ESTRANGEMENT from the Passion of our Lord spiritually impoverishes more and more the Church of Christ. A mist gathers around the cross, that enswathes and darkens it. True, it is not pulled down; somber as it is, with its striking anguish, it is still left to stand, where it stood; but something is put before it. Something which, I well know, is transparent; something, which, while softening the naked lines of the cross, still leaves them visible. The anguish of the Lama Sabachthani with its woeful apperception may still affect the heart slightly, but the grief of the Man of Sorrows may no more enthrall us.
One sees it before one’s eyes in Roman Catholic as well as in Protestant lands. The transparent swathing of the Cross of Golgotha is the artistic work of the spirit of the times, whose influence even the best do not escape, and is therefore common to all parts of the ecclesiastical world. Yonder the Mater dolorosa gave place to the “Queen of heaven”, among us it was made plain to the listening multitude, first: that the resurrection surpassed the significance of the Cross; then: that in importance the Person of Christ exceeded His Cross; and again: that the after-effect of His historical influence, or even the mystic remembrance of Him Who went from us, must crowd out the tragic of Golgotha.
The apostolic determination “not to know anything, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (I Cor. 2:2), came in conflict with the ash-colored aesthetic sense of our passing age.
As Easter approaches,1 Passion sermons are still preached, but the suffering of the Mediator between God and man no more fills and moves as aforetime the soul of the congregation.
All as result of this: that to become holy in one’s own estimate, rather than to obtain “peace through the blood of the Cross”, became the ambition of the devout mind. What justification is before God and through God, is still learned in general by rote, but only by a few is it learned with the heart.
And though we do not under-value here the good right of reaction against a sentimentality which in a sickly way has made game of the “blood” of Golgotha, more than in a sacred way has enthused over it, yet it cannot be denied, that this change in the Christian perception has broken the accord of apostolic witness, and that to become spiritually strong again, with sanctified sentiment the Church of Christ must get back again to the Cross.
With sentiment.
It should not be barren, mechanical and incoherent exhibitions of loosely-tacked-together passion-scenes. What Paul wrote to the Galatians (3: 1, Dutch version) must continue to be rule: “before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been vividly portrayed, as being crucified among you.”
Sentiment, we do not shrink from borrowing this word from our younger men of letters, for in their warm protest against the frozen classicism of the older schools they are right.
Lack of sentiment has gradually killed our Lenten preaching. The adorable passion-drama was artistically cut apart into a series of passion-texts. The succession in order of time was irreproachable. At one time it was Peter who was made the chief personage with his denial, at another time Judas with his betrayal, again it was Pilate with his juridic hesitation, and in turn Barabbas and Herod, Annas and the slandering priests, while the Man of sorrows moved among them only indirectly. It was no longer one Divine tragedy, unfolding itself in its striking acts, but piecework, and thereby of itself barren, in mysticism cold and without effect.
The congregations no longer saw Christ pictured forth before their eyes as though crucified in their midst. Piecewise was narrated what every one knew and what interested no one, and the art that quickens pale narrative into newness of life, was lacking, because feeling remained unmoved, imagination did not operate, and, to speak with Da Costa our poet, heroic courage did not understand its task.
If now this volume ventures, in old style again, to offer passion-meditations to the churches, let no one think that we presume to deem ourselves capable of working our escape from the atmosphere that oppresses every one of us.
All we attempt to do is, to offer some resistance, and, be it only from a distance, to point back to the right path.
This speaks in the title we have chosen. Not of all Jesus’ sufferings do you find meditative thinking here, but only of “His decease at Jerusalem”. He suffered “from the beginning of His incarnation, all the days of His life upon earth, but particularly at the end”, and only of that end do you here find the rejoinder in heart and mind.
On Tabor begins the shifting. Here glistens the heightened glory, and it is by this heavenly splendor, that the dark shadow of Golgotha shows itself, and, as the Evangelist narrates, under this contrast Moses and Elijah told Jesus of the decease, which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem.
And from this viewpoint, in every scene of suffering here meditated upon, Christ remains the center, the suffering of Christ the leading motive.
Therefore in between the main scenes, returns are made to Psalm twenty-two and other lyric utterances of the soul of the Messiah. Only from the sentiment of Jesus, as He Himself felt and endured His suffering, can our fellow-feeling borrow depth, warmth and direction.
On the heart that thirsts after higher peace, nothing operates with an effect so moving, so touching, so kindling of higher love, as a sinking away in the fathomless depth of the suffering and the dying of the Godman.
Whether these Meditations, as their purpose is, shall bring more than one of our brethren or sisters to their knees at the Cross of Golgotha, in this tense mood and with such blessed result, is a matter to be decided by those who ponder them after us.
If such might be the case, then let in this also a fruit be glorified, not of what we meditated, but of the incomparable Cross.
KUYPER. Amsterdam, November, 1900.
Contents · Translator’s Preface →
Footnotes
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In the Netherlands the weeks preceding Easter are called: “The Passion Weeks.”—Translator. ↩