Celebrate the Darkness, Part 3 (Final)

The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning
CHAPTER 7

"Hans Kung’s On Being a Christian:
'Jesus’ unresisting suffering and helpless death, accursed and dishonored,for his enemies and even his friends, was the unmistakable sign that he was finished and had nothing to do with the true God. His death on the cross was the fulfillment of the curse of the law. “Anyone hanged on a tree is cursed by God.” He was wrong wholly and entirely: in his message, his behavior, his whole being. His claim is now refuted, his authority is gone, his way shown to be false…

The heretical teacher is condemned, the false prophet disowned, the seducer of the people unmasked, the blasphemer rejected. The law had triumphed over this “gospel.”

Jesus found himself left alone, not only by his people, but by the One to whom he had constantly appealed as no one did before him. Left absolutely alone. We do not know what Jesus thought and felt as he was dying. But it was obvious to the whole
world that he had proclaimed the early advent of God in his kingdom and this God did not come. A God who was man’s friend, knowing all his needs, close to him, but this God was absent. A Father whose goodness knew no bounds,providing for the slightest things and the humblest people, gracious and at the same time mighty; but this Father gave no sign, produced no miracles.

His Father indeed, to whom he had spoken with a familiarity closer than anyone else had ever know, with whom he had lived and worked in a unity beyond the ordinary, whose true will he had learned with immediate certainty and in the light of which he had dared to assure individuals of the forgiveness of their sins; this Father of his did not say a single word. Jesus, God’s witness, was left in the lurch by the God to whom he had witnessed. The mockery at the foot of the cross underlined vividly this wordless, helpless,miracle-less and even God-less death.

The unique communion with God which he had seemed to enjoy only makes his forsakenness more unique. This God and Father with whom he had identified himself to the very end did not at the end identify himself with the sufferer. And so everything seemed as if it had never been: in vain. He who had announced the closeness and advent of God his Father publicly before the whole world died utterly forsaken by God and was thus publicly demonstrated as godless before the whole world: someone judged by God himself, disposed of once and for all. And since the cause for which he had lived and fought was so closely linked to his person, so that cause fell with his person. There was no cause independent of his person. How could anyone have believed his word after he had been silenced and died in this outrageous fashion? It is a death not simply accepted in patience but endured screaming to God.'

What an awesome graphic description of the dark night of Jesus Christ. No human mind will ever comprehend the depths of desolation, the indescribable loneliness, the utter abandonment that lay behind Jesus’ cry, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” The cross is the symbol of our salvation and the pattern of our lives. Everything that happened to Christ in some way happens to us. When darkness envelopes us and we are deaf to everything except the shriek of our own pain, it helps to know that the Father is tracing in us the image of his Son, that the signature of Jesus is being stamped on our souls.

Forgiveness is the key to everything. It forms the mind of Christ within us and prevents the costly and painful process of the dark night from itself becoming an ego trip. It guards us from feeling so “spiritually advanced” that we look down on those who are still enjoying the comforts and consolations of the first conversion. The gentle and humble heart has the mind of Christ.

We hear Jesus praying for his murderers, “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.”

Here is the final repudiation of the ego. We surrender the need for vindication, hand over the kingdom of self to the Father, and in the sovereign freedom of forgiving our enemies, celebrate the luminous darkness."