31st March 2024 

"Looking for his friend..."

In this busy week, Holy Saturday is for us a day of resting, waiting - a day of stillness after the emotion of Good Friday and before the celebration of Easter Sunday. Over time, various traditions grew up as to what exactly may have been happening on that day after the Son of God was crucified, on that day when earth mourned and when heaven was silent. One of these traditions, based on 1 Peter 4:6, which states that the gospel was proclaimed to the dead, is the Harrowing of Hell.

In a probably apocryphal story, a well-meaning vicar asks the children in his church what they understood about the harrowing of hell.  "I know!" says a six-year-old.  "It was when Jesus went all the way through hell, looking for his friend Judas."

Judas, famously, betrays Jesus, handing him over to the temple authorities for thirty pieces of silver. We don't know why Judas does what he does. Perhaps he is disappointed that Jesus is not the Messiah he has hoped for, that Jesus is not going to ride out and take the capital by storm. Perhaps he is jealous that other disciples seem to have more influence, to be closer to Jesus. We know from John 12 that he is separating himself from the group, already pilfering their resources. But Judas is not alone in letting Jesus down. None of the disciples cover themselves in glory. Peter, the rock upon which Jesus builds his church, denies three times that he even knows Jesus.

Judas' tragedy is that, overcome with remorse, he cannot face the other disciples, seek their forgiveness, grieve with them. In horror at what he has unleashed in betraying Jesus, he takes his own life. And so, when the other disciples meet with the risen Jesus, receive his forgiveness, his new life, his peace, Judas is absent. 

Tomorrow we will remember Jesus' death on the cross - an innocent man, dying for the sins of the whole world. How could that death not include Judas, the friend he had spent three years with, as much as it includes all of us who have ever let Jesus down? 

"Behold, the man upon a cross,
my sin upon his shoulders.
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice
cry out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held him there
until it was accomplished.
His dying breath has brought me life;
I know that it is finished."

(Stuart Townend: How deep the Father's love for us)


I don't know whether the harrowing of hell happened in a literal way on Holy Saturday. But I like to imagine Jesus, who, in the words of the theologian Karl Barth, went "into the far country" to save me, to save you, searching through the deepest recesses of hell to find his friend, to offer forgiveness, to offer peace.