As Dark As It Gets

As Dark As It Gets

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion was first performed on Good Friday in Leipzig, Germany. I heard it for the first time nearly three hundred years later in a small Lutheran church in Houston, Texas.

The libretto combines the text of John’s Gospel, stanzas of old church hymns, and poetic text. As it was sung in German, I followed the English translation in my lap, but I could have closed it and understood. The familiar story unfolded on a current of sheer emotion, carried along by the music’s inflection and intensity and the sometimes harsh, sometimes hushed interplay of voices.

Loud, angry cries of “Kreuzige ihn!” needed no footnote. The music itself told me the moment my Lord said, “It is finished!” Then a mournful soprano voice sang, “Dissolve in tears my heart, in floods of weeping in honor of the Most High. Tell the earth and the heavens your anguish: your Jesus is dead!”

That’s as dark as it gets.

Have you ever been in utter, total, can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face darkness? The kind of darkness that makes you wonder if there will ever be light again? Maybe the darkness you remember is not a physical darkness. Maybe it was a moment when you lost something so precious that you thought the sun couldn’t possibly bring itself to rise again. Maybe you thought, This is as dark as it gets.

It wasn’t.

As dark as it gets was when the Father’s only Son gave up his final breath and it looked like death had won. As dark as it gets was when communication ceased between the Father and the Son—when two who’d never been apart suddenly were. As dark as it gets was a sealed tomb, a buried promise, and the empty hours between Friday and Sunday.

As dark as it gets happened once. It will never be that dark again.

“Rest well, sacred limbs,” the chorus sang as the music ended. “I no longer weep for you: sleep well, and bring me, too, to rest. The grave which is reserved for you no more dismays me: it opens heaven’s gates for me and closes those of hell.” It’s already been as dark as it will ever be.

Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen.

Luke 24:5-6, NASB