The Power of God
The Gospel
accounts are not consistent about what terrestrial or celestial events
accompanied Jesus’ crucifixion. Things
like the darkening of the sun…
John, whom we
always read on Good Friday, doesn’t mention anything. But, of course, John was written a good bit later and is
considerably more interpretative and less historical than the synoptic
gospels. John is also more
pointedly critical of “the Jews.”
It took time for the early Christians to perceive the Jews as “other”
and therefore available for blame.
We have no way
of knowing for sure what happened to the world when Jesus was crucified. But Matthew, Mark and Luke all recount
very significant effects.
Matthew’s list
is the most comprehensive:
The sun darkened.
The curtain of
the temple was torn in two.
The earth shook
and the rocks were split.
Graves were
opened.
Everyone would
have noticed. A fairly small group
of people would have actually witnessed Jesus’ death. And even his closest followers couldn’t have really begun
yet to understand what it meant.
And yet, the
Gospel writers are telling us that Jesus’ death on the cross affected everyone
and, literally, every thing. Everyone would have noticed that something monumental was
happening to their world.
Things which
they thought were absolutely solid, unchangeable or secure... all of a sudden were not. The light of the sun. The stability of the earth. Even the temple itself. Were shown to be perishable, changeable.
Only the cross
was secure, where God’s power, greater than any other power, was being
revealed.
Later
St. Paul would write: For the message about the cross is
foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the
power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18).
God’s power, in
the message of the cross, wasn’t to be fully revealed until Easter. But Good Friday and the crucifixion certainly
should have gotten people’s attention…
Wake them up to the earth-shattering, soul-shattering significance of
what is happening. What happened
at Golgotha was an event more powerful than the light of the sun, more powerful
than the solid rock on which we stand, more powerful even than the temples we
build to house God.
Today we know
(or say that we know) that Jesus’ death was earth-shaking, soul-searing, yet we
rarely treat it as such. We place
our security elsewhere. In things
that seem to us secure. Rather
than in the power of God, made known on the cross.
