Shock and Discontinuity

It's a curious stillness, this afternoon, remembering the olive trees on the hill outside Jerusalem, looking down over the Kidron Valley - the gaps between the trees where, not many hours ago, Jesus had pleaded that there might be another way; anything but this; that now was over, finished.

This silence has not yet pattern. There is a kind of stasis field around Good Friday afternoon, time suspended almost, beyond the torn curtain, the instant of shock and discontinuity among all that was made.

This Good Friday, of all Good Fridays, we are between worlds, waiting for we know not what. Discontinuity. Not knowing, yet the mercy of that death spreads like a stain, unbounded, in the empty places after that cry, "Tetelestai!" It has only just begun.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5 NIV)

No more what we were before…

In the stories of the Crucifixion the agony and the death of Jesus are connected with a group of events in nature: Darkness covers the land; the curtain of the temple is torn in two; the earth is shaken and the bodies of saints rise out of their graves. Nature, with trembling, participates in the decisive event of history. The sun veils its head; the temple makes the gesture of mourning; the foundations of the earth are moved; the tombs are opened. Nature is in an uproar because something is happening which concerns the universe.

Since the time of the evangelists, wherever the story of Golgotha has been told as the turning event in the world-drama of salvation, the role nature played in this drama has also been told. Painters of the crucifixion have used all their artistic power to express the darkness over the land in almost unnatural colours. I remember my own earliest impression of Good Friday—the feeling of the mystery of the divine suffering, first of all, through the compassion of nature. And so did the centurion, the first pagan who witnessed for the Crucified. Filled with awe, with numinous dread, he understood in a naive-profound way that something more had happened than the death of a holy and innocent man…

The sun veiled its face because of the depth of evil and shame which it saw under the Cross. But the sun also veiled its face because its power over the world had ceased once and forever in these hours of its darkness. The great shining and burning god of everything that lives on earth, the sun who was praised and feared and adored by innumerable human beings during thousands and thousands of years, had been deprived of its divine power when one human being in ultimate agony maintained His unity with that which is greater than the sun. Since those hours of darkness it is manifest that not the sun, but a suffering and struggling soul which cannot be broken by all the powers of the universe is the image of the Highest, and that the sun can only be praised in the way of St. Francis, who called it our brother, but not our god…

And the earth not only ceases to be the solid ground of life; she also ceases to be the lasting cave of death. Resurrection is not something added to the death of Him who is the Christ; but it is implied in His death, as the story of the resurrection before the resurrection, indicates. No longer is the universe subjected to the law of death out of birth. It is subjected to a higher law, to the law of life out of death by the death of Him who represented eternal life. The tombs were opened and bodies were raised when one man in whom God was present without limit committed His spirit into His Father’s hands. Since this moment the universe is no longer what it was; nature has received another meaning; history is transformed and you and I are no more, and should not be any more, what we were before.

Paul Tillich, The New Being, Ch.23 (also available to read online here)

Cold and empty…

After all the church activity, Good Friday evening is cold and empty, empty as the stripped altars, the shocking, open tabernacle, without even its curtain…

If I feel like this, wondering how long it will be till Sunday morning, how must it have been for his Mother, and the scattered, frightened disciples?

To whom can we turn, when silence lies hollow as the night wind, and the light fails at last?

Peter said it: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6.68)

How can God die?

PILATE: Claudia, Claudia, tell me—what was this dream of yours?

CLAUDIA: I was in a ship at sea, voyaging among the islands of the Aegean. At first the weather seemed calm and sunny—but presently, the sky darkened—and the sea began to toss with wind…

Then, out of the east, there comes a cry, strange and piercing…

(voice, in a thin wail:
”Pan ho megas thethnéke—
Pan ho megas thethnéke—”)

and I said to the captain, “What do they cry?” And he answered, “Great Pan is dead.” And I asked him, “How can God die?” And he answered, “Don’t you remember? They crucified him. He suffered under Pontius Pilate” …

(Murmur of voices, starting almost in a whisper)

Then all the people in the ship turned their faces to me and said: “Pontius Pilate”….

(Voices, some speaking, some chanting, some muttering, mingled with sung fragments of Greek and Latin liturgies, weaving and crossing one another:
“Pontius Pilate… Pontius Pilate… he suffered under Pontius Pilate… crucified, dead and buried… sub Pontio Pilato… Pilato… he suffered… suffered… under Pontius Pilate… under Pontius Pilate…”)

… in all tongues and voices… even the little children with their mothers…

(Children’s voices: “Suffered under Pontius Pilate… sub Pontio Pilato… crucifié sous Ponce Pilate… gekreuzigt unter Pontius Pilatus…” and other languages, mingling with the adult voices: then fade it all out)

…your name, husband, your name continually—“he suffered under Pontius Pilate”.

PILATE: The gods avert the omen.

CLAUDIA: This day is like my dream, Caius—this darkness at mid-noon… Hark! What was that?

PILATE: Nothing, Claudia, there is nothing to hear… Come away from the window.

Dorothy L Sayers: The Man Born to be King, Gollancz, 1943; Ignatius Press 1999

A Dream of the Rood

Listen:
I will disclose      the deepest vision
that came in a dream      at night’s centre
when all human voices      rested in sleep.
It seemed I beheld      the tree of the Mystery
rise in the heavens,      spinning out rays
of perfect light.      That beacon glowed
spattered with gold,      shining with jewels,
clear to earth’s corners:      five gems
defined the crossbeam.      All God’s angels were witness,
splendid throughout eternity.      This was no common gallows.
Many observed it:      both angelic hosts
and men on earth:      it ran through creation.
The victory wood was a marvel,      and I, stained with my sins,
cut with my shame,      saw the glory tree
robed in its honour,      radiating splendour,
decked with gold,      magnificently cased
in precious stones,      the axle of power.
Yet through that radiance      I could witness
the primal agony      when it first began
to bleed on its right side.      I was overwhelmed with sorrow,
afraid of this terrible vision.      I saw the moving beacon
change the nature of its raiment:      sometimes it was soaked through,
drenched with heavy blood,      sometimes it blazed with treasure…

I prayed to the tree,      glad in spirit,
strong in zeal,      though I was alone,
small in my solitude.      Then my soul
urged me forward;      I had to endure
my hour of longing. Now my life’s hope
is to seek out      that triumphant wood
as a lone pilgrim      so that all souls
may fully adore it.      This is my hope,
the strength of my heart:      my purpose comes
straight from the Cross.

(from A Dream of the Rood, (Anglo-Saxon) tr. Karl Young)

A white silence...

I have not been posting as regularly as I would have liked to, recently. I'll try and write more on why after Easter, but actually these last weeks have also been externally scattered, in a good way, with old friends from across the world and from the other end of the country coming to visit, and to see around our county, and to be shown some of the lovely hidden places of Purbeck!

Barbara, of barefoot towards the light, has a wonderful little post on the Easter Triduum, where she speaks of "withdraw[ing] behind a white silence." I think, as the hours pass on towards Good Friday, that that is the right place for me, too. As Barbara also says, "it is more than called for."