Friday, April 2, 2010

Good Friday: “Sometimes it causes me to tremble!”

“Sometimes it causes me to tremble” is a line from the refrain of the well-known spiritual, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” The trembling comes upon the witness to Jesus’ crucifixion, and like many hymns and spirituals puts the singer or hearer in the role of a witness to the event.

This is a particularly modern approach, an existential one we might say, where the “religious affections,” to use Jonathan Edwards' term, are profoundly moved by contemplating Jesus on the cross.

But there is another parallel tradition as ancient as the New Testament that sees in the death of Jesus not merely a profoundly agonizing event which moves the witnesses, then and now, but also as an event that changes the whole world, even the natural world.

In theology talk we would call the Cross of Jesus a “cosmic and eschatological” event, meaning that its implications were both universal in scope and ultimate in time.

We see some of this imagery already in, for example, the Gospel of Mark, our earliest Gospel, where he describes the earth darkening at the hour of the crucifixion, and the veil of the temple being torn in two. (Mark 15:33 and 38)

Matthew’s account says even more of this kind of thing: “The earth shook and the rocks were split.” (Matt. 57: 21b)  Luke adds that “the sun’s light failed.” (Luke 23:45)

P. T. Forsyth once got at the cosmic implications of the Cross by saying that the very atomic structure of the universe was changed by this event. Whether he meant this as science or as a metaphor, either way it points to the vast repercussions of the moment when “They crucified my Lord.”

Earlier generations were more able to see in such an event, not the merely personal and individual, where our time seems to want to safely relegate all religious phenomena, but the cosmic.

Here’s an example of such a cosmic view from Frances Quarles, a Seventeenth Century poet, which refers to a trembling that shook not just the believer, but the earth itself.  He doesn't ignore the personal. On the contrary, he asks, if these senseless things can tremble so, “Shall I not melt one poor drop to see my Saviour die?”

The Earth Did Tremble

“The earth did tremble: and heaven’s closed eye was loathe to see the Lord of Glory die.
The skies were clad in mourning, and the spheres forgot their harmony;
The clouds dropped tears.
The ambitious dead arose to give him room; and ev’ry grave did gape to be his tomb.
The affrighted heav’n sent down elegious thunder;
The world’s foundation loosed, to lose their founder;
The impatient temple rent her veil in two,
To teach our hearts what our sad hearts should do:
Shall senseless things do this, and shall I not melt one poor drop to see my Savior die?
Drill forth my tears and trickle one by one till you have pierced this heart of mine, this stone.”
Frances Quarles, 1592-1644

2 comments:

  1. Rick, I like the new photo header, but I miss seeing that beautiful shot of the snow.

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  2. Jason,

    It'll be back next year! I'm moving to a seasonal photo header of what it actually looks like out my blogging window. It is the exact same scene.

    I did think the winter scene was beautiful, and also served metaphorically for a retired guy in the winter of his life, but re-considered and decided to make it seasonal.

    The next one should be the marsh in full Spring bloom, for Eastertide in a few weeks. I know that your seasons differ Down Under, but here “the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.” In the 70's f. today for the first time. And predicted to be the same for Easter, a rarity in these parts.

    -Rick

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