The Torn Curtain
Sermon
An Idle Tale Becomes Good News
Messages On Lent And Easter Themes
Plagued on every side by loss, suffering, and sorrow, righteous Job cried out: "Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling!" (Job 23:3). He wanted to know where he could find God. The Hebrew people believed they had the answer to Job's question. They said that God's dwelling was in Jerusalem, in a special room in the Temple there.
This room was only a small part of the Temple complex, but it was the most important part. There were steps leading up to it from the place where sacrifices were made on a daily basis. That place itself was a Holy Place, but this room was the Most Holy Place or Holy of Holies. Yet so far as human activity was concerned, it was a seldom-used room.
The only person who could enter the Holy of Holies was the High Priest, the spiritual leader of the Jewish people, and he could enter it on only one day of the year, the Day of Atonement (now called Yom Kippur). Actually, he entered the Holy of Holies three times on the Day of Atonement. On his first entrance, he used a censer to cense the shrine to protect himself from the Divine mystery. On his second entrance he carried a vessel of blood from a slain bull and sprinkled the blood on specified places. On his third entrance he carried the blood from a slain goat, sprinkling it, too, at designated points.
Originally the ark of the covenant, which had meant so much to the Hebrews in their early history as a people, had been placed in this room. But the ark had been lost when the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 587 B.C. The significance attached to the ark explains why the Holy of Holies was so important. The ark was a small portable box, with handles for carrying and with a cover made of gold and called "the mercy seat." This ark represented the presence of God, and the room in which it was placed was thought of as the special dwelling place of God.
But God was not to be approached in this Most Holy Place by ordinary people. The High Priest, the one person who could approach God there, did so as the representative of the people, and he came with sacrifices for them, seeking Divine forgiveness for them and the smile of God upon their lives. He and his people could be assured of this if the rites were carried out properly.
It was always a momentous occasion when the Day of Atonement came and the High Priest, in his splendid robes, ascended to the Holy of Holies. But something separated him from the inside of that room. It was a fine linen curtain of blue, purple, and scarlet colors, hanging over the entrance to the room, shutting the light out of it and obscuring everyone's view of the inside of it. It was there as a warning against intrusion upon the privacy of God and as a symbol of the division that existed between God and people.
Three of the Gospels -- Matthew, Mark, and Luke -- mention this curtain in connection with the crucifixion of Jesus. They say there was darkness over the land, and that as Jesus breathed his last breath, "the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from the top to the bottom." Whether we are to understand this as an actual historical occurrence or as a theological statement, we must not miss the good news in it -- the good news of a torn curtain!
An Unconfined God
It speaks to us, for one thing, of an unconfined God.
A magnificent prayer offered by Solomon at the dedication of the first Temple acknowledges that God is too great to be contained in a building. "But will God indeed dwell on the earth?" Solomon asks. Then his prayer continues, "Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!" Yet it was believed, even centuries later, that God had promised, "My name shall be there" (1 Kings 8:27-30). At the very time of Jesus' crucifixion, there were several million people who would have answered the question "Where can we find God?" by saying, "In Jerusalem, in the Temple in Jerusalem."
But where would you say that God was on that day? There was quietness in that innermost room of the Temple. Surely that was a good place for God to be -- removed from the noise and dirtiness and turmoil of the world. But the early Christians came to believe that God had been present at another place, too. It was a place of ugliness and pain and death. Yet a hardened soldier, as he stood there watching three men die and listening especially to the gasping words of one of the men, said: "Truly this man was God's Son!" (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39).
Matthew Brady, the noted lawyer in the play Inherit the Wind, is a pathetic figure as the play comes to an end. Drummond, the defense counsel, has won over him but cannot rejoice in his victory. He says, "A giant once lived in that body. But Matt Brady got lost. Because he was looking for God too high up and too far away."1
Where should one look for God? God is often experienced in some place set aside as a sanctuary. But God is never confined to the places where people think God ought to be. God may be in the ugly, the unpleasant, the painful, the distasteful, as well as in the beautiful, the pleasurable, the joyful.
Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles tells about working with Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker soup kitchen as a young man. One afternoon, after he and several others had struggled for some time with a "wino," a "Bowery bum," an angry, cursing, hostile man with virtually no teeth and bloodshot eyes, Dorothy Day said to them: "For all we know he might be God himself come here to test us, so let us treat him as an honored guest and look at his face as if it is the most beautiful one we can imagine."2
Dr. Coles said he had difficulty thinking of that man's face as the face of God. Well, where would God's face be? God is an unconfined God, and sometimes abides in unlikely persons and unexpected places. God is too great to be kept within one place or one type of place. Neither can God be confined to a creed or doctrinal statement or a particular set of circumstances. The torn curtain tells us of an unconfined God.
