Sermon — April 19, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Believe it or not, I was kind of a shy kid growing up. And so, while I was a total church rat—while I was at church every Sunday morning, and at youth group on Sunday nights, while I went on every mission trip and every church overnight, I also turned down every opportunity to preach, on Youth Sunday, or after a mission trip, or whenever it was. I wouldn’t even take a speaking part in the Christmas Pageant. My friend Tom and I sat up in the balcony and worked the lights.
During college, though, I became a little more outgoing, and so it was that I found myself giving what I now realize was my first ever sermon, I think, on this day, Holy Saturday, thirteen years ago, at Appleton Chapel in Memorial Church in Harvard Yard.
Every morning, Monday through Saturday, Appleton Chapel had a Morning Prayer service at 8:45am. It was about fifteen minutes long: a psalm, a reading, a hymn, and a homily that was five minutes long or so. Sometimes faculty would speak, or one of the Harvard chaplains; Divinity School students took their turn, and college seniors often chose to speak. That year, our Episcopal chaplain asked me if I might like to speak at Morning Prayers on Holy Saturday; it turned out, mysteriously, they were having trouble filling the spot.
It’s not so mysterious to me now. Of all the days in any given year, Holy Saturday is probably the day on which you are least likely to find a preacher who’s willing and able to work.
And I think there are two reasons for this: one very obvious, one much less so.
The obvious reason, of course, is that, on Holy Saturday, the church rats of the world are desperately trying to catch their breath. The Episcopalians and Catholics have already been at church for hours over the past few days, and they may have hours more at the Vigil that night. Even plain Protestants are preparing for a big Easter Sunday the next day. No one in their right mind would volunteer to preach on the morning of Holy Saturday unless they were both very enthusiastic about church and had no other church commitments that week, and that’s how they ended up with me.
But there’s another reason for the utter uninterest in Holy Saturday. A less obvious, more important one.
We live in a hyper-active, hyper-productive culture. We are obsessed with getting things done. We measure our lives, at work and at home, by progress on our to-do lists. We live in a world in which busyness is a measurement of our importance, perhaps even our competence. As the Presbyterian minister Eugene Peterson once wrote, if you go to a doctor’s office where the waiting room is empty and when you walk in, you see the doctor sitting in a chair, reading a book, you’re probably more worried than impressed; why am the only one with an appointment today?
The disease of busyness afflicts the church, as well. One of my mentors was married to another priest, and when they went to clergy events they’d always play a secret game: replacing the word “busy” with “important” in what their colleagues said. “How’s your Holy Week going?” they’d ask another priest at the Holy Tuesday Renewal of Vows we have, down at the Cathedral. “Oh,” they’d reply with a sigh, “I’m just so busy this time of year.” And they would laugh, translating in their heads, “I’m just so important this time of year.”
It’s a fun game to play, but it’s a real spiritual disease. The busy mind has no time for rest, let alone the kind of “deep work” that only comes in large blocks of silence. The busy society is one in which rest is suspect, in which, if you aren’t doing, doing, doing, then you must be missing out. We live in a world in which every moment can be full of noise, if you like; in which you never have to be alone with your thoughts, or the people around you, or with God; because, hey! there’s social media, and radio, and 24-hour cable news.
And let me just say, to be clear—I am so bad at this. It takes me a week to settle in to being on vacation. I get antsy when I try to relax. I have side projects that I work on in the evenings just so I always have something to do. I will confess that I spend a lot of time with one headphone in, half-listening to music and half-listening to whatever tale my beautiful, beloved child is spinning me for the fourth hour straight about Sammy and Turkey and the spectral host of the Ghost Queen.
I even come up against this every year, when planning for this service. It’s just a few readings, and some prayers. No communion. No music. And I find myself thinking—Isn’t there some way we could make this Holy Saturday service do more? Couldn’t it be a little more busy? I feel embarrassed that I waste your time, inviting you down here for a twenty-minute thing.
And I wonder if this is the other reason that it can be hard to find a preacher for Holy Saturday. Because we are Holy Saturday denialists. We’re want a God who does things: who calls the ancient Israelites out of their wanderings, and leads them out of slavery in Egypt; who speaks through the prophets and becomes flesh in Jesus; who teaches, and heals, and suffers, and dies; who rises again and then sends the Holy Spirit to continue the work. We want a church that does things: that loves God and loves its neighbor, that makes disciples and cares for the poor, that worships and studies and prays and serves. We’re not used to a God who rests. We’re not used to being a church with nothing to do. And so we go from the suffering of Good Friday to the Resurrection of the vigil, and we skip over the rest.
But after six long days of working hard to create all things, on the seventh day, God rested; and on the eighth day, on Sunday, on the first day of the week, the life of the new creation began.
And so too, after many long years of living in the world, and after a very long and very Holy week, on the seventh day of the week—on Saturday, the Sabbath day—Jesus rested in the tomb. On the eighth day, on Sunday, he would rise—and the life of a new creation would begin again.
But on the seventh day, on Saturday, he rests. And we are left with nothing to do.
We can make all the excuses that we want. We can say that it’s worth being here right now because afterwards, we’ll get set up for the Vigil. We can say that more is more, and so another Holy Week service from the Prayer Book? Why not!
But Jesus doesn’t need our busyness today. The Sabbath is a day of rest.
Pontius Pilate and the chief priests, are busy today. They’re holding meetings and sending soldiers, they’re imagining conspiracies and scurrying around doing what they can to secure the tomb.
But Mary and Mary just sit, and watch, and rest. There’s nothing they can do but remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. And while the buzz of activity to try to keep Jesus’ body in the tomb will be completely useless in the end—the Marys will become “the apostles to the apostles,” the first to see and tell these wonderful things that have occurred.
So now it’s our turn to lay down our excuses. To set aside our busyness. To take a few moments, just a few, to be still, and keep watch. To do nothing but wait. To sit before the tomb, and pray. To dare to do a useless thing, and to rest, knowing that the God who needs nothing from us will do everything for us.