The Magic of Good Friday

It was sunny when you first joined the line in the Outer Court, but you've finally made it inside the temple just as it clouded over.  The crowds, the noise, the heat, dodging the endless processions of criminals going to Golgotha has made for a very long day. You've come to offer your sacrifice to the priest, and on the far side of the room you see The Curtain. The curtain is there for your benefit, it shields you from the holiness of your God who lives on the other side - the God who has chosen you and your people, set you apart, protected you, guided you, provided for your every need. The God who will one day set you free, vindicating you before all nations, and declaring you righteous. Then ... a vibration, ever so slight at first, felt only in the soles of your feet. It continues to strengthen until you need to reach out for something, anything, to maintain your balance. The noise builds with it. The sound of falling stones offends your ears. Panic sets in. Then you hear it: A sound you can't quite place. It starts off softly, quickly intensifying, until your sure it's going to violate your very soul. It's close.

Very close.

You first catch sight of it out of the corner of your eye. The Curtain. The curtain is torn wide open - from top to bottom. Instinctively you look away. You've been told your whole life that if you could see behind the curtain you'd be blinded, if not killed. But you can't help yourself. You steal a quick look, hoping it's fast enough you don't get caught. Before you know it you're on your knees in debilitating disbelief, and your stomach is trying to leave your body through your mouth. What you see behind the curtain is ... nothing: No searing light, no chorus of angels, no heavenly presence on a throne - nothing but a slightly raised section of floor and an incense burner. Like a magician pulls the curtain aside to reveal the empty box where his beautiful assistant once stood, your god is gone.

Or was he ever there?

The traditional explanation for the curtain tearing says it's God's way of showing there's no longer any separation between God and man; we are free to approach God without a mediator. But Peter Rollins and Jay Bakker have another take. Jay explains it like this. What if the point of tearing the curtain in two was to expose the fact that there's nothing there, and never was: that any illusion we've created about God is just that - an illusion. Once faced with the fallacy of this god, the question then becomes, which god are we going to believe in. Maybe destroying the curtain was to show the god of the good parking space, the miraculous healing, the lid for every pot, the hedge of protection - the god we've so carefully created in our image - doesn't exist. But the God of self sacrificing love does. He's the one hanging on the cross.

He's the one to follow.

The Dark Night of the Soul

All the posts you see below were copied over from my other site, due to problems with it. This is the first real post on this site. As I was copying them over, I was reminiscing on the various entries. I came across "Look Ma No Hands" and as this is Easter Sunday, it stuck out. Then for some reason I started to think back several years ago, before I started on my current spiritual journey, to I time when I was going through what has been described as the dark night of the soul by saint John of the Cross. It lasted about a year and a half.

Look Ma, No Hands

“My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” This is the cry from the cross. The traditional interpretation is that God couldn't look on Christ anymore because of the sin of the world that he was carrying. When you think of it for awhile, you realize how ridiculous that explanation is. Since when can God not look on sin? Doesn't he have to look at sin in order to judge it as wrong? Hasn't he been looking at sin for millennia?

 The other view is that God moved away from Christ, such as in “the dark night of the soul”. But no one ever seems to give an explanation as to why. Perhaps God does move away, but not in the negative sense that most people would think of.

 Christ is the perfect model for how we are to live. He modelled for us perfect obedience and self-sacrificing love. Maybe God moved away from him in the same way as a parent moves away from a child learning to ride a bike.

 When teaching a child how to ride a bike, you run along side of them, holding onto the seat, keeping them steady until you sense that they have enough balance to do it on there own. And then you slowly release your grip on the seat, while still running beside, until they are doing it all on their own. Eventually they are riding down the street, all by themselves, without even realizing that you are no longer there.

 Maybe God saw Christ's perfect obedience on the cross and then slowly moved away, in the realization that his modelling of obedience and self-sacrificing love was now coming to completion. And, just as a child suddenly realizes that the parent isn't holding onto the seat anymore, there is a burst of fear and panic.

 Maybe in the closing moments of the cross, God was standing off to the side, slightly out of breath, but with a big smile on his face.

 “It is finished.”