The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross

Literalism is for the weak; fundamentalism is for the insecure. Both are sins, too, against God, for to come to believe that we are in exclusive possession of the truth about things beyond time and space, and thus hold the power to shape lives and decisions about things within time and space, is to put ourselves in the place of God. But we are taught that no man has searched the mind of the Lord, or been his counselor.

We must make our peace with mystery or else we might go mad. For me, faith is complicated, challenging and sometimes confounding. It is not magical but mysterious. Magic means there is a spell, a formula, to work wonders. Mystery means there is no spell, no formula—only shadow and impenetrability and hope that, in a phrase T.S. Eliot borrowed from Julian of Norwich, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

If he did not suffer, if he did not bleed, if he did not feel every bit of the pain of execution as he gulped for air, then he would not be the Christ we know. He was fulfilling his epochal role in history on that cross; he was not playacting, not a god pretending to die. He was the Word made flesh, who was, however strangely and incomprehensibly, full of grace and truth.

We stand now at the cross, in the moments of Jesus’s greatest pain. May we bear in mind the central emotional truth of Good Friday: that the Christian tradition grew from the most wrenching, mysterious, and mystifying sacrifice imaginable—that of a father’s offering of his child.

Fact is what we can see or discern; truth is the larger significance we extrapolate from those facts.

Then his Father’s will was done, and from darkness came light, and death was conquered. This is our story, our faith, our consolation.

For the thoughtful believer, then, there is nothing more certain than the reality of uncertainty, nothing more natural than doubt, which is perhaps thirty seconds younger than faith itself (And even that approximation may be giving faith too much of a headstart).

These answers are fine as far as they go - but still children die, things go wrong, and hearts get broken, so the answers don't go very far. I certainly can't dispose of the challenges to Christian belief, nor can I make an entirely rational case for the existence of God. What I can do is join a vast chorus of voices who see religion as intrinsic and seek to make their home in the ethos of a faith that suggests an order and a direction amid the confusions of life.

Light can neither emanate from, nor enter into, a closed mind. And so for all its limitations, reason—the weighing of evidence, the assessment of likelihood, the capacity to shift one’s opinions in light of thought and of experience—remains essential. Without reason, we cannot appreciate complexity; without appreciating complexity, we cannot rightly appreciate the majesty and mystery of God; and without rightly appreciating the majesty and mystery of God, we foreclose the possibility of the miraculous and the redemptive.

Thou seest, not only the stains and scars of past sins, but the mutilations, the deep cavities, the chronic disorders which they have left in my soul. Thou seest the innumerable living sins…living in their power and presence, their guilt, and their penalties, which clothe me….Yet Thou comest. Thou seest most perfectly….Yet Thou comest.

Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it,” the

Still, the gospels are not biographies but apologetic documents, composed to persuade, to inspire, and to convince. (John is explicit about this: “These are written that you may believe…and that believing you may have life in his name.”) The gospels must be read critically, with a sense of historical context. Which is to say, the Last Words that we are about to encounter may or may not have actually been spoken by Jesus. What is certain is that each of the evangelists thought it important for his audience to believe that Jesus had said them.

Without Good Friday, there is no Easter; without Easter, there is no deliverance from evil; without deliverance from evil, there is no victory of light over dark, of love over hate, of life over death.

Jerusalem and a theological event that transformed the world.

In the meantime—and that is where most of life is lived, in the meantime—whether you worship God the Father of the Holy Trinity, the God of Abraham of Judaism, the Lord who spoke to the Prophet in the cave in the founding hours of Islam, or some other god, known only to a few, or even just to you, we all seek the means of grace, and the hope of glory.

Experience teaches us that men who are equally wise and good may differ in political as well