Weight of Darkness

The Cross was a instrument of torture. The person hanging on the cross was suspended by his arms, with usually only a nail in each wrist suspending his upper body from the pull of gravity. The gravitational pull was stalled out by the arrival of a third nail into the feet, which would staub out the eventual collapse of the body as it constantly fought against the force of nature. The nails were embedded in between the small bones of the wrist, kind of as a trap for them.Otherwise, of course the flesh would not withhold the iron and it would rip through the flesh as it drifted downward slave to gravity. He would not have stayed.

The imagery of the Christ being suspended on that rough wooden cross and experiencing the torture of dying is powerful and humbling.  The reality that Christ was truly alone, that there was NO one there to help him, no one who could relieve Him from his misery, is a reality that all Christians must face.

While we all can say now, "We would have been there!" I would have climbed up there with a saw or clippers to release those iron stays!" those are all statements made from the safety of history.

The story of Easter is not about our unwillingness to help Him, but about His willingness to STAY there. Christ's complete surrender to the will of His loving-but at that point absent-Father to die for us is one that I as a mortal human cannot comprehend nor fully appreciate.

But as a believer of Scripture, I know this much to be true: The Easter Story is real. It is historically accurate, and the story of Jesus Christ is one that has travelled throughout the nations. It is what gives us our reason for Hope. It is our reason for Faith.

At the Cross, Jesus was alone. While the stories and movies share of his mother and Mary Magdalene among others present at the Crucifixion, Christ died alone. Just like I tried to emphasize in my Huffington Post comment, in death we are alone. No one can explain to us what those last few hours of suffering or despair were like for Him.

Not because we have not experienced our own versions of despair or depression or loneliness, but as a Christian the truth is: We are never alone. Because of what Christ did on the Cross God has allowed us to enter into relationship with Him and rely on His guidance and His mercy to maintain and sustain us through life's challenges.

 ’ēlî ’ēlî lāmâ ‘ăzabtānî

The translation from Matthew 27:46-"My God, my God...why have you forsaken me?!"

Jesus screamed those words. Imagine that. Jesus, the Son of God, screaming.

Why did I always just assume that He moaned our cried out? Of course the abject suffering He surrendered to would weaken one to such a place, never mind his inability to breathe due to his lungs filling with blood as he slowly asphyxiated. I just assumed it was a cry out, a final good-bye, a Death moan. No, Pastor describes this as a scream.

In the sixth hour darkness came over the land. Darkness. He describes Hell as many theologians do-not as a place of fire and brimstone, but of Darkness. What Jesus experienced for the next three hours was Hell on earth.

What happens when you are enveloped in darkness? How does your body physiologically respond? Because we are so fearfully and wonderfully made, God created in us senses that work together to help us. In times of blindness, the sense of hearing is piqued. It's part of the beautiful and the complex machine that God created perfect in each of us.

Vision more than anything is what protects us. It is the last bastion of defense for us to determine what is real and what is imagined. In times of modern-day torture (Yes I do reference Zero Dark Thirty in this) the prisoner is placed in a dark tight box with no light. Only noise. And if not noise then the voices inside your head.

From the sixth hour to the ninth hour darkness fell over the land. 

Imagine the fear Christ felt. He is alone and now, there is nothing to see. He gets no confirmation of what He deems to be real or what the Emperor of Darkness has decided is true. He is being told that God has forgotten about Him, that He is suffering the sins of all mankind, of all creation, from Adam and Eve onward, and that He is paying the price for all of those willful wrong hurtful hateful acts. He is beaten, He is being judged, He is eating the poisonous sins of those who went on before, and those who denied His deity. He loves you enough to do it anyway.

He cannot cry out to His Father. God has turned His back. He is alone. He has no one to call on. His cries are not known, there is no mention of Him begging for His life or asking God to cause His suffering to cease, not without a final "Not my will but thine" acceptance. Even when He begs for redemption, He acquiesces to the reality of "Not my will but thine".

His final cry is not a call for help or an SOS, but a relinquishment of His life. "Why HAVE you forsaken me?" It's already happened. He is experiencing it. He stopped asking for help. Now He just wants to know..."Why?"

The messages and voices are telling Him one thing. The blanket of darkness has fallen. His is a life readying for death. He is suffocating under the heavy garment of judgment God placed on His shoulders. It is killing Him.

And then the Tetelestai: "It is finished".

 Jesus says that in the Scriptures. John 19:30. What a powerful sentence. The most powerful sentence in all of Scripture.

He did it.
We can have Joy out of what Jesus Did.
If you obey God out of fear, out of some need to continue the work that Jesus Christ did on this earth: Stop. Stop. Only fear can come out of that sort of faith. Stop.

Jesus said it Himself. "It is finished". 

Not even "I did this."  Just---"It is finished". 

And the 60 foot tall curtain the width of your hand that separated the synagogue from the Holy of Holies. The thick curtain that separated the light of God's Holiness from us.

The curtain that kept us in the dark of God's grace and God's forgiveness.
The curtain that kept us in the outer darkness...not just for three hours but for eternity.
 The outer darkness that made our vision useless and made our realities as vague and lost as a coin lost in a dark well...
The curtain that kept us separated from the reality of God's wisdom and the truth that God offers us as believers.

The curtain that made us fear God and that gave the power of our forgiveness to the High Priests and to sacrificial works.

The curtain was torn away. And we can fellowship with God and we can worship Him and trust in Him in our daily existence. We can come to Him with our requests and our prayers, and not through a confessor or a priest. It is just between us. Between Him and us.

Because God sent His son who lived in complete darkness and suffered utter agony for us to enter in.

And so, today I can serve God not out of fear of experiencing darkness. Not out of fear of abandonment or being left alone. Of being shunned or rejected for your mistakes.

We can serve out of Joy for what Christ did for us.
And while we deserved what He received,
 even the nails could not have kept Him up there.