"If you see Jesus losing the infinite love of his Father out of his infinite love for you, it will melt your hardness." 210
"Spiritual darkness comes when we turn away from God as our true light and make something else the center of our life." 203
"When you are in spiritual darkness, although you may feel your life is headed in the right direction, you are actually profoundly disoriented." 203
"Also, if you center on anything but God, you suffer a loss of identity. Your identity will be fragile and insecure... It's based on human approval. It's based on how well you perform. You don't really know who you are. In the darkness you can't see yourself." 204
Intro: When Jesus was asked, "Are you the Messiah/Christ...?" (Mark 14:60-61), he said, "I am" (Mark 14:62), thus claiming to be the Messiah, the promised one. Jesus also identified himself as "the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One" (Mark 14:62; Dan 7:13; Ps 110:1). Everyone in the room, all of the ruling council of the Sanhedrin knows who the Son of Man is--the One with the shekinah glory, the very glory of God, who will judge the entire world (Dan 7:13-14). It was a claim to deity.
Of all the things Jesus could have said, with so many texts, themes, images, metaphors, and passages of the Hebrew Scriptures he could have used to tell who he was, he specifically says he's the judge. By his choice, Jesus is deliberately forcing us to see the paradox with an enormous reversal: "He is the judge over the entire world, being judged by the world." (196) Everything is turned upside down.
Their response to Jesus' claim to deity was explosive (Mark 14:63-65). The high priest ripping his garments is a sign of the greatest possible outrage, horror, and grief. Then the whole trial goes berserk, deteriorating into a riot--spitting at Jesus, beating him, instantly convicting him, and condemning him as worthy of death.
But since they had no power to pass the death sentence, the Sanhedrin hands Jesus over to Pilate, the governor appointed by Rome, for him to put Jesus to death (Mark 15:1-5). Knowing Jesus to be innocent and that the religious leaders were only accusing Jesus out of envy, he still vacillates and stalls, and attempts to have Jesus released through the time-honored custom of releasing a prisoner amid a time of general rejoicing (Mark 15:6-10), which back-fired on him (Mark 15:11-15).
Crucifixion was designed to be the most humiliating and gruesome method of execution, being reserved for the worst offenders, which resulted in a horrible death by shock or asphyxiation. But Mark gives us very few of the gory details. He aims his spotlight away from the physical horrors of Jesus' ordeal in order to focus it on the deeper meaning behind the events (Mark 15:20-24; Ps 22:7, 14, 16-18).
Imagine what Jesus' followers felt. Jesus had calmed storms, banished sickness, cheated death by the miraculous power of his word, and given a king's welcome to Jerusalem less than a week before. How could this be happening?
The depiction of Jesus' death (Mark 15:25-33) by the 4 Gospel writers show a consistent concern for what visual artists call "values"--that is, the interplay and contrast between darkness and light. All 4 Gospel writers take pains to show us that all the critical events of Jesus' death happened in the dark: the betrayal and trial before the Sanhedrin, and now at the actual moment of Jesus' death, though it is daytime, an inexplicable total darkness descends from noon to 3 pm (Mark 15:33).
Though some have proposed a natural cause for this darkness (eclipse, desert windstorm), this was a supernatural darkness. In the Bible, darkness during the day is a recognized sign of God's displeasure and judgment (Isa 13:9-10; Jer 15:6-9). The supreme example was the penultimate plague at the time of the 1st Passover (Exo 10:21023). So, when judgment fell, God was acting in judgment. But who was God judging?
When Jesus cried out, he didn't say, "My friends, my head, my hands!" But he said, "My God, my God" (Mark 15:33-34). On the cross, Jesus was forsaken by God. To say, "my Abigail," or "my Michael" is to express in the language of intimacy. Jesus said, "My God, you have forsaken me." The closer the person who forsakes you, the deeper the cut. This forsakenness, this loss, was between the Father and ths Son, who had loved each other from all eternity. "This love was infinitely long, absolutely perfect, and Jesus was losing it. Jesus was being cut out of the dance." (202)
Jesus, the Maker of the world, was being unmade. Why? Jesus was experiencing our judgment day. Jesus' cry (Mark 15:34) "wasn't a rhetorical question. The answer is: For you, for me, for us. Jesus was forsaken by God so that we would never have to be. The judgment that should have fallen on us fell instead on Jesus." (202)
Darkness, Disorientation, Disintegration
Today we don't know what real physical darkness is. But if you're in utter darkness, you can't even see your hand in front of your face. To stay in utter darkness for an extended time can have a radically disorienting effect on you.
In the Antarctica the sun goes down in mid-May and doesn't come back till late July. There's no daytime--no sunlight--for > 2 months. In all the world, say the biographers of polar explorers, there is no desolation more complete than the polar night. Only those who have experienced it can fully appreciate what it means to be without the sun day after day and week after week. This has driven some men mad. In such darkness you can't see forward, you don't know where you're going, you have no direction, you can't even see yourself, you don't know what you look like. It's like having no identity. You're isolated. Physical darkness brings disorientation, but according to the Bible, so does spiritual darkness.
Being wrapped up or centering on anything but God causes us to lose direction, lose our identity, and become isolated. When what we live for is not God, we're always scared or angry or proud or driven or full of self-pity, thus isolating ourselves from others. Say I want to be a good Christian by teaching the Bible and serving others. But if achieving them becomes my real hope, significance, security, more important than God's love for me in Jesus, I experience a loss of identity. If my teaching and serving are my ultimate center, and I under-perform, or am criticized or unappreciated, I unravel and disintegrate inwardly. Similarly, if 2 people love each other > God, then minor fights become major fights, and major fights become world-shaking cataclysms, because neither can take the other's displeasure or failure.
