Good Friday Special: Silent Voices

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: The following is a special Good Friday presentation from WORLD Radio.

This weekend is a time for thoughtful reflection on the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. A chance for Christians to ponder its meaning and how it informs the way we live. At times, a fresh perspective can help create a deeper understanding of the most important event in human history. On the Friday edition of The World and Everything in It we played a few minutes of a conversation between Mary Reichard and author Gregory Athnos. He is Professor Emeritus at North Park University in Chicago where he taught for 32 years as a conductor and lecturer in music history and literature.

Athnos is the author of numerous books, including The Art of the Roman Catacombs, as well as The Easter Jesus and the Good Friday Church: Reclaiming the Centrality of the Resurrection…and the book we’re highlighting today is Silent Voices: Meditations for Holy Week.

One of those silent voices Athnos explores is Barabbas…a short passage read here by actor John Gauger:

JOHN GAUGER: [AS BARABBAS] So… their shouts of ‘crucify, crucify’ were not crying out for my blood, but his? How could his rebellion be any greater than mine? The disgrace of crucifixion I deserve are being transferred to the innocent carpenter’s son? He dies a murderer’s death while I, the murderer, go free? Who is this man? Why does he willingly take my place?

Here now is Mary Reichard’s full interview with Greg Athnos about his book.

MARY REICHARD: Greg, Silent Voices takes on different points of view of people who were present on Resurrection Day. And you focus on these silent figures who speak very little or not at all through the Scriptures. What drew you to tell the passion through their eyes?

GREG ATHNOS: Well, we've lived, lived with the story our entire life. We've grown up in the church, and so we know the main characters. We know who they were, what they did, what the reactions were. But what about those other figures that don't speak, but they're part of the story? What were they thinking? And so I thought, if I can figure out, if I can get myself inside their sandals and robes and see the the events through their eyes, that might enlighten me more deeply about the story itself.

REICHARD: Mm, hmm. Now, one of the things that some people might have a concern about is that you are blending scripture and tradition with your own imagination. So that might concern some people. How did you, Greg Athnos, approach this without losing biblical grounding?

ATHNOS: It was a challenge. I know the story. It's part of my life, and I want to be true to the story as scripture tells it. But I also wanted to get in addition to the facts, something, the emotions of it, which you sometimes don't pick up from Scripture. Facts are there. Emotions are sometimes in the background. …So I wanted to put myself in a pre- resurrection state of mind and speculate what could be possible situations and responses to those situations of those people? I was constantly trying to be creative and imaginative, and yet every time I came up with an idea, I had to put it against the facts of Scripture. …Now, can I say for sure what they did and what they thought? No, I can't. But I wanted the reader to assume the same position. So if you were that person, what would you do? And if your response was different from mine? That's the whole point of the exercise.

REICHARD: Hm. Hm. Well, let’s take a moment and hear a longer excerpt from one of the silent voices. Who is this first one?

ATHNOS: Let's see. I think the soldier at the tomb. What did he see? The Scripture doesn't tell us anything about what happened, except it was an earthquake and the stone was rolled away. So I said, well, what would the resurrection have actually felt like and looked like? And I had to put myself in the eyes and hearts of the guy standing at the tomb witnessing all of this.

REICHARD: All right, that’s the set up. Let’s have a listen:

GAUGER: [AS THE SOLDIER] I was peering into a new dimension. Shall I embrace it or flee from it in terror like the others? I lay there alone, naked of all pretense, ignorant of fear, immune to trembling, held captive by a blind and dumb neutrality. I could not escape those crimson flames, nor could I embrace them. As a Roman, I did not believe in hell and there was no heaven, just life and the void called death. I was trapped, caught between mind and heart. My heart wanted what the living presence offered, but my mind doubted my need to want. My heart wanted what I saw of divinity, yet my mind felt reluctant to part with my humanity. The two forces, negative mind and positive heart, fought within me. As a Roman guard, I foolishly allowed the one I had always lived by to reign, that hellish force of mind, narrowing my choices, obliterating all hope. If I fled, I would die in Pilate's court for dereliction of duty. If I stayed, I would most certainly die in the all consuming light of that living presence. I was a dead man, regardless. I made my decisive and destructive choice: I ran. I ran for my life. I, one of the crack troops of Rome, fled in utter, unfettered, uncontrolled terror. I refused the crimson invitation. I chose my Scarlet sepulcher over his white as snow paradise.

