April 3: “Father, Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit”
♫ Music:
Day 46 - Saturday, April 3
HOLY SATURDAY
Title: “FATHER, INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT”
Scripture: Luke 23:44-49
About the sixth hour darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, because the sun was obscured; and the veil of the temple was torn in two. And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Having said this, He breathed His last. Now when the centurion saw what had happened, he began praising God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent.” And all the crowds who came together for this spectacle, when they observed what had happened, began to return, beating their breasts. And all His acquaintances and the women who accompanied Him from Galilee were standing at a distance, seeing these things.
Poetry:
The Say-But-the-Word Centurion Attempts
a Summary
by Les Murray
That numinous healer who preached Saturnalia and
paradox
has died a slave’s death. We were maneuvered into it
by priests
and by the man himself. To complete his poem.
He was certainly dead. The pilum guaranteed it. His
message,
unwritten except on his body, like anyone’s, was wrapped
like a scroll and despatched to our liberated selves, the
gods.
If he has now risen, as our infiltrators gibber,
he has outdone Orpheus, who went alive to the Shades.
Solitude may be stronger than embraces. Inventor of
the mustard tree,
he mourned one death, perhaps all, before he reversed it.
He forgave the sick to health, disregarded the sex of the Furies
when expelling them from minds. And he never speculated.
If he is risen, all are children of a most real high God
or something even stranger called by that name
who knew to come and be punished for the world.
To have knowledge of right, after that, is to be in the wrong.
Death came through the sight of law. His people’s oldest
wisdom.
If death is now the birth-gate into things unsayable
in the language of death’s era, there will be wars about
religion
as there never were about the death-ignoring Olympians.
Love, too, his new universal, so far ahead of you it has
died
for you before you ever met it, may seem colder than the
favors of gods
who are our poems, good and bad. But there never was
a bad baby.
Half his worship will be grinding his face in the dirt
then lifting it to beg, in private. The low will rule, and
curse by him.
Divine bastard, soul-usurer, eros-frightener, he is out to
monopolize hatred.
Whole philosophies will be devised for their brief snubbings
of him.
But regained excels kept, he taught. Thus he has done
the impossible
to show us it is there. To ask it of us. It seems we are to
be the poem
and live the impossible. As each time we have, with
mixed cries.
THOSE HANDS
“Into your hands, I commit My spirit.”
How can he say this? Life is leaving his body. Darkness has fallen. The end is near.
It is one thing on a peaceful sunny hillside with friends and followers about to talk of trusting God. It is another to commit one’s spirit into his hands at the very end.
He feels his life dripping to the ground, pooling in blood. How does he give himself over to the hands of God? Where is the fight? Where is the lament? Where is the anger at the injustice?
Something is terribly wrong, here. Even those who came to enjoy the spectacle, saw that something had gone terribly wrong. They drifted away, beating their breasts in silence. Those who came for a show left in mourning. Something has gone wrong. Even one who commanded the men who nailed the hands, who pierced the side, who threw the insults, even he saw that something was terribly wrong. This man was innocent.
And then, there were those words:
“Into your hands, I commit My spirit.”
Committing his spirit into those hands did not begin on the cross. It did not begin on the march to the cross. It did not begin in the garden through that long night of prayer. It began long ago. He asked his mother, “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2: 49,50)
He knew those hands. He was there in the shadows before time and light were thrown into being when those hands shaped the world. He was there when those hands formed another out of the mud of the ground. He was there when those hands brought his people out of bondage. He felt their gentle touch as they led him into the wilderness of temptation. He felt their protective care as they led him out again. Those hands rested upon him as he first stood in the synagogue and declared his liberating mission. Those hands guided his hands as he multiplied fish and loaves, touched lepers, called people from the grave. He knew those hands.
He knew the Father’s hands. Those hands set him on his faithful path. He fixed his own hands as on to a plow. He held to the end – to the very end. “Into your hands, I commit My spirit.”
How can he say this? At the end? He knows whose hands they are.
Into your hands – those hands – the hands of love, I commit My spirit.
Prayer:
“Father, help me know your hands – your hands of Love. Help me know them as I wake and as I lie down; as I rejoice and as I mourn. Help me feel your touch on my life and through my life. Help me commit my spirit, my world, my life into your hands.
Amen
Greg E. Ganssle
Professor of Philosophy
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Bedouin Crucifixion (2 versions)
Igael Tumarkin
1982
Steel and mixed media
211 x 206 x 80 cm
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Gift of the artist
Israeli artist Igael Tumarkin demonstrated his empathy with Bedouins struggling against government-sponsored evictions and land confiscations in his work Bedouin Crucifixion. There is no placard on this crucifixion. Instead, it is necessary to discern who is ‘on the cross,’ through material objects with strong associations and resonances. The cross Tumarkin constructed consists of horizontal wooden branches—used by the Bedouin, a traditionally nomadic people, as tent-poles—and an industrial iron vertical backdrop against which a assemblage of pieces of cloth and other organic materials is ‘crucified’. The rigid metal structure symbolizes the Israeli establishment that victimizes the Bedouins. One of Tumarkin’s most important sources of artistic influence was the renowned Isenheim Altarpiece (1512–16) painted by Matthias Grünewald. In Bedouin Crucifixion, the sparse wooden branches recall the emaciated arms of the Isenheim Christ and, along with the bowed tree-stump head, recreate something of the gaunt figure of Grünewald’s depiction of the crucified Christ.
