Lent Day 39… Death Machines And Darkness

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land. —Mark 15.33

I have always struggled to understand why today is called Good Friday. What I think would be more appropriate: switch names with Black Friday (the big day of shopping on Friday after Thanksgiving). Call the shopping day Good Friday, and the day of Jesus’ torture and death Black Friday.

But nobody consulted me, so today is Good Friday… the day violence won and the Prince of Peace was slaughtered. Irony seems to ride shotgun with violence these days (or maybe it always has). The biggest non-nuclear bomb our country has goes by the nickname “Mother Of All Bombs,” MOAB. Motherhood and death machines?

And then you have newscasters calling missile attacks beautiful. Brian Williams recently said, “We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean… I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons.’”

The most recent bombing inspired this eager statement from Geraldo Rivera, “Well one of my favorite things in the 16 years I’ve been here at Fox News is watching bombs drop…”

That statement almost sounds like a slight lyrical revision to the old classic Sound of Music tune in the voice of Julie Andrews …

Raindrops on roses
And whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Bombs leveling destruction and missiles as they scream
These are a few of my favorite things

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so gleeful. Maybe bombs aren’t good—just like this Friday isn’t really good.

I know that my own death machines (usually destructive words and attitudes—but sometimes actual violence against people or things) don’t bring me joy.

They don’t make my life bright and full of color and sound. Instead, they cloak my world in a heavy, dark fog. They do not inspire joyful sounding songs. Instead, they shroud me in shame.

When Christ was hung on the cross, a darkness covered the land for some three hours. I imagine there wasn’t the sound of celebratory songs during this great smog. Perhaps it was quiet… enough silence and heavy darkness to strike fear in the depths of everyone’s soul. What have we done?

If you have Netflix, I’m sure you’ve seen their original series The Crown about Queen Elizabeth. It is lavish and beautiful with vibrant colors and textures. It is a visual feast.

But in the fourth episode, the story depicts the real-life catastrophe known as the “Great Smog” that descended on London in 1952, causing chaos and death for several days. A period of cold weather in London, combined with windless conditions, led to pollution collecting in the streets and forming a thick layer of smog across the city. Most of these pollutants came from the burning of coal—which was used to heat homes and power factories.

The fog descended on Friday, December 5th, and was reported to be so thick that you couldn’t see the other side of the street, or even your own feet in some hard-hit areas. The fog caused many services to be cancelled in London—including ambulances—so that people had to walk themselves to the hospital.

There was also an increase in crime during the smog, with more than 100 smash-and-grab raids across the city and one murder where a 16-year-old girl was stabbed in the back. The official number of dead after the fog lifted on December 9th was 4,000, though more recent reports (accounting for those who died after it lifted) rank the death toll at closer to 12,000.

Can you imagine what it was like to live in London during the Great Smog of 1952? With darkness everywhere, the sun is nowhere to be seen in the middle of the day… I don’t know about you, but I would be terrified. It would make me wonder, what have we done?

This is Good Friday. Or, as I like to think of it, Black Friday.

The earth turns grey, silent and sad—the sky and land lifeless, colorless. —Isaiah 24.4

It would be unwise for us to attempt to rush past this day and on to Easter.

We shouldn’t do that.

Instead, we sit in the unsettledness of this fog.

We should let the death machines and darkness speak to us.

What are they saying now?