our tombs and ascends to the edges of our cliffs – into the hellishness of our lives, breaking the bonds of death and setting free the captives. His love fills the tomb and permeates its walls; his love envelops the edge and strings a safety net. Christ’s triumph is not apart from death but within death. Christ’s victory is not away from the edge but on the edge.
All and only for love’s sake, Jesus stood there like the rest of us – life and death on the edge, and he lived to tell about it! And so will you and I. Evil surely can and will do all it wants: Tempt us, hound us, hassle us, accuse us. Thus the battle rages on, but the war most certainly is over. Evil cannot and will not push us over edge. For Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again.
Ancient words, ever true. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, August 16, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee and Michael K. March inform the message.