ECLIPSE Matthew 2:1-2; Matthew 27:32-54 This noontime darkness is no ordinary eclipse. This noontime darkness is not a solar eclipse. This noontime darkness is nothing else than the eclipse of the Star of the East. Make no mistake about it. The brightness of the Eastern Star casts long the shadow of the cross. This blackest of all days is made black by the light which was put out. Steinbeck's Ethan Alan Hawley captures this blackness for us as we gather in the noon time darkness: There's nothing blacker than a wick.... It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone. 1 And so we stand, today, in the shadow of the cross, bewildered, wounded, and chilled. The Gospel of light has been eclipsed by the tragedy of the cross. Our inclination as Christians who proclaim a resurrection faith is to brush aside the noonday darkness as we dash ahead to the Easter sunrise. We love the brightness of Easter even as we love the brightness of the Eastern Star; together they proclaim for us hope and promise, the assurance of the power of God, the certainty of God's forgiveness, the finality of our faith. Make no mistake, however. The Easter path begins with midnight brightness in Bethlehem and passes through the midday darkness of Golgotha. We cannot pass from bright to bright without pausing at the cross. And so we stand, today, in the shadow of the cross, bewildered, wounded, and chilled. The Gospel of light has been eclipsed by the tragedy of the cross. Bewildered in the Shadow of the Cross
of the Kingdom of God? Was it not he who showed us the power of God and His Kingdom as he healed the lepers, fed the hungry, and stilled the storm? To each of those queries we respond in faith, "Yes!" "Yes! Yes!" All of that is true! Even as those echoes of our affirmation die in our ears, however, we are haunted by the taunts of those described by the Evangelist who wagged their heads in the shadow of the cross and said: He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. 3 Somehow it just does not make sense. How could things have changed so quickly? Scarcely a week ago this Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, riding upon a donkey and the crest of public opinion and adulation. "Hosanna!" they cried. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" they shouted. Those echoes, too, have died; and all that remains are the taunts: "He saved others; he cannot save himself." There is bewilderment in the shadow of the cross, profound bewilderment. The horrible reality of the cross does challenge the very root of our faith: the assurance of the power of God. Either our faith is in vain or we have not understood the power of God. Those are not happy options! We cling to our faith and have glibly announced the power of God in countless ways: "God knows what He is doing," we say. "God knows what is best for us," we mutter in the face of the
And behold, they brought to him a paralytic, lying on his bed; and when Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralytic, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven. And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, This man is blaspheming. But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, `Your sins are forgiven' or to say, `Rise and walk?' But that you may know the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins he said then to the paralytic Rise, take up your bed and go home." 4 (emphasis added) attempt to flee from the shadow of the cross, because in the shadow of the cross we are bewildered. Somehow it just does not make sense. The very Son of God could not save himself from the grip of death! He died. The shadow of the cross is a place of bewilderment for there we are confronted with the inconsistency of an all-powerful God who stands aside as His Son dies a powerless death. Wounded in the Shadow of the Cross If the shadow of the cross leaves us bewildered about the assurance of the power of God, it also leaves us wounded as we contemplate the certainty of God's forgiveness. The two are closely related. Time and again the Gospel writers have told us that the mighty works of Jesus his signs and wonders performed serve to buttress his authority to forgive. Matthew, as well as Mark and Luke, record the healing of the paralytic who was brought before Jesus. In each instance the Evangelist reports that Jesus first of all offers the proclamation of forgiveness. Only then does the work of healing take place. Matthew recounts the event with these words:
