stare into the void

Today is Good Friday, the darkest day in the Christian calendar. Tonight my church is having a joint service with another local body in which we will be remembering the Seven Last Words of Jesus, the seven sayings attributed to Jesus on the cross in the four gospels. I have been asked to speak about the last of the seven sayings, which comes from Luke 23:46: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."

I'm going to share with you the short reflection on "The Word of Reunion" (as it is sometimes called) that I will be giving tonight. (**Thus: Spoilers ahead if you're coming tonight!**) I am honored  to be part of the Good Friday gathering, as this marks one of the most important, contradictory, and confusing aspects of the life of Jesus: his death. It's easy to talk about the resurrection, since it's all about triumph and happiness and final victory. It's harder to really sit with the bleakness of Good Friday and be humbled by the strange and powerful love of a God who reaches out to us.

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When I was a child, I was taught a simple blessing to say before every meal. Without fail, every time we ate, we would bow our heads, fold our hands, and pray, "God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. By his hands we are fed, thank you God for daily bread. A-men." And, of course, the "A-men" had to be said with a sing-song inflection.

It's easy as an adult to look back on that and think, "That's kid stuff." As we get older, we can brush off those childhood rituals as if they have no place in a mature person's life. However, I thank God for those foundational customs I learned as a child. I don't care how "mature" or "intellectual" you become, the truth found in memorizing these prayers and reciting familiar verses like John 3:16 or Psalm 23 remains truth - and often deep, foundational truth that really matters.

In Luke we find the seventh of the Jesus's seven sayings on the cross, and it's one of two in which Jesus quotes from a Psalm. (The other is the fourth word.) Here, Jesus recalls Psalm 31. It's a psalm attributed to King David when he was fleeing for his life, oppressed and scared. I'll go ahead and recite the first five verses:

"In you, Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me; come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. Keep me free from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge." And here's the money verse: "Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God."

You may not have noticed that Jesus on the cross adds one very important word here: "Father." "Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit." Jesus isn't crying out to some distant deity or some spiritual idea that he doesn't really know; he reaches out to God the Father, a very personal, intimate relationship. And perhaps the most important thing about Psalm 31 is that, according to some scholars, it was a prayer sort of like that dinner blessing I learned as a child. Jewish mothers would teach their children the words of this psalm: "Into your hands I commit my spirit." In times of sadness or uncertainty, Jewish children were taught to say these words.

So we see here Jesus, at his most vulnerable, at his weakest, at his loneliest, at the point of his death, and he goes back a prayer he may well have learned as a young Jewish boy. These aren't theologically profound words, these aren't the great words of a scholar or a rabbi or a political figure. This is an expression of the truth Jesus has known since he was a child - that God does not abandon, that God is a refuge and a rock and a fortress: today we might say a bunker or a storm shelter. God is the one to whom we run when we have no more strength and no idea where to go next.

Luke also tells us that the curtain in the Jewish temple was ripped in two at the time of Jesus's death. That curtain was the symbol of a divide - only the priests could enter, for beyond that boundary was the presence of God. It was kind of like the velvet rope at an awards ceremony with security standing by - beyond this was forbidden territory. At Jesus' death, the curtain falls - God is accesible to all. Jesus, as he dies, commits himself to the will of the God who does not let his followers slip through his fingers.

As we go into the dark night of Friday, not yet entering the light of resurrection, let us stare into the void and defiantly but confidently say with the faith of a child, "Father, into your hands, we commit our spirits."