Adapted from a commentary by Amitai Mendelsohn
https://thevcs.org/reinscribing-cross/whose-crucifixion
About the Artist:
Igael Tumarkin (b. 1933) is an Israeli painter and sculptor. Tumarkin served in the Israeli Navy. After completing his military service, he studied sculpture in Ein Hod, a village of artists near Mount Carmel. His youngest son is the actor Yon Tumarkin. Among Tumarkin’s best known works are the Holocaust and Revival memorial in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, and his sculptures commemorating fallen soldiers in the Negev. Tumarkin is also an art theoretician and stage designer. In the 1950s, Tumarkin worked in East Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris. Upon his return to Israel in 1961, he became a driving force behind the break from the charismatic monopoly of lyric abstraction there. Tumarkin created assemblages of found objects, generally with violent expressionist undertones and decidedly unlyrical color. His determination to “be different” influenced his younger Israeli colleagues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igael_Tumarkin
About the Music:
“El Yom Ollika” from the album Good Friday Eastern Sacred Songs
Lyrics Transliteration:
Alyawm ealaq ealaa khashabat aldhy ealaq al’ard ealaa almia
‘Iklyl min shuk wade ealaa hamat malak almalayika
Birafiraan kadhbaan tasrbl
Aladhi washah alsama’ bialghuyum
Qabl latmat aldhy ‘uetaq ‘adam fi al’urdun
Khatn albayeat samar bialmasamir
W ‘iibn aleadhra’ taen biharba
Nasjud li’alamik ‘ayuha almasih
Fa’arna qiamatuk almajida
Lyrics Translation:
On this day is crucified on the Cross
He who suspended the earth upon waters.
A crown of spines crowns the King of angels.
He was dressed in a purple robe of mockery,
He who adorns the heavens with clouds.
He accepts to be smote,
He who released Adam in the Jordan.
The Spouse of the Church is transfixed with nails,
And the Son of the Virgin is pierced with a spear.
We adore Thy passion, O Christ.
Show us Thy glorious resurrection.
About the Text and Music:
The Maronite Syriac Church of Antioch is an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. It traces its heritage back to the community founded by Maron, a fourth-century Syriac monk venerated as a saint. Although reduced in numbers today, Maronites remain one of the principal ethno-religious groups in Lebanon. They have a rich musical heritage, with many hymns sung in the ancient Syriac language, which closely resembles the Galilean dialect of Aramaic spoken by Jesus. Tarateel Marounya (Maronite music) is frequently composed in acrostic verse, like many Psalms, and since the ninth century has also been influenced by the rhyming schemes of Arabic poetry.
https://www.last.fm/music/Tarateel+Marounya/+wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_Christianity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_sacral_music
About the Performer:
Fairouz (b. 1934) is a Lebanese singer and actress widely considered to be one of the most celebrated Arab singers of the twentieth century. Fairouz’s husband was Assi Rahbani, who along with his brother Mansour Rahbani—known together as the Rahbani Brothers—wrote and composed the majority of the songs and plays that Fairouz performed from the mid-1950s until Assi suffered a debilitating stroke in 1973. Subsequently, Fairouz began collaborating separately with her son and daughter, Ziad and Rima Rahbani. She is also known as an icon in modern Arabic music and has sold over 150 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling Middle Eastern artists of all time.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fairouz
About the Poet:
Les Murray (1938–2019) was an Australian poet, anthologist, and critic. His career spanned over forty years and he published nearly thirty volumes of poetry as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings. Translations of Murray’s poetry have been published in eleven languages. Murray’s poetry won many awards and he is regarded as “the leading Australian poet of his generation.” He was rated in 1997 by the National Trust of Australia as one of the 100 Australian Living Treasures. Murray published around thirty volumes of poetry and is often called Australia’s “Bush-bard.” The academic David McCooey described Murray in 2002 as “a traditional poet whose work is radically original.” His poetry is rich and diverse, while also exhibiting “an obvious unity and wholeness” based on “his consistent commitment to the ideals and values of what he sees as the real Australia.” He is almost universally praised for his linguistic dexterity, poetic skill, and humor. However, these same reviewers and critics tend to be more questioning when they start discussing his themes and subject matter. While admiring Murray’s linguistic skill and poetic achievement, poet John Tranter, in 1977, also expressed uneasiness about some aspects of his work. Tranter praises Murray’s “good humor” and concludes that, “For all my disagreements, and many of them are profound, I found the Vernacular Republic full of rich and complex poetry.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Murray_(poet)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/les-murray
About the Devotion Author:
Dr. Greg E. Ganssle
Professor of Philosophy
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
Dr. Gregory Ganssle is a professor of philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. His interest is in the philosophy of religion and the history of philosophy. His latest book is Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspiration (IVP, 2017).