Good Friday: The Seventh Word: “Father, Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit”

Christ of Saint John of the Cross (overall and detail view), Salvador Dalí, 1951. Oil on canvas, 205 cm x 116 cm. Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland.

“​​Into Thy Hands I Commend My Spirit” from the album Carr: Seven Last Words From The Cross. Composed by Paul Carr. Performed by Chorus Angelorum, William Dazeley (soloist) and The Bath Philharmonia.

Poetry:

“Dirge Without Music”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

ON THE PASSION AND CREATION

Why, on Good Friday, Dark Friday, was the darkness over all the earth? Why was the sun darkened? The passage radiates creation imagery. The Spirit hovered over the surface of the waters, and now Jesus commits his spirit to the Father. On the first day, God spoke light into being, and on the fourth day spoke the sun, moon, and stars into being as well. But on this particular sixth day, he withheld his speech, withheld their light. Creation blinked, its heart skipped a beat—or two—and recalled with a shudder that first day, or, rather, the formless and void that preceded the first day. And what a shudder, for the earth shook and the rocks were rent (Matthew 27).

For whom was this, but the one by whom “all things were created, in heaven and on earth...all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16). So, in his death throes, the sun, the earth, which hold together in him, which were made through him and for him, went dark and shook, threatened to fall apart altogether, back into the formlessness and void from which they were spoken by the Word into being.

But of course, there is another level, another layer, to this darkness. For all things were created by, though, and for him—but his creating was the work of the Father. The Father created by his Word. So, this darkness, this shaking, is the work of the Father (Is. 52). The silence is that of the Father: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). And it is this harsh light—the light of the Father’s will and work, which radiates around Jesus, casting all else into shadow, but which Jesus himself does not see, for he is turned away from the light, seeing nothing but shadow in Dali’s masterpiece… that is the real light of this scene. For this is the Father’s work, once more through, by and for the Son.

And this is the Father’s work––not to de-create, not to bring the seas back over the land, to put the light out, to return to Gen.1:2. The Father’s work was once more to bring order and goodness to his beautiful creation, to say once more that it was and will be forevermore “very good.” To look from the cross outward not just to the Sea of Galilee and the apostolic mission that the cross entails, but to goodness and beauty of creation which could be re-established, reaffirmed, only in this way.

Prayer:
Father,
You made all things by your Son.
And you remake all things by the same.
Make us new. Make us whole.
Make us, remake us, to walk in your ways.
Amen

Dr. Adam Johnson
Associate Professor of Theology
Torrey Honors College
Biola University