A Curtain Torn in Two

A Curtain Torn in Two: The Good News of Good Friday

April 10, 2020

Scripture: Mark 15:38

“And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.” Mark 15:38. Mostly we read that line almost as a throw away. It’s there in the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. We read it on Good Friday. It comes immediately after Jesus breathes his last. Most of us probably don’t know what it means. A curtain torn in two? In the temple? The temple has a curtain? What, to cover a window? If the temple did have a curtain why should it be torn in two, and why precisely at the moment of Jesus’ death? We don’t understand it, so we glide over it and pay it no mind. The line is there, but for most of us it might as well not be.

That’s really unfortunate. Mark saying that at the moment of Jesus’ death the curtain of the temple was torn in two is one of the most important and theologically profound verses in all of scripture. The temple really did have a curtain, but it didn’t cover a window. In the innermost part of the temple there was a space called the Holy of Holies. It was the most sacred part of the temple. Jews in Jesus’ time believed that it was where God lived. It was sacred because God was most immediately present there. Only one person was permitted to enter it, the chief priest, and he entered it only once a year. This is where the curtain comes in. The Holy of Holies was separated from the rest of the temple not by a wall but by a curtain. The curtain separated the Holy of Holies, God’s dwelling place, from the people. Except for the chief priest once a year no one could approach closer to God than the outside of the curtain, which functioned as a barrier between the people and God.

Now, the curtain being torn in two at the moment of Jesus’ death is not a factual truth. Outside the Gospels there is no account of it ever having happened. That it didn’t happen as a matter of fact however matters not at all. The author of the Gospel of Mark never intended for us to understand the line as a factual matter. The power of the line lies in its symbolic meaning, a meaning which is there whether the curtain was ever actually torn in two or not.

Here’s that meaning: When Jesus died everything that separates us from God was torn apart. Mark’s tearing of the curtain is a symbolic expression of that truth. Everything that separates us from God or that we think separates us from God was wiped away. All barriers between God and us were destroyed. Upon Jesus’ death everything that separates us from God was gone. The curtain of the temple was torn in two.

That is the great good news of Good Friday. Yes, the Romans crucified Jesus. They nailed him up on crossed timbers and left him there to die. What they did to him and to so many others was brutal, terroristic even. Crucifixion was a horrible way to die, and that’s why the Romans did it. Crucifixion was Rome’s way of saying don’t you dare oppose us. Don’t you dare rebel against us. This is what will happen to you if you do, and you really don’t want this to happen to you. Crucifixion was barbaric. It was diabolical, and the Romans did it to Jesus.

Yet we Christians find the best good news ever in that horrendous act. When the Romans killed Jesus the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Everything that we think separates us from God was blown away. How? Because in the crucifixion of Jesus God in God’s own person entered into, experienced, and suffered the worst that human life can bring. In Jesus as God the Son Incarnate God did not avoid the suffering human life can bring. God took it into God’s own being. In Jesus’ death God took human death into God’s own being. God sanctified human suffering and death. God showed us in the most personal way possible that God does not abandon us when we suffer and die. God does not abandon us when we think God has forsaken us as Jesus did on the cross.

Rather God enters into whatever happens to us in life, meets us there, holds us there, loves us there. That’s why the symbolic tearing of the curtain of the temple at the moment of Jesus’ death is so important. That’s why Good Friday is good while at the same time being horribly, horribly bad. Jesus is Emmanuel, God With Us, in life and wellbeing and far more importantly in suffering and in death. In his suffering and death we see that nothing, absolutely nothing separates us from the love of God. The curtain of the temple is torn in two. Thanks be to God!