Holy Saturday: What If Jesus Had Never Been Raised?

As a teenager, I played the organ weekly for my large Catholic parish. Steeped in the rituals of Holy Week, my musical participation was the means for experiencing the events we were commemorating.

One particular year, after the demands of Holy Week had run their course through Good Friday, I came into the church on Saturday to practice my pieces for Easter morning. In the Catholic tradition, at the conclusion of the Good Friday service the church sanctuary is stripped of all ornamentation. The candles are extinguished and the Sacrament is removed from the building. Empty of worshipers on Holy Saturday, the one day of the year when Mass is not said, the place was desolate. I felt the vacuum and the question rose in my mind, “What if Jesus had never been resurrected?”

Sitting in the pew to ponder this idea, and having revisited the question annually since then, I could list several impacts on my life if Jesus had remained dead and never risen from the grave.

1. Jesus would have been dismissed as a fraud and liar, never to be remembered again. His claims to deity would have been disproved. Even his teaching would have been discredited as untrue or unreliable (e.g. John 11:25).

2. There would be no church for me to participate in, for the resurrection is the cornerstone of the church’s existence, as evidenced by the first sermons (Acts 2). The disciples, without the resurrection, would not have been able to sustain a witness and endure persecution without the presence of the Risen Lord.

3. No one would be available to answer my prayers. Jesus would not be sitting at the right hand of the Father to mediate and intercede for me (Romans 8:34).

4. I would still be guilty, under the burden of consequences of my sin, and alienated from God (Romans 5:1; 2 Cor. 5:17).

5. The Father would not have sent his Spirit to dwell in my soul, enlivening and comforting me (John 14:25-26).

6. I would be robbed of hope for Life after death (1 Cor. 15:20-22).

Imagine what life would be like if we had been left in this kind of emptiness. I have considered it a gift of time and space to meditate for one day on life without God. The equivalent exercise is to remember what it was like before I knew the resurrected Christ personally. And then to consider all that Jesus Christ has done for me (and not just me—the world) in the last fifty years since I surrendered to him. My life would have turned out entirely different—riddled with guilt, anxiety, selfishness, and fear of death. I shudder to think.

By day’s end, I will be ready once more to give thanks to God for the fact that Jesus lives and reigns forever and ever! Hallelujah! Christ is risen. Indeed.