ATHNOS: I saw that all that God had ever put together in creation, all the laws that he had put in place to keep things going, they all disintegrate….And so we say "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," and we say it so casually, but what that really means is everything that we have done to a perfect creation has to be destroyed in the process, which means that the return to Eden is violent and totally uprooting. But then bottom of the line was, well, this soldier saw it all! Did he believe? Well, Scripture says nothing about that. And so, well, why didn't he, from what he'd seen, certainly he should have believed. Why didn't he? And so that was a....... I was shocked by that, by having created a picture of what the resurrection did, who would not say yes to it?

REICHARD: Well, let’s talk more about that. The soldier at the tomb was physically present at the actual resurrection, and yet he felt trapped between reason and faith. I think a lot of us have that problem.

ATHNOS: Yes, we do. And and in the final chapter of the book, the disciples in the upper room, it's the same story. They followed for three years, only to be left behind by the death of the person they thought was their coming Messiah. And they're trapped at the same doubts and and yet the same sense of the reason that they had experienced previously with his presence. And so they're caught between reason and doubt as well. And I tried to really paint us a big picture of the argument between reason and doubt, trying to make doubt acceptable given what they’ve had happen to them. So that between between heart and mind, heart takes over and mind is put aside. And that's generally the way we pursue life itself. We think we're people of reason, but we're really, when it when rubber meets the road, it's the heart and the emotion that takes over.

REICHARD: Hearing that, I’m just struck. I mean, you and I both had little brushes with death in the recent past.

ATHNOS: Yes.

REICHARD: And so when I hear passages like that, it hits me harder than it did when death was just an abstraction in the distant future. It isn’t anymore. I mean it’s with me all the time. I wonder if that experience for you informed your writing of this book?

ATHNOS: Yes. I had written it before that, but then I rewrote it after.

REICHARD: Did you?

ATHNOS: Yeah, I mean, I had to edit it and change some things because I felt certain things less profoundly and other things more profoundly.

REICHARD: Such as?

ATHNOS: You think of it, you say, you know, our life is so short and it's so precious, maybe we'd better think more profoundly of what it means to live the life we're ordained to live, with that idea that the the absence of the light is devastating. And we don't want to be there, if we can help it.

REICHARD: Yes there's a lot that could be said about that. I want to move to this next question that leads me to think about Judas, you know, one of the most reviled figures in Christian history, yet you try to get into the mind of Judas. I’m wondering, what did that process reveal to you?

ATHNOS: The question is, how could he, having followed Jesus for three years, having eaten with him, lived with him, traveled with him, witnessed all of the other worldly powers and miracles that he could do. How could he turn away?...But the Scriptures tell us the precise moment when Satan enters into him. So Jesus has to die in order to fulfill scriptures’ promise of of redemption. But who's going to be the betrayer? So the question came to me, was Judas ordained to be that person, to be the betrayer? I can't possibly accept that idea that God would ordain someone to hell. God doesn't ordain evil. He defeats evil.

So then it made me think, well, maybe Judas is like me. I have free will, Judas had free will. He could make his own choices for good or evil. What was the avenue into Judas’ heart that was vulnerable to an incursion by Satan? What do we have that makes us vulnerable?... I saw that in Judas's case, it was money. That's a big thing for a lot of people. But in the end, he had all the money, but he threw it away. It meant nothing. He'd seen what he had done, but it was too late. So it made me think of my own vulnerabilities. So that as despicable as Judas is, I match him in that.

REICHARD:Perhaps one of the most overlooked witnesses is Simon of Cyrene. Let’s hear some of that now:

GAUGER: [AS SIMON OF CYRENE] It was uphill now and he agonized with every step. The mob continued lashing out at him. The bloody beam across my shoulders stained my Passover clothes. My muscles ached.