"Spiritual darkness--turning away from God, the true light, and making anything more important than him--leads invariably from disorientation to disintegration. And, apart from the intervention of God, we are all in spiritual darkness. We are all orbiting around something else. And we're all incapable of changing our orbit, because we inevitably, ultimately, seek to glorify ourselves instead of God. So we are all on a trajectory toward a life of disintegration." (205) When God the judge, who is all light and all truth, returns, this means utter darkness and eternal disintegration (Isa 13:9-13; Amos 8:7-10).
This was our trajectory, and Jesus' death was the only way to alter it. Jesus had to go to the cross. He fell into the complete darkness for which we were headed. He died the death we should have died, so that we can be saved from this judgment and instead live in the light and presence of God. How do we know it worked?
At the moment Jesus died, the curtain in the temple, which was not a flimsy little veil but was heavy and thick and almost as substantial as a wall, was torn in 2 from top to bottom (Mark 15:38), just to make clear who did it. This was God's way of saying, "This is the sacrifice that ends all sacrifices, the way is now open to approach me." (207) Our trajectory has been permanently redirected toward God.
To make sure we get the point, Mark shows the 1st person who went in: the centurion, who said, "Surely this man was the Son of God" (Mark 15:39; 1:1). This is momentous, because up to this point in Mark, no man had figured that out. Though the disciples called him the Christ, in that prevailing culture the Christ was not considered to be divine. Though Jesus' teachings and acts of power were all pointing to him being divine, people wondered, "Who is this?" Before the cross, the centurion, a Roman, got it. (Every Roman coin of the time was inscribed "Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus." The only person a Roman would ever call "Son of God" was Caesar.) This hard character, a hardened, brutal man, who had seen death, and had inflicted it, saw that Jesus is God. Something penetrated his spiritual darkness. He became the 1st person to confess the deity of Christ.
This is in striking contrast to others around the cross. The disciples, though personally mentored at length by Jesus and repeatedly told that this day would come, were completely confused and stymied. The religious leaders who studied the Bible the most rejected the point of their life study (John 5:39-40).
What penetrated the centurion's darkness? Tim Keller thought about this question for 30 years and concludes that it was because he heard Jesus' cry, and saw how Jesus died. To this man who had seen so many die, yet Jesus' death was unique; it was unlike any other. "The tenderness of Jesus, despite the terror, must have pierced right through his hardness. The beauty of Jesus in his death must have flooded his darkness with light." (208)
The Beauty of the Darkness
See 1st quote at the beginning. What good is there in God suffering and crying out in agony? It seemed senseless to those around the cross. But it is of immense good to them. Why? "Because they would eventually see that they had been looking right at the greatest act of God's love, power, and justice in history. God came into the world and suffered and died on the cross in order to save us. It is the ultimate proof of his love for us." (209)
When we suffer we may be completely in the dark about the reason why. It may seem senseless as Jesus' suffering did to the disciples. But the cross tells us what the reason isn't. It can't be that God doesn't love you, or that he has no plan for you, or that he has abandoned you. "Jesus was abandoned, and paid for our sins, so that God the Father wold never abandon you. The cross proves that he loves you and understands what it means to suffer. It also demonstrates that God can be working in your life even when it seems like there is no rhyme or reason to what is happening." (209)
Even Albert Camus, the existentialist, said this about the cross: "The God-man also suffers, and does so with patience...he too is shattered and dies. The night on Golgotha only has so much significance for man because in its darkness the Godhead, visibly renouncing all inherited privileges, endures to the end the anguish of death, including the depths of despair." (Quoted in Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 1993, p.226) (209)
"It doesn't matter who you are--centurion, prostitute, hit man, minister. The curtain has been ripped from top to bottom. The barrier is gone. There is forgiveness and grace for you." (209)
When the centurion saw how Jesus died (Mark 15:39), he surely heard Jesus' cry of dereliction (Mark 15:34), and saw the beauty, the tenderness. "Jesus Christ's darkness can dispel and destroy our own, so that in the place of hardness and darkness and death we have tenderness and light and life." (210) "Because of Jesus' death evil is a passing thing--a shadow. There is light and high beauty forever beyond its reach because evil fell into the heart of Jesus. The only darkness that could have destroyed us forever fell into his heart." (211)
Question: Can you fathom the deep darkness, disorientation, and disintegration of Jesus on the cross?
Chap 1: The Dance (Trinity) (Mark 1:9-11): Do you expect others to dance around you?
Chap 2: The Gospel, The Call (Mark 1:14-20): Is your gospel good news or good advice?
Chap 3: The Healing (Mark 2:1-5): Are your sins against God or people (Ps 51:4)?
Chap 4: The Rest (Mark 2:23-3:6): Are you desperately seeking significance?
Chap 5: The Power (Mark 4:35-41): Do you enjoy goodness and calm in a storm?
Chap 6: The Waiting (Mark 5:21-43): Do you have peace when God delays?
Chap 7: The Stain (Mark 7:1-23): Do you feel unclean, insignificant?
Chap 8: The Approach (Mark 7:24-37): Do you know you’re a dog, yet loved?
Chap 9: The Turn (Mark 8:27-9:1): Why is forgiveness so hard?
Chap 10: The Mountain (Mark 9:2-29): What if you are filled with doubt?
Chap 11: The Trap (Mark 10:17-27): Is money just money to you?
Chap 12: The Ransom (Mark 10:45): Is Jesus all you want and need?
Chap 13: The Temple (Mark 11:1-18): Are you both a lion and a lamb?
Chap 14: The Feast (Mark 14:12-26): Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Chap 15: The Cup (Mark 14:32-36): Are you suppressing your desires/detaching yourself?
Chap 16: The Sword (Mark 14:43-52): Does status, honor, power define you?
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