An Illumined God
The torn curtain also symbolizes for us illumination of the mystery of God.
There were no windows or skylights in the Holy of Holies, and the curtain over the entrance shut out much of the light that would have come in through that opening. But then when the curtain was torn from the top to the bottom and the sun appeared again, light began to illuminate that dark room.
Mystery was associated with the Holy of Holies. That was one of the reasons why enemies who gained possession of the Temple always wanted to venture into it. They had heard about it, and they wanted to see if God really dwelt there, or they wanted to demonstrate that God did not dwell there.
The Second Book of Maccabees records an interesting story, most likely a legend, about a foreign invader, a man by the name of Heliodorus, who got the beating of his life from a strange horse and three armored men when he tried to invade the Temple. When his king, Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria, asked him what sort of man would be suitable to send to Jerusalem another time, he answered: "If you have any enemy or plotter against your government, send him there, for you will get him back thoroughly flogged, if he survives at all; for there is certainly some power of God about the place" (2 Maccabees 3). There were many questions about the nature of this "power." God's being, like the Holy of Holies itself, was surrounded by mystery. Indeed, that must always be the case, for God is too great to be comprehended fully by finite human minds. In one of his sermons, Saint Augustine said to his congregation: "Since it is God we are speaking of, you do not understand it. If you could understand it, it would not be God."3
But there is such a thing as mystery being illuminated, and that is what happened at the Cross. The torn curtain symbolizes an illumined mystery. The mystery is still there, but light has been thrown on it. Nothing else in all the universe nor in human history so illumines the being of God as does that Cross. No wonder John Bowring could sing: "From the cross the radiance streaming / Adds more luster to the day."4
It makes a difference, it "adds more luster to the day," to see the heart of God as revealed by Christ on the Cross. "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13).
An Accessible God
The torn curtain speaks of an accessible God, one who can be approached by any person in the world.
Jesus himself never entered the Holy of Holies. If he had tried to do so, he would have been put to death. That was too holy a place for an ordinary person to enter.
It was both the condition of humanity and the nature of God that forbade this. Humankind was sinful, and the holiness of God made sin repugnant in God's eyes. God's distaste for sin was so great that something had to be done to make persons acceptable to God. That was the function of the sacrifices, especially the blood sacrifices carried into the Holy of Holies by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement.
But Jesus' death eliminated the necessity of animal sacrifices. Centuries before, a psalmist had said, "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:17). The judge and prophet Samuel had asked, "Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?" Then he had said, "Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams" (1 Samuel 15:22). Yet sacrifice had continued to be of utmost importance. In Hebrew understanding, something had to be done to hide the sins of persons from the eyes of God, making it possible for them to be at one with God. So for centuries, relationship with God had been regulated and determined by ritual and had been mediated by a special class of people, the priests.
Jesus' death on the Cross showed God in a new light. God was not waiting in some distant heaven, or in some special place on earth, for people to offer the proper sacrifice or to have one offered for them that would make them presentable to God. God was coming to meet persons, as a father meeting a returning prodigal son, bearing in the Divine heart a pain and anguish that required for its relief only a broken spirit, contriteness of heart, sincere sorrow for one's sin.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews pictures Jesus entering the Holy of Holies while on his Cross. He had not entered it before, but, symbolically, now he did. The High Priest had entered it every year, but once was enough for Jesus. "He entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:12).
We still are not to think lightly of our sins or of the holiness of God. But we can approach God with confidence, with assurance of forgiveness and acceptance, because of the Cross of Christ. As the author of Hebrews put it, "Since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain ... let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith ..." (Hebrews 10:19-22).
That Temple curtain was no longer appropriate after Jesus died on the Cross. It symbolized a separated God, an unapproachable God. But the Cross speaks of a seeking God, a suffering God, an accessible God.
A curtain torn by a cross! That torn curtain tells us of a God too great to be confined in creeds, places, rituals, or circumstances. The light that moves through that torn curtain comes from the Cross, illuminating the mystery of God and showing us what we most need to know about the being of God. And it speaks of accessibility, assuring us of an open way to the Divine presence.
Thank God for the torn Temple curtain!
____________
1. Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind (New York, London, Toronto: Random House, Inc., 1955, Bantam Pathfinder edition, 1963), p. 114.