That was not the worst. I was now unclean for having touched human blood. My Passover was ruined…ruined. My religious pilgrimage was for nothing. Where it came from I don’t know—that image of that first Passover in Egypt—the image of lamb’s blood splashed on the lintels over the doors sparing my people from God’s wrath. Was I witnessing a new Exodus? Another sacrificial Lamb was staggering up the hill in front of me. I carried his blood on the ‘lintel’ stretched across my shoulders. Suddenly, I knew He was the spotless Lamb of God. It was a revelation—my promised Messiah had to die! The scene in all its ugliness became transformed. I must follow him to his place of undeserved death, a death that would set me free. Isaiah’s prophecy became clear to me: By his bleeding stripes dripping from the crossbeam lintel scarring my shoulders I would be redeemed. I would be saved from the punishment I deserved, (slowly) as I carried the cross of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

REICHARD: Hmmm, one of my favorites you chose to highlight….Greg, why do you think it's important to put ourselves in the sandals and robes, as you say, of these silent people?

ATHNOS: You know, we're like a smooth stone skipping over the surface of a calm lake. That's about how deeply we know the story because we've known it our whole life, so we can just skim over the surface of it and leave the murky bottom sort of untouched. I felt if we could find ourselves more engaged with the terrible thought that this person we followed for three years was going to have to die, and this went against everything we knew about and everything we anticipated about Messiah, the disillusionment would be overwhelming. And if we could get down to the depths of the disillusionment, maybe we would more greatly respond to the heights of the resurrection that follow. So the more deeply we understand the dark side, the more profoundly we can understand the bright side.

REICHARD: Yes, yes. Greg, let’s hear one more passage, this time from the perspective of the Centurion at the foot of the cross. Let’s pick up the story just moments after Jesus pleads with the Father to forgive them as they didn’t know what they were doing…

GAUGER: [AS THE CENTURION] I caught my breath. “Forgive them? What is this forgiveness? Two are dead, and the third is dying. They’re destined for Hell, not Paradise!” Then, it sprang from a deep, hidden place inside—“Forgive me? For what?” Guilt had never entered my mind. I was trained to be brutal. I was paid to kill without remorse. I began to wonder who I really was. At the same time I began to wonder who He was. My heart beat agonizingly against my breastplate; I could hear it above the churning, swirling wind. Then he uttered his final words…

JESUS: Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.

CENTURION: My next words came from nowhere, silent at first. Then rising. The heat of this involuntary testimony seared my throat:

“I accept your forgiveness. Grant me a future in your paradise.” What was I saying?

Then my words mounted to a deafening roar. They exploded, screaming above the fury of the rattling earth and the raging heavens. It was as if all the voices of creation had gathered into a shout coming just from me, tearing and unraveling the curtains of the shattered past and heralding the indestructible fabric of the future:

“Truly”, I cried with astounding conviction, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

REICHARD: Aaah, so much here! This book is just 116 pages long. It’s a very doable devotional. Greg, how do you hope readers will use this book?

ATHNOS: What I would suggest is read it alone, even out loud, on your own, by yourself, and uh so so become like the disciples—you know, curious, wondering, doubtful, hateful, hopeful, all of those things that we see woven into the story of Holy Week. And then after you've lived with these characters in this way, and you've been able to sense something very deep inside yourself that makes you identify with each character, because there's something in each character that we can identify with. Then perhaps in the weeks of uh Eastertide following Resurrection Sunday, maybe in adult Sunday school classes or in small groups or something. Just sit down, read the monologs together and discuss them.. But first of all, start on your own.

REICHARD: I know you’ve put a series of questions in the book that relate to each silent person you write about. That’s so very helpful. Greg Athnos is the author of Silent Voices: Meditations for Holy Week. Greg, thanks so much for helping us listen to those quiet voices of Scripture.

ATHNOS: It's my pleasure. Mary, thank you.

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