March 21, 2008

Clay Nelson

Good Friday

According to Matthew, “From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.” A powerful image suggesting that for the time Jesus was on the cross until his death the world was in a shadow. The world was under the hold of the forces of darkness.

Someone who studied physics recently told me darkness doesn’t really exist. Darkness is simply the absence of light. An interesting notion as darkness seems so very real. We resist the notion because darkness gives evil a place to reside. It is a place of fear from our earliest childhood memories and why parents invest in cute little nightlights for the nursery. As young children it is the place of “ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.”

Since we think darkness is an objective reality instead of simply the absence of light we give the evil that lives there a name – usually that of a mythological creature living in the underworld, or another person, or group of people or religion or country – and ask God to deliver us from the suffering we blame it for. However, escaping our darkest fears is too important a priority to leave to God, so we take matters into our own hands. That’s when we hear ourselves shouting, “Crucify, crucify him.”

We do it in so many ways, not just with nails. Sometimes only with words: innuendo, association, rumour, name-calling; lies: You’ve heard he is Muslim, haven’t you? Do you think he is black enough? Have you heard who his pastor is? An empty suit with magnificent but empty words. His followers are cult-like.

Sometimes we do it by remaining silent. When we are “the good German” and do not speak truth to power, but simply go along claiming we are not complicit in the evil perpetrated by our government or church or company, we wash our hands of any responsibility. Alas, the grime and guilt are still there, if only under the nails. “Shock and awe” five years ago this week comes readily to mind. Not all in the world or even in my own country remained silent, but too many did and so too many have died.

It took those in power a week to succeed in crucifying Jesus. In today’s 24/7 cable news and Internet-fuelled information age and with our weapons of mass destruction at our disposal we can do it in a matter of hours.

Deepak Chopra, a follower of eastern religions who has a fascination with Jesus, calls such moments the “Season of the Shadow.” He defines this season in mythic and psychological terms as ”a place of darkness in each of us – and in society as a whole – where we hide feelings we are too weak or afraid to face.”

We reside in the shadow when we say, “It is not me, but you who are a repository of evil.” Our hope is that if I destroy you I destroy darkness and the evil scurrying around in it like a cockroach. Alexander Solzhenitsyn reminds us that the problem with this strategy is that “the dividing line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” The physicist would put it similarly, if we succeed in destroying the other, that may be reassuring at first, but the darkness is still within us because hate and violence do not shed light.

The answer to this shadow is before us: the cross. But sadly, not in the way it has been presented through the ages.

The cross is evil. In is a violent and cruel tool of death and to Jesus’ disciples a humiliating means of execution reserved only for the worst amongst us.

It raised the question of meaning for them. What was the purpose of his death on a cross? They and the church sought answers in the shadows and as a result gave answers born in violence.

Sadly, those answers still crucify.

They began with blaming us. We are undeniably flawed and sinful creatures who deserve punishment. Someone has to make reparation to our Creator our forebears viewed primarily as a god of war. The church explained that the source and mystery of life is a cruel child abuser who demanded his son’s life to satisfy his bloodlust. But in truth as we gaze on the cross, we know such violence changed nothing. The darkness remains. The shadow has not lifted from our lives. Neither God nor we are satisfied.

Another explanation says, no, God did not sacrifice him; Jesus chose to die for us. Out of love he wanted to spare us the bloody and painful death our sinfulness deserves and God demands. This answer suggests we are saved by suicide. Unless it can be shown that Jesus suffered from chronic depression, I reject it. Complicity in one’s own death is not a way to shed light on the subject. Darkness will accept no substitute for the light we desire. Our lives have not been changed by this explanation.

Then there was the attempt to say death on the cross was not for God but to pay off the Devil who rules us because of our sinfulness. Again, we should reject this based on our own experience. We cannot buy ourselves out of trouble. Violence even for a good cause changes nothing – at least for the long term. The shadows still fall long before us.

So then the church tried to suggest that no, we didn’t pay off a terrorist making demands from Hades. Instead, the cross is a symbol of Jesus victory over the power of evil. He could take anything the Devil could handout, but only because he was fully divine. This explanation is rooted in ancient creation myths of warring gods who formed the world out of the body of their defeated enemy. But once again violence does not redeem us. It only perpetuates the darkness, leaving us mere mortals even more powerless against it. We still live in the season of the shadow, thinking now only God can save us.

There is only one way we can remove ourselves from the shadow of the cross. We need to understand that Jesus was showing us a way to live in how he died. A way filled with light that pushed away the darkness. But he wasn’t doing our work for us, he was doing what he had to do because it was the only way to be authentically human.

With the cries of “Crucify him” echoing in his ears he did not forsake his convictions. He did not blame or divert. He spoke and, more importantly, lived his truth. He lived his loving life as an indictment of the injustice, brutality, and ignorance that was closing in on him no matter what the consequences. And in the end, he forgave his tormentors. It was an audacious thing to do. It was an authentic thing to do.

He transformed the cross from an instrument of death into a reminder of how to live. He showed us that the darkness has no power over us unless we succumb to it out of fear. Only light has power. When we light candles of love, hope; compassion in our hearts the darkness retreats to the corners. He didn’t die to light those candles, but to remind us to light our own.

And when we do, we will see abundant life awaits us even in death and the shadows of fear that plague us will lift. The physicist is right, in the light, darkness doesn’t exist. It has no reality. Yes, it is an audacious thing to do, but then like him we will be authentically human.