2. Robert Coles, The Spiritual Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), pp. 67-68.
3. Garry Wills, Saint Augustine (New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., copyright 1999 by Garry Wills), p. xii.
4. John Bowring, "In the Cross of Christ I Glory," in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), Number 195.
This room was only a small part of the Temple complex, but it was the most important part. There were steps leading up to it from the place where sacrifices were made on a daily basis. That place itself was a Holy Place, but this room was the Most Holy Place or Holy of Holies. Yet so far as human activity was concerned, it was a seldom-used room.
The only person who could enter the Holy of Holies was the High Priest, the spiritual leader of the Jewish people, and he could enter it on only one day of the year, the Day of Atonement (now called Yom Kippur). Actually, he entered the Holy of Holies three times on the Day of Atonement. On his first entrance, he used a censer to cense the shrine to protect himself from the Divine mystery. On his second entrance he carried a vessel of blood from a slain bull and sprinkled the blood on specified places. On his third entrance he carried the blood from a slain goat, sprinkling it, too, at designated points.
Originally the ark of the covenant, which had meant so much to the Hebrews in their early history as a people, had been placed in this room. But the ark had been lost when the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 587 B.C. The significance attached to the ark explains why the Holy of Holies was so important. The ark was a small portable box, with handles for carrying and with a cover made of gold and called "the mercy seat." This ark represented the presence of God, and the room in which it was placed was thought of as the special dwelling place of God.
But God was not to be approached in this Most Holy Place by ordinary people. The High Priest, the one person who could approach God there, did so as the representative of the people, and he came with sacrifices for them, seeking Divine forgiveness for them and the smile of God upon their lives. He and his people could be assured of this if the rites were carried out properly.
It was always a momentous occasion when the Day of Atonement came and the High Priest, in his splendid robes, ascended to the Holy of Holies. But something separated him from the inside of that room. It was a fine linen curtain of blue, purple, and scarlet colors, hanging over the entrance to the room, shutting the light out of it and obscuring everyone's view of the inside of it. It was there as a warning against intrusion upon the privacy of God and as a symbol of the division that existed between God and people.
Three of the Gospels -- Matthew, Mark, and Luke -- mention this curtain in connection with the crucifixion of Jesus. They say there was darkness over the land, and that as Jesus breathed his last breath, "the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from the top to the bottom." Whether we are to understand this as an actual historical occurrence or as a theological statement, we must not miss the good news in it -- the good news of a torn curtain!
An Unconfined God
It speaks to us, for one thing, of an unconfined God.
A magnificent prayer offered by Solomon at the dedication of the first Temple acknowledges that God is too great to be contained in a building. "But will God indeed dwell on the earth?" Solomon asks. Then his prayer continues, "Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!" Yet it was believed, even centuries later, that God had promised, "My name shall be there" (1 Kings 8:27-30). At the very time of Jesus' crucifixion, there were several million people who would have answered the question "Where can we find God?" by saying, "In Jerusalem, in the Temple in Jerusalem."
But where would you say that God was on that day? There was quietness in that innermost room of the Temple. Surely that was a good place for God to be -- removed from the noise and dirtiness and turmoil of the world. But the early Christians came to believe that God had been present at another place, too. It was a place of ugliness and pain and death. Yet a hardened soldier, as he stood there watching three men die and listening especially to the gasping words of one of the men, said: "Truly this man was God's Son!" (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39).
Matthew Brady, the noted lawyer in the play Inherit the Wind, is a pathetic figure as the play comes to an end. Drummond, the defense counsel, has won over him but cannot rejoice in his victory. He says, "A giant once lived in that body. But Matt Brady got lost. Because he was looking for God too high up and too far away."1
Where should one look for God? God is often experienced in some place set aside as a sanctuary. But God is never confined to the places where people think God ought to be. God may be in the ugly, the unpleasant, the painful, the distasteful, as well as in the beautiful, the pleasurable, the joyful.
Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles tells about working with Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker soup kitchen as a young man. One afternoon, after he and several others had struggled for some time with a "wino," a "Bowery bum," an angry, cursing, hostile man with virtually no teeth and bloodshot eyes, Dorothy Day said to them: "For all we know he might be God himself come here to test us, so let us treat him as an honored guest and look at his face as if it is the most beautiful one we can imagine."2
Dr. Coles said he had difficulty thinking of that man's face as the face of God. Well, where would God's face be? God is an unconfined God, and sometimes abides in unlikely persons and unexpected places. God is too great to be kept within one place or one type of place. Neither can God be confined to a creed or doctrinal statement or a particular set of circumstances. The torn curtain tells us of an unconfined God.
