Easter 2023: How come the world still spins?

The death of a child, a spouse, a parent, comes as a shattering blow. It is one that I haven’t experienced personally yet but I know that one day I will. However, what I have observed in others is the way their world just stops. And then complete incomprehension: why hasn’t it stopped for everyone else? Do they not know what’s happened? Are they simply unaware? Or do they not care? How can this be? And so it goes on. It would be less than human if such a loss did not induce, at least for an instant, anger, compounding the grief. But then the death of any particular individual will not be known to the vast bulk of humanity. And consider the numbers involved; it is estimated that just over one hundred people die every moment of every day. It is a tragedy that not every single one will be mourned – there have always been those who die alone and unknown. But many will be mourned, and there will be those who grieve. For those impacted there will always be that question: How can your world continue to spin when mine has come to a shuddering halt?

I found myself wondering about this at church this morning. Although it is a Friday, it is “good” Friday, hence I was in church. Some other time perhaps I will investigate why this particular day on which we remember Jesus giving up His life in appalling circumstances is called “good” (here’s what I came up with previously). So much about that day is grotesque. The injustice of it. Jesus is declared innocent by His human judge, the Roman governor Pilate, three times in quick succession. The case brought against Him collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. One of His two fellow accused, a thief, recognises that while two of the three of them that day were being justly punished (albeit by crucifixion), Jesus had done nothing deserving death. Even His Roman executioner comes to appreciate something of Jesus’ uniqueness (albeit after the event). And yet, there He hangs, there He suffers, there He dies.

I want to explode. I want to point an accusing finger at those limp, wet disciples, and shout: how could you? Judas betrayed Him the previous evening, and Peter had repeatedly denied Him. The rest of the little band of His closest disciples had scattered. Only some women (including His mother) and John are left to watch Him die. He had invested years in a core group of twelve, patiently, painstakingly, teaching and shaping them, feeding them and occasionally rescuing them. They had heard amazing words, they had seen amazing things. And now, outrageously, they are nowhere to be seen, just when you think He might need them most. More startling still is Jesus’ restraint. When Judas and a mob arrived in a garden where Jesus had been praying to arrest Him, a fight had almost broken out. Violence started, but was stopped just as quickly by Jesus Himself. Could He have escaped if He’d let Peter and the rest “get stuck in”? Perhaps. Did He need their assistance? He certainly didn’t want it. But consider. He’d calmed storms, fed thousands and raised the dead! He could have snuffed out the very existence of those who now laid their hands on Him. And yet He didn’t. My immediate response is to ask: why didn’t you? Why didn’t you stand up to such obvious injustice? Why didn’t you make the likes of Judas and the rest pay there and then? I would have.

If I’m confused by Jesus' response, I’m stunned by God the Father who had spoken of His love for, and His pleasure in, His Son. I know that the incarnation takes us to the edge of, and well beyond, human understanding; how can one person be both God and man? But the claims made by Jesus are clear. He had willingly come from the Father’s side, at the Father’s behest, something long planned. Just as the Father took pleasure in the Son, so the Son sought to please the Father. And yet this Father watches this Son unjustly defamed and abused. Part of me me wants to cry out: how could you? Never mind stopping the world spinning, I wonder why God didn’t rip the earth from its axis and hurl it like a discarded marble across the galaxy. He is God after all, and this is His Son being abused and insulted.

As if all of that isn’t bad (or confusing) enough, as Jesus hangs on a cross, the Father apparently abandons His Son, who cries out in agony because this abandonment is so excruciating. And this only part of what is going on; things that those original observers could see, hear and infer. There are those things transpiring that are unseen and so extraordinary that if God Himself had not revealed what was really going on, one would hesitate even to hint at it. It is Paul who writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin...”. Why? Part of me is outraged at how unfair this all is. How are we to understand it?

But neither my understanding or my feelings are of much interest. My perspective isn’t the one that matters. God is God, He is not me and He is not like me. In fact He is so unlike me (and you) that the very words that we use, human words, cannot communicate accuracy the fullness of what He is like, even if we could understand what He is like in the first place. We mustn’t slip into the misunderstanding that God is just like us, but bigger. He’s not; He is of a completely different order of being. But because we cannot know everything about Him, does not mean we can know nothing. That’s because He has revealed Himself using human language and images that we can understand. Why did He restrain Himself when His Son was brutally taken and crucified by mere creatures? Because this was the means by which that very rebellion could, in justice, be forgiven by God who is just. Breathtakingly, the world still spins on its axis, not because He is somehow indifferent and doesn’t care or love, but precisely because He does. And He does so with a perfect passion unlike anything that is ever true of us. So he watches as He had always watched, because as He is outside of time, the death of His Son has been and is always before Him.

Part of our problem is that we are time-bound and temporal; for us time is linear. Although this story isn’t over, and our picture is incomplete, we’ll have to ponder and wait until Sunday. Then we’ll learn why the world kept, and keeps, on spinning.