Tenebrae

The Service

Last night I attended a Tenebrae service at Llanerch Hills Chapel in Havertown. “Tenebrae,” a Latin term meaning “shadow,” is a Holy Week gathering which attempts to place the audience into the mind and heart of Jesus in the hours before His death.

I’ve attended such programs before, but this one truly moved me.

The Sympathy

The whole experience brought to mind Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin." According to Rev. David Guzik’s excellent online Bible commentary, Enduring Word, the Greek word “sympathize” means “to suffer along with.” If I’m reading this right, one reason Christ came to earth was so He could suffer along with His children, walk in their shoes, as it were. 

What I value about Tenebrae is it gives me a chance to suffer along with Christ.

As much as is humanly possible, that is.

Our text was Matthew 26:30 through Matthew 27:50, which walks the reader from Jesus’s prediction of His disciples’ betrayal, to wrestling with His macabre mission, and ultimately, His undeserved death.

Like I said, this touched me.

Warning to friends and family, especially my children: I’m about to become very transparent.

The Sorrow

Chapter 26 verse 38 shows our Lord agonizing as He pondered what lay ahead. The text says He was “exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.”

I don’t know what it’s like to willingly die for the entire human race (thank God – and I mean that literally, not in the cavalier way many toss around the phrase), but I can relate to suffering to the point of death. I’ve faced that kind of anguish twice in my life, and I pray it never comes my way again.

For many folks, there comes a come when it takes more courage to go on living than to end it all. I fought that life and death battle once as a troubled teen and again as an agonizing adult.

As an adolescent, my grief centered on an unrequited crush, made worse by the young man’s attentions to another girl. Sounds silly now, but it felt very real and very raw at the time. Later, as the mother to two young boys, I became hopelessly depressed at the prospect of my marriage ending and having to raise them alone.

Both times, I found out I was far from alone. God’s love for me was poured out bountifully through the merciful kindnesses of parents and siblings (through blood and through marriage), and professionals who did their jobs well and compassionately. Not least, through the tiny hands and tender hearts of the little ones He chose for me to parent.

But I well recall the courage it took to wake up every morning and try to do each next right thing. I remember counseling myself that the only thing I had to do each day was stay out of a mental hospital, for the sake of my kids.

I had to stay alive to fulfill my earthly job, for the sake of my sons. Our Lord had to stay alive that awful night in Gethsemane to fulfill His duty to die for the sake of humanity.

A humanity that didn’t see Him as the King of the universe – far from it. They beat and ridiculed Him and assigned Him an ignominious death – a death which the Bible says was considered a curse.

Did He contemplate ending it all? Is that what He meant by “sorrowful, even unto death?”

If He could have called down legions of angels to loose Him from the grip of murderous men, surely He could have arranged a less gruesome death for Himself – or better still, a direct ascension back to heaven to reclaim His rightful throne. Why wait till after the resurrection to be swept up in clouds of glory?

While praying in Gethsemane, did He consider refusing the cup of God’s wrath and taking an easier way out?

The Suffering and the Substitution

Was His pain magnified by the inability of His closest friends to satisfy His simple request for companionship and prayer? By their nodding off, not once but three times, when He needed them most? By their subsequent failure to comprehend that loyalty meant making good on their promises to stick by Him, as opposed to brandishing weapons?

He didn’t need to be defended by flesh and blood – His fate had been sealed in heaven before the world began. What He needed was comfort and strength from those dearest to Him to sustain Him to the cross.

Instead, they fled to save their own skins, and denied even knowing Him.

What went through our Lord’s mind when the crowd insisted on releasing Barabbas – a career criminal – and called for excruciating death for the Son of God? It was recently pointed out to me that Christ literally took the punishment that would have been doled out to this evil man – an actual substitutionary death. The gospel doesn't get any clearer than that.

Again, I find myself trying to comprehend the emotions He must have felt on that brutal night by traveling back to an incident in my own life.

I was bullied as a child, and in third grade I had the dubious distinction of being “called out” by a peer who wanted to fight me for no other reason than the fact that I didn’t fit in. How well I recall the terror and helplessness of being surrounded in the schoolyard by cruel taunters who were literally out for blood.

My father learned of my predicament, and showed up in the nick of time to rescue me.

In contrast, Jesus’s Father turned His back on Christ so that mankind could walk away scot free from eternal punishment.

I felt great relief when Dad’s commanding voice scattered my persecutors; our Lord felt no such solace. I suspect the brokenness of His body paled in comparison to that of His soul when He cried out wretchedly, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?”

The Sacrifice

The awful yet beautiful truth is that the Son of God gave up His spirit and suffered a grueling death so that I might live. In His deity, He poured out His life, but in His humanity, He lost hope for a time so that my hope could be perfected.

What a Savior.