HOLY SATURDAY

Holy Saturday

Forty-six years ago tomorrow, April 8, 1966, the Easter issue of Time magazine carried the headline “IS GOD DEAD?” We were just ending a three-year Navy tour in Japan and looking forward to our first assignment in Washington, DC. When we arrived in Washington that summer we had two or three weeks to get settled in our house on what was still somewhat rural Wakefield Chapel Road and see the sights, monuments and memorials, Washington National Cathedral, the Smithsonian, and the Washington Zoo, where I had seen my first tarantula during a visit in 1943. 

Two types of institutions have fascinating bookstores, cathedrals and seminaries, and the cathedral bookstore in Washington is no exception. The first thing that caught my eye that 1966 summer was a bright red book in paperback

that reminded me of the Time magazine article. The book went home with me, was read, and probably is still around here somewhere.

At seminary years later, the perennial Holy Saturday question always brought to mind that red book by Altizer and Hamilton. It went like so, and perhaps still does. “If Jesus is truly God and on that Saturday after his crucifixion God was truly dead, who was in charge of the universe on that day while God was dead?” Sure as the Easter Bunny, the question pops up every year on this weekend.

That wasn't the kind of death Altizer and Hamilton had in mind, and the question may or may not be tongue in cheek like “how high is the sky?” and “how long is a string?” but it always made seminarians pause long enough to think about whether to respond.

TW+