We are frustrated not only by the enigmatic character of Jesus’ words from the cross but by the general reticence of the Gospels. We think if we only knew more about what Jesus was really like, what he really thought he was doing, that would surely make believing in God, at least the God of Jesus Christ, more intelligible. For instance, why do the Gospels tell us next to nothing about Jesus growing up, or his relationship to women? And then there are the parables. If only he had explained what he was trying to get us to understand. Even when he responds to the request of the disciples for explanation, we are often as confused by the explication of the parable as we are by the parable itself. Because we know so little about Jesus, our imaginations run wild trying to make up for the leanness of the Gospels and, in particular, these words from the cross.
Yet I believe the reticence of the Gospels as well as these spare words from the cross is not accidental. Instead, that reticence is a discipline given us by God to draw us into, to make us participants in, the silence of redemption wrought by the cross. In the world as we find it—a world that seems to make belief in God some desperate irrationality, Christians are tempted to say more about what we believe than we can or should say. This is a particular temptation for theologians, particularly theologians like me who are critics of the church’s accommodation to the way things are, who too often seem to presuppose we know more about what God would have us be than can be warranted.
In his Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgment, Rowan Williams observes that “God is in the connections we cannot make,” a wonderful remark that reminds us that our desire to say more than the silence scripture forces on us manifests out uneasiness with the mystery of a God who would be known through crucifixion. Our attempts to speak confidently of God in the face of modern skepticism, a skepticism we suspect also grips our lives as Christians, betrays a certainty inappropriate for a people who worship a crucified God.
--from Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words by Stanley Hauerwas.
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