And darkness spread over all the land
Christian Baur
Thoughts about Christ’s Death on the Cross as depicted in the Jerusalem Panorama in Altötting, Germany.
The Jerusalem Panorama in Altötting, Germany is a synchronised audiovisual show of a 360° panoramic painting that visualises the Crucifixion of Christ in detail. Whoever buys a ticket for the Panorama Altötting climbs up an almost dark staircase and reaching the stage, beholds an illuminated scenery opposite, believing he is seeing an ancient town under a heavy grey sky. But the audio is telling him that he is seeing the towering, mighty residence of Pilate, and to the left of this the far reaching temple-mount of Jerusalem. If he turns right round towards the horizon, the sky becomes even darker and murkier. He then notices in the distance, Christ on the Cross, the two thieves, Maria Magdalene, Mary and John, along with the gaping crowd. Deeply moved, he can hardly tear himself away from this picture, but the audio voice leads him relentlessly into the preconceived historical and theological viewpoint. But this acoustic intrusion into the visual world of events contains much that is comprehensible.
It is, for example, certain that the painter of this giant panoramic work, Gebhard Fugel (1863–1939), referenced his illustration to the gospel of Luke (23, 44/45), who wrote about the Crucifixion: “And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.”
In the gospels of Matthew and Mark there is also mention about the darkness that gripped the entire country. The fact that the dreadful death of Christ on the Cross was mirrored in nature and even in the cosmos, should be a warning to the observant Christian theologians not to interpret His death as an act of redemption by the Son of God. We should be reminded by the beginning of the gospel of John where it is stated: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
The Crucifixion of Christ clearly demonstrated that the tools of the darkness were able to physically silence the Light Envoy of God because there were not enough people to protect the Son of God from this act of madness.
Anyone looking at the painting of the Crucifixion of Christ in Altötting, Germany will find it difficult to experience any feeling of redemption. He is more likely to feel a certain apprehension, emanating from the pale light in which the main group appears before the grey and darkened sky. Eight years after the screening of the first film, the artist has, in this late work of an objective, illusionist painting, touched on a semblance of cinematic realism and shows, as it were, a topical snapshot of the happening. He transports the death on the Cross into the everyday world of our time, with an almost nightmarish proximity. Thus the question about the meaning of Christ’s death is depicted as a modern day occurrence that could be compared to a criminal in the United States that has been executed or a woman in Iran stoned to death for committing adultery. Or in other words, in this context, it is not a Son of God who is dying, but the person next door!
However, the traditional Christian visual imagery points out that it is indeed Jesus Christ who has been crucified. And yet the sovereignty of the Divine is by no means embodied. It is not capable of “shining forth” from the depths of the image in the way this can, for instance, be experienced from a Rembrandt work of art. Here an ordinary person is represented who is suffering, feels thirst, sweats and eventually succumbs to the physical agony. We are not made to feel that the person characterised here on the Cross, albeit outwardly resembling Christ, can be innocent, because no human being is without guilt. Whether or not his suffering and death is “justified” cannot be easily understood.
And yet there is a sign from nature, the darkness, which speaks its own distinct language and incites even the strongest assailants of Christ, who wanted His death, to take notice. The painter depicts this through a Pharisee that is about to ride home and notices the sun eclipse. It is accurately observed psychologically how the old man stops frightened, defensively raises his right hand and nervously grips the reins of his mount more tightly and wishes that what he sees were not true, and yet is forced to watch spellbound. This almost describes the inner transformation of a man who witnesses a cosmic drama he cannot really believe, leaving open as to whether this experience is sufficient for a true inner change. Nevertheless, it is precisely in this figure, beyond all theology, that the only way leading to Christ and His Word is best described. If the whole of nature can mourn a being that was considered a blasphemer by the Jewish people at that time, then this assumption cannot be right! Thus the so-called “King of the Jews” was the Son of God after all!
But under these circumstances, can the later Christian interpretation of the Crucifixion of Christ, as a redemptive death, represent the Will of God in the right way? Would the whole cosmos darken, if henceforth the chasm between guilty humanity and divinity were overcome?
Most certainly not! Nature, with all its possibilities of orchestrating glittering spectacles, would have celebrated this new connection between the Creator and His Creation, thereby rendering humanity visibly happy. Richard Wagner portrayed this very idea in his play “Parsifal”. In his redemptive mysticism of the “Good Friday Spell”, overshadowing Christian theology, he illustrated a transfigured nature, which in the end, really only belongs to the Resurrection Morn or to Whitsuntide. Wagner thereby falsified history, arbitrarily altering the happening to the point in time of the Crucifixion. But this action was not without consequence if the Christian idea of redemption was to be developed further.
Let us return once more to the Pharisee painted by Fugel. This religious dignitary loses all his previous certainty and is able to spontaneously experience the darkening sun in relation to the man who has just been crucified. Even though he was unable to intuitively grasp the sovereign figure of the Son of God during His life, or to weigh and measure the public outcries of Christ’s opponents with the common sense of his heart, in this moment he is now overwhelmed by the events mirrored in nature. Therefore he begins to suspect that this mocked and maltreated man, is nevertheless the Son of God before him.
If many more people had spontaneously understood the true happening at the time, and been able to interpret the oppressive darkness around the cross, they would have realised that this heinous crime against God and the Son sent by Him, was not a sacrifice of redemption, as portended by Christian theology throughout the ages. There were and still are sufficient hints and words of the Son of God to interpret the Crucifixion differently. For example, Christ’s words: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do!” refers to “ignorant mankind” and the request for forgiveness. One can interpret this to be reassuring and exculpating, or this same sentence becomes a bitter accusation if the word “what” is stressed. Mankind does not even know what they have really done thereby! It is not just a matter here of the individual words of this statement, but also the tone. Does this tone not belong to the voice of the Lord that man did not want to listen to anymore when once misled by the serpent of intellect?
Man has forgotten how to hear this tone and to perceive light and darkness since he began to rely solely on his intellect. Only the earthbound intellect could imagine that with the death of His Son on the Cross, humanity was redeemed from its guilt, otherwise the omnipotence of God would have intervened to save Him.
This very same intellect that otherwise proudly insists on logic would believe that a deviation from the natural laws, such as a Divine intervention or the come-down-from-the-Cross is possible. It is just this conflict, the distrust of the inner voice, which also includes mistrust in the Will of the Lord, and yet unbridled confidence in the most superficial scope of thinking, that has alienated mankind from God. So the word of John’s Gospel was intensified by Christendom: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
It is urgently necessary, especially today, to grasp the meaning of this sentence of John’s Gospel in what it implies. Every individual must make the effort to recognise that the Divine Word shining into the darkness was not then, nor today, understood. This will then help us to dispel the comfortable idea that the Son of God died on the Cross for us and force us to delve deeper into the meaning of the Divine Word through our thoughts and inner perceptions. It will not be easy, therefore we must use all of our strength to awaken our buried inner voice and to learn to perceive with our hearts again. This is the true activity of our immortal spirit, our true human existence, and not of the physical brain.
We must sincerely long for true recognition of the Word, for the living water of the Son of God, with a firm resolution. The Sermon on the Mount: he who seeks, must also find.
