And
the Curtain of the Temple Was Torn in Two
April
2, 2021
Today is Good
Friday. Good Friday is the seemingly odd name we give to the day on which we
especially commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the one we confess to
be Lord and Savior. It is the most solemn day of the Christian year. There are
several unique things about Christianity that make it different from all other
faith traditions, the Incarnation and the Trinity among them. Yet perhaps the
one thing that most distinguishes Christianity from other faith traditions is
the truth that we follow a man who did not die a natural death. The founding
figures of Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism all lived more or less lengthy lives
and died of natural causes. Jesus didn’t. The ruling authorities of his time
and place, the Romans not the Jews, executed him as a political criminal. Or
maybe to them he was only a nuisance and a potential threat to their rule
rather than an actual one. Either way, our Lord and Savior was executed, killed
by the legal and military authorities of his day, and killed in the most
brutal, miserable way those authorities used to kill people, crucifixion. The
founding figures of other faiths died natural deaths. Jesus was murdered.
That Jesus was
executed as a criminal creates a particular problem for Christianity. If we can’t
find saving significance in Jesus’ crucifixion our whole religion is a sham. It’s
a fraud. Jesus’ crucifixion having no meaning would mean that we follow a man
who was a total loser, a false messiah, a man who claimed to be and who we
confess to be something that he was not. Yet Christians have always found
salvific meaning in Jesus’ death. For nearly the last one thousand years, though
not so much before that, western Christianity has found the meaning in Christ’s
crucifixion that Christ was paying the price that had to be paid to God before
God could or would forgive human sin. I reject that interpretation of Jesus’
death completely. I won’t go into the reasons I reject it here. For a rather
lengthy discussion of my reasons see chapter 8 of my book Liberating
Christianity.[1] I
want to focus here not on critiquing a
widely held but I belief indefensible understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion
but on the explanation of that meaning that the Gospel of Mark gives in just a
few words as part of its story of Jesus’ Passion. It is a powerful explanation
that discloses the true meaning of Jesus’ death to us.
Mark of course
tells a story of Jesus’ crucifixion. He had to. Every Christian knew that Jesus
had been crucified. Mark knew that, and he apparently also knew that Jesus’ crucifixion
has profound saving significance. He expressed that significance in these few
words: “Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of
the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”[2]
In my experience few Christians understand the significance of Mark’s words
here, but in those words Mark discloses the true cosmic significance of Jesus’
death. To understand how they do that, however, we need some background
information that most American Christians don’t have.
“The curtain of
the temple was torn in two.” Most of us know, I think, at least generally what
the temple was. The temple in Jerusalem was the central institution of Judaism
in Jesus’ day. It had originally been built in the late sixth century BCE after
the Jews returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. The king and
Roman puppet Herod the Great (died 4 BCE) had greatly expanded and enhanced it.
It was staffed by the top authorities of the faith, the chief priests, priests,
scribes, and Levites. It was the only place where Jews could offer the animal
sacrifices that the Torah law so often demands. It consisted of several
different of courts or areas. The first one a person entered was the largest of
them. It was called the Outer Court, or the Women’s Court, or sometimes the
Court of the Gentiles. Anyone could enter it. It was where people were selling
doves and changing money when Jesus came in and disrupted those activities.[3]
As you moved through the temple, which only men could do, you passed various
areas and installations including the altar where those animal sacrifices were
performed. At the far end of the temple from where you entered was a small
space called the Holy of Holies. It was the most sacred place in Judaism. It
was where God lived. When the Jews called the temple the House of God they
meant it literally, and God dwelt in the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies was
so sacred that only the high priest could enter it, and he did so only once a
year. It was separated from the rest of the temple by a curtain. The curtain
blocked all view into the Holy of Holies. It separated the Holy of Holies from
the people. It made the Holy of Holies a secretive, mystical, inaccessible
place. In both a factual and a mythic sense the curtain of the temple separated
the people from God.
Mark says that at
the moment of Jesus’ death the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top
to bottom. He means the curtain that closed off the Holy of Holies. Mark surely
did not intend for us to take that assertion literally. In any event there is
no historical evidence outside the Gospel of Mark that the curtain was actually
torn in two when Jesus died. (Luke has the curtain torn in two but at a
different time.[4]) Mark
clearly intends a mythic meaning here not a literal one. We too must focus not
on mere historical fact but on what Mark’s statement about the curtain of the
temple being torn in two means. It means an immense amount. It is the line in
which Mark tells us what Jesus’ death meant for him and means for us.
The curtain of
the temple separated the people from God. It prevented the people from having
direct, unmediated contact with God. When Mark says that at the moment of Jesus’
death the curtain of the temple was torn in two he means that with Jesus’ death
everything that separates us from God, or that we think separates us from God,
is removed. Destroyed. Rendered inoperable. With Jesus’ death we see that we in
fact stand in direct, unmediated relationship with God. All barriers real or
imagined between us and God are torn down. They never existed in the first
place, but now we see that they don’t. We see that in truth nothing in all creation
separates us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, as St. Paul says.[5]
OK, but why is it
precisely at the moment of Jesus’ death that the curtain of the temple is torn
in two? It is because as Jesus dies on the cross we see that God enters into
and is present with us in everything that happens in our lives up to and
including death. In Jesus Christ, God the Son Incarnate, suffering and dying on
the cross we see that God does not stand aloof from us and our lives. Rather
God is always there with us no matter what. Yes, Jesus cries out “My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?” But that cry simply points to the paradox that
in Jesus on the cross God is paradoxically both absent and present at the same
time. In Christ on the cross God enters into the full human condition,
including suffering and death. There is no separation between God and us. None.
If there ever was any it is gone. Any such thing is rendered ineffective, torn
in two from top to bottom.
That’s why we can
call this most solemn day of the Christian year when we remember the horrific
suffering and death of our Lord and Savior “Good Friday.” On one level of
course there’s nothing good about it. Unjust suffering and death, indeed any
suffering and death, are never good. They’re just inevitable for us humans,
being as we are mere mortals not gods. Yet like all profound spiritual truth
Jesus’ suffering and death are a paradox. What on one level is horrific (and we
must never minimize its horror the way the Gospel of John does) is at the same
time the best news there ever was or ever could be. In them we know that God
never leaves us, never rejects us, never dismisses us, but is present in saving
solidarity with us in everything that comes our way. Full stop. That’s the
bottom line of the Christian faith. Nothing in all creation can separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The curtain is torn in two.
Thanks be to God!
[1]
Thomas C. Sorenson, Liberating Christianity, Overcoming Obstacles to Faith
in the New Millennium (Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 2008)
91-108.
[2]
Mark 15:37-38 NRSV.
[3]
For a discussion of the meaning of what Jesus did there see Thomas Calnan
Sorenson, Liberating the Bible, A Pastor’s Guided Tour for Seeking Christians,
Revised Edition, Volume Three, The
New Testament (Coffee Press, Briarwood, New York, 2019) 48-50.
[4]
Luke has the curtain being torn in two, but he gets the timing wrong. He says
it happened at noon, three hours before Jesus died. See Luke 23:44-45. That
timing removes all the meaning of the curtain being torn in two. The author of
the Gospel of Luke wasn’t Jewish like the author of Mark was. He apparently
didn’t understand what the curtain was, what it did, and what its being torn in
two might mean.
[5]
Romans 8:38-39.
No comments:
Post a Comment