An Illumined God
The torn curtain also symbolizes for us illumination of the mystery of God.
There were no windows or skylights in the Holy of Holies, and the curtain over the entrance shut out much of the light that would have come in through that opening. But then when the curtain was torn from the top to the bottom and the sun appeared again, light began to illuminate that dark room.
Mystery was associated with the Holy of Holies. That was one of the reasons why enemies who gained possession of the Temple always wanted to venture into it. They had heard about it, and they wanted to see if God really dwelt there, or they wanted to demonstrate that God did not dwell there.
The Second Book of Maccabees records an interesting story, most likely a legend, about a foreign invader, a man by the name of Heliodorus, who got the beating of his life from a strange horse and three armored men when he tried to invade the Temple. When his king, Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria, asked him what sort of man would be suitable to send to Jerusalem another time, he answered: "If you have any enemy or plotter against your government, send him there, for you will get him back thoroughly flogged, if he survives at all; for there is certainly some power of God about the place" (2 Maccabees 3). There were many questions about the nature of this "power." God's being, like the Holy of Holies itself, was surrounded by mystery. Indeed, that must always be the case, for God is too great to be comprehended fully by finite human minds. In one of his sermons, Saint Augustine said to his congregation: "Since it is God we are speaking of, you do not understand it. If you could understand it, it would not be God."3
But there is such a thing as mystery being illuminated, and that is what happened at the Cross. The torn curtain symbolizes an illumined mystery. The mystery is still there, but light has been thrown on it. Nothing else in all the universe nor in human history so illumines the being of God as does that Cross. No wonder John Bowring could sing: "From the cross the radiance streaming / Adds more luster to the day."4
It makes a difference, it "adds more luster to the day," to see the heart of God as revealed by Christ on the Cross. "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13).
An Accessible God
The torn curtain speaks of an accessible God, one who can be approached by any person in the world.
Jesus himself never entered the Holy of Holies. If he had tried to do so, he would have been put to death. That was too holy a place for an ordinary person to enter.
It was both the condition of humanity and the nature of God that forbade this. Humankind was sinful, and the holiness of God made sin repugnant in God's eyes. God's distaste for sin was so great that something had to be done to make persons acceptable to God. That was the function of the sacrifices, especially the blood sacrifices carried into the Holy of Holies by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement.
But Jesus' death eliminated the necessity of animal sacrifices. Centuries before, a psalmist had said, "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:17). The judge and prophet Samuel had asked, "Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?" Then he had said, "Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams" (1 Samuel 15:22). Yet sacrifice had continued to be of utmost importance. In Hebrew understanding, something had to be done to hide the sins of persons from the eyes of God, making it possible for them to be at one with God. So for centuries, relationship with God had been regulated and determined by ritual and had been mediated by a special class of people, the priests.
Jesus' death on the Cross showed God in a new light. God was not waiting in some distant heaven, or in some special place on earth, for people to offer the proper sacrifice or to have one offered for them that would make them presentable to God. God was coming to meet persons, as a father meeting a returning prodigal son, bearing in the Divine heart a pain and anguish that required for its relief only a broken spirit, contriteness of heart, sincere sorrow for one's sin.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews pictures Jesus entering the Holy of Holies while on his Cross. He had not entered it before, but, symbolically, now he did. The High Priest had entered it every year, but once was enough for Jesus. "He entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption" (Hebrews 9:12).
We still are not to think lightly of our sins or of the holiness of God. But we can approach God with confidence, with assurance of forgiveness and acceptance, because of the Cross of Christ. As the author of Hebrews put it, "Since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain ... let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith ..." (Hebrews 10:19-22).
That Temple curtain was no longer appropriate after Jesus died on the Cross. It symbolized a separated God, an unapproachable God. But the Cross speaks of a seeking God, a suffering God, an accessible God.
A curtain torn by a cross! That torn curtain tells us of a God too great to be confined in creeds, places, rituals, or circumstances. The light that moves through that torn curtain comes from the Cross, illuminating the mystery of God and showing us what we most need to know about the being of God. And it speaks of accessibility, assuring us of an open way to the Divine presence.
Thank God for the torn Temple curtain!
____________
1. Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind (New York, London, Toronto: Random House, Inc., 1955, Bantam Pathfinder edition, 1963), p. 114.
2. Robert Coles, The Spiritual Life of Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), pp. 67-68.
3. Garry Wills, Saint Augustine (New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., copyright 1999 by Garry Wills), p. xii.
4. John Bowring, "In the Cross of Christ I Glory," in The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), Number 195.
