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Cross-Shattered Christ:
Meditations on the Seven Last Words
By Stanley Hauerwas
Brazos Press, 2005. 108 Pages
Reviewed by Christy Risser-Milne
This is not your typical Hauerwas tome. Indisputably one of our greatest living theologians, Hauerwas is known for his biting humor (he’s an equal-opportunity insulter), brilliant analysis, and clear, concise writing style.
Cross-Shattered Christ is a departure from Hauerwas’s typical world of theological analysis, and his entry into the world of circumspect devotion, though he cannot entirely avoid the circular argumentation that is contemporary theological discourse.
“Mystery” is not a word I often use even though I am a theologian. Indeed, I avoid the word “mystery” because I am a theologian. To say that what Christians believe is mysterious invites the assumption that what we believe is not believable. In short, ‘mystery’ suggests that what we believe defies reason and common sense. What we believe does defy reason and common sense; but yet I believe what Christians believe is the most reasonable and commonsense account we can have of the way things are.
Although Hauerwas addresses the seven traditional phrases (each of which is called a “word”) compiled from all four Gospels that Jesus spoke while on the cross dying, he focuses in with incredible clarity on the fourth of these words.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
Cutting through to the heart of the words, Hauerwas identifies this demand, this question, as central to our identity as human beings living in this world’s realm.
We believe that if we know anything, we know horror -- the darkness hidden in our determinedly superficial lives, lives calculated to deny the darkness of our death-drenched time. In the face of terror surrounding our lives, God remains silent.
Hauerwas speculates that because there is indeed terrible suffering present in our world, we believe we understand fully the nature of Jesus’ sense of abandonment. This, he says, is proof positive that we don’t truly understand just who Jesus really is. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, and as such, he is God and this suffering and dying of God in the flesh that is Jesus is the heart of the mystery of the Trinity and of faith itself.
This is not a dumb show that some abstract idea of god appears to go through to demonstrate that he or she really has our best interest at heart. No, this is the Father’s deliberately giving his Christ over to a deadly destiny so that our destiny would not be determined by death.
So while these are not, strictly speaking, theological treatises on the words attributed to Jesus as he hung, dying on the cross, they are the very nature of what theology (literally: the word about God) itself is.
Into a contemporary Christian culture of simplistic faith (which is most certainly a radical departure from “simple faith”), Hauerwas speaks the innate mystery of God that makes so many Christians today uncomfortable. “We’ve split the atom, so we therefore must be able to understand God,” we say; to which Hauerwas might respond, “Rubbish.”
Although this book gives every appearance of being a Lenten devotional study, I feel that it is appropriate for any time of year. Most particularly, I feel this little book deserves a regular place on the devotional book table in the spot where you go to spend time with the Mystery.
But if you’re looking for comforting answers to the horror of the cross, don’t read this book. No wait. Do read this book. You probably need it more than those of us who have always been troubled by the events of that day.
In any event, Hauerwas has achieved one of the truest books of theology he has ever written, and for that I thank him.
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