Sabbath of Sabbaths
This poem imagines Holy Saturday as the most radical Sabbath imaginable: creation itself stops (and God the Creator ceases to work). The Son lies in the tomb; the ordinary rhythms of the cosmos appear suspended; even modern clocks, airplanes, streetcars, and communications participate imaginatively in the great interruption. Yet beneath that apparent inactivity something is happening. The dead Christ enters the realm of death, chains loosen, and Sheol’s apparent security begins to collapse. Thus God’s deepest Sabbath conceals God’s deepest work: while the world sees only stillness, death is being undone from within.