forgiveness has been proclaimed; we hear his words, "Take heart, your sins are forgiven," and we take heart in the knowledge of forgiveness. And then it happens in the shadow of the cross. The one in whom we have taken heart cries out and stops our hearts! More haunting than the taunts of passers-by at the foot of the cross are the words of the one crucified: My God, My God, Why have You forsaken me? The so-called cry of dereliction, or cry of abandonment, stops our hearts, indeed. Jesus, the one we confess to be the Christ, the very Son of God, that Jesus cries out in agony from the cross, "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?" We have taken heart in the words of this Jesus, "Your sins are forgiven you;" how can we keep heart once we have heard his cry of pain, and agony, and abandonment? The one in whom we place our faith cries out in abandonment. Already his followers have left him they ran away at the time of the arrest. And now, now in the final moments of life Jesus pours out his heart in a cry of emptiness. That cry, "My God, My God, Why have you abandoned me?" echoes in the emptiness of our souls as we stand in the shadow of the cross; we are wounded by the wounds of Jesus; we are wounded by his empty cry; we are wounded by the possibility that each of us will face similar abandonment: an empty and lonely death. Chilled in the Shadow of the Cross Where now are the bright promises of the Eastern Star which burned so bright over a Bethlehem midnight? Where is the calm assurance of the power of God in history, working out
We stand in that shadow, bewildered, wounded and chilled. There is nothing quite like the chill that grips in the shadows. After a morning of vigorous yard work under a springtime sun we all have experienced that shivering clamminess that comes as a cloud obscures our source of heat, reminding us that winter is not completely gone. The chill brought on by a sudden shadow is a chill like none other. The shadow of the cross is a sudden one. The chill it brings is like none other. Early in the third century the Latin theologian, Tertullian pondered the shadow of the cross, trying to make sense out of its senselessness. Tertullian was convinced that God makes himself known to us the way he really is. Said another way, Tertullian was convinced that God related to himself the same way he relates to his creation. [The immanent Trinity is the same as the economic Trinity.] 5 Jürgen Moltmann, a contemporary theologian, has built on the ideas of Tertullian (and others [most notably, Karl Rahner]) concluding that the cross is first of all an event in the life of God, and only subsequently an event in our lives. 6 Suggesting the cross as an event in God respects the integrity of suffering and, therefore, it does not deny the horrible reality of the cross for Jesus. Suggesting the cross as an event in God respects the integrity of shared suffering and, therefore, it does not deny the horrible reality of the cross for God, the Father. Seeing the cross at the heart of God for me allows me to endure the chill of the shadow of the cross. I cannot deny the suffering of the cross; neither can I exclude
In the shadow of the cross we feel the chill of death. In the shadow of the cross we feel the chill of grief. Death and grief--neither of them ours; both of them for us, however. The agony of the dying Son is not our agony. The agony of the dying Son is not his alone, however. If the cross is first of all an event in the heart of God, then the agony of a dying Son is also the agony of a grieving Father! The Son experiences the pain of the cross as death. The Father experiences the pain of the cross as grief. Death and grief taken up in the heart of God! A dying Son and a grieving Father bound together by the Spirit of shared suffering. A poetic reading of Matthew's account of the last hours of the life of Jesus captures the shared suffering of the cross. The Evangelist tells us of midday darkness en eclipse. He tells us, too, of the quaking earth at the moment of the death of Jesus. The shadow of death falls across the life of Jesus; that same shadow falls across the heart of God, the Father. Grief in the shadow of death chills the Father and he shivers, sending shudders of suffering throughout all creation. In the shudders of grief we see most clearly the shape of the heart of God. The heart of God grieves in the pain of death; the heart of God shares in the pain of death; the heart of God takes suffering to its very core. In the cross, God is revealed as the supreme Sufferer. This noontime darkness is no ordinary eclipse. This noontime darkness is not a solar eclipse. This noontime darkness is nothing else than the eclipse of the Star of the East. Make no mistake about it. In the cross we glimpse the finality of our faith, the assurance that in the shadow of the cross God is on this side of the darkness telling us once and for all that He has borne our
1 John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent (New York: The Viking Press, 1961), 281. 2 I Corinthians 1:18-25. 3 Matthew 27:42-43. 4 Matthew 9:2-6 and parallels. 5 Tertullian, "Against Praxeas" in The Ante-Nicean Fathers, Vol. III, 597-628. 6 Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), especially chapter 6, "The `Crucified God,'" 200-90.