Thoughts for the Day

Luke 23:44-46 It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining.  And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.

Luke, who tells us he carefully investigated everything, comes across here as a journalist who has pared the results of his investigation to the bone to fit them into a news programme soundbite.  And what a soundbite, with four normally impossible but hugely significant elements condensed into as many lines.  First, a supernatural darkness (assuredly not an eclipse), not from the moment of his crucifixion but starting at midday when the contrast is greatest; a potent symbol of God’s judgement not to mention his authority over creation.  Second, the temple curtain that was considered to separate the people, even the priests, from the presence of God, reputedly 20 m high by 10 m wide by 10 cm thick , torn in two … just like that; a potent symbol of Jesus opening a way into God’s presence.  Third, dying of asphyxiation, Jesus shouts!  And what does he shout?  Scripture, of course!  Psalm 31:5, except that he precedes it with the word “Father” and leaves his listeners to complete the verse “… redeem me, O Lord, the God of truth.”  Fourth, he breathed his last, which may sound “normal” apart from the sense that this was a moment of Jesus’s choosing.  I picture Jesus after three long, agonising hours of darkness seeing the first glimmers of sunshine, knowing that his work is finished and choosing that moment to lay down his life.