On the 21st of this month, Americans from sea to sea will get to see and experience a total eclipse of the sun, beginning in Oregon and tracing across the country all the way through South Carolina. All along that track, people are filling motel rooms and campgrounds, and planning parties with such names as, “The Eclipse Party. Totally.”, “Moonshadow Festival,” “Howl at the Moon Block Party,” and “Total Eclipse of the Art (a fine arts festival!).” Cruises are featuring viewing opportunities, as are colleges and state parks. Radio stations are playing Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 hit song, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” And people are buying special viewing glasses to let them look at the eclipsed sun without going blind by burning out their retinas. It’s a big deal, to say the least, considering the darkest effect of the totality will last no more than a few minutes at each location.
I’m looking forward to seeing as much of the eclipse as I safely can. When the previous partial eclipse passed over us a few years ago, I wasn’t so stupid as to look directly at the sun. Oh, no, I was cleverer than that: I just aimed my camera at the sun instead. Which resulted in a permanent dark spot burned into my camera’s retina, leading to my needing a new camera. As I said, I was clever . . .
With all the excitement over this year’s total eclipse, I was reminded about something I read not too long ago concerning the darkness that occurred while Jesus hung on the Cross at Golgotha. Of course, we have the Gospel accounts of the darkness, such as we find in Matthew 27:45, “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.” The Gospels of Mark and Luke report the same.
“Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.”
But besides the scriptural accounts, there are early Christian reports of secular writers trying to explain away the event. According to an early historian named Sextus Julius Africanus, and to the Christian theologian Origen, there was a Greek historian Phlegon, who lived in the 2nd century and wrote “with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place.”
Sextus also referred to the writings of the pagan historian Thallus: “This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun. For the Hebrews celebrate the Passover on the 14th day according to the moon, and the passion of our Savior falls on the day before the Passover; but an eclipse of the sun takes place only when the moon comes under the sun.”
Did you catch that? The dark noontime sky at Jesus’ death could not have been caused by a solar eclipse, because the Passover is always celebrated during a full moon, when the moon is on the opposite side of the earth from the sun. Not only that, but eclipses can last no longer than three minutes and a few seconds; the darkness on Good Friday lasted for three hours. It was not a natural occurrence; it was a powerful sign from God that it was his Son we were killing.
God often uses light and darkness in his Word and in earthly events to represent spiritual realities and accomplish his work.
God often uses light and darkness in his Word and in earthly events to represent, respectively, good and evil, truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance, salvation and judgment. On the one hand, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). God is the “Father of lights” (James 1:17). God’s first word of creation was, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). Jesus is the Light of the world (John 9:5) and he was “the true light which gives light to everyone” (John 1:9). At the Transfiguration, Christ shone with the brilliance of the sun (Mark 9:2)- which revealed his divine nature to his closest disciples. Even Jesus’ birth was announced by the light of a star and by the glory that shone around the angels when they told the shepherds. In the Old Testament, God used light and dark to do his work: he caused the sun to not go down until Joshua had defeated Israel’s enemies (Joshua 10), he blinded the Assyrian army that sought to kill Elisha (2 Kings 6), and he showed his supremacy over the so-called sun god of the Egyptians by sending a plague of darkness over the land.
We who believe in Christ are called children of the light, and we look forward to the heavenly city where there will be no more night, and which needs no lamp or sun because the Lord will be our light. We will enjoy the glory (light) of God, and will ourselves be glorified. Light is our destiny.
. . . darkness is the symbol of Satan and of evil which stands in opposition to God.
On the other hand, darkness is the symbol of Satan and of evil which stands in opposition to God. When Judas left the Last Supper to betray Jesus, we are told that “it was night” (John 13:30). When Job suffered all he did, he proclaimed, “But when I hoped for good, evil came and when I waited for light, darkness came” (Job 30:26). John 3:19 tells us that people would be judged by God because they rejected the Light that had come into the world (Christ); the problem was they “loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” Paul used the same description of evil in Ephesians 6:12 to describe the spiritual warfare we face: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Those who face God’s condemnation are destined to be cast out of the light and into the outer darkness where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30). They will be separated from the glorious light of God.
The connection of darkness with God’s judgment was assumed by the disciples when they encountered a man who had been born blind (John 9). They asked Jesus why the man was born that way; they wanted to know if he or his parents had sinned to deserve it. How Jesus responded and what happened next teaches us (or should I say, “enlightens us”?) much about light and darkness from God’s perspective.
We know that all illnesses, defects, and our eventual mortality are a result of mankind’s sin and God’s curse on creation. Here was a man suffering effects of man’s fall into sin. But we learn that his disabilities (and ours) are not God’s punishment for any specific sin. For Jesus said that it was neither the man’s nor his parents’ sin that caused his blindness; instead he said the man was born blind in order that “the works of God might be displayed in him.” And then Jesus did God’s work and healed him. (What a great lesson! How might God’s works be revealed through our particular disabilities? Might God have allowed us a certain illness or handicap to use it as a blessing for us and others, as well as for his glory?)
Might God have allowed us a certain illness or handicap to use it as a blessing for us and others, as well as for his glory?
The One who is the Light of the world (which Jesus said in connection with this healing) gave sight and light to the man. But the story did not end there, for when the man went to the Pharisees to show them he had been healed, they refused to accept what Christ had done and tried to get the man to disavow the miracle. They wanted him to call Jesus a sinner, to which he replied one of my favorite retorts of scripture: “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25).
When Jesus learned of the Pharisees’ rejection of what they could plainly see with their own eyes, he spoke of their spiritual blindness, a blindness which kept them from recognizing the Messiah for whom they had long been waiting. For 700 years the Jews had the prophecy of Isaiah which foretold that the Messiah would give sight to the blind (Isaiah 29:18), and now they had the testimony of a miraculous work of God – before their very eyes. But they wouldn’t accept this work of God; they wouldn’t accept the evidence that Jesus just might be the Messiah, the Son of God; you might say they suffered from a “total eclipse of the Son.” Their biases and pride blocked out the Light that could have saved them. So Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” And to those Pharisees he said, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains” (John 9:39-41).
Spiritual blindness is a darkness of the soul which exists apart from the light of God and his Son, Jesus Christ. It’s the kind of eclipse we really don’t want, for it separates us from the true Light and leads to the outer darkness. Let us look to Christ, our Savior, and thank him for giving us his life, which is the light of men (John 1:4).
Let us look to Christ, our Savior, and thank him for giving us his life, which is the light of men (John 1:4).
So go ahead and celebrate the solar eclipse of 2017; but don’t look at the sun or you might end up like my former camera. Instead, fix your eyes upon the Son, the author and perfecter of our faith.
May the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.
Read: John 9