Book: The Cross Shattered Christ by Stanley Hauerwas

The Cross-Shattered Christ is a short book of meditations inspired by the the seven last words of Christ as he died on the cross. Hauerwas, Professor of Theology and Ethics at Duke Divinity School, scrutinizes each of these crucifixion sayings and thoughtfully explores the questions and mystery they provoke.

I read the book during Lent and Holy Week this year and appreciated many of the new ideas and insights Hauerwas presents. I'm thankful for this thoughtful little book and the ways it encouraged me rethink and reflect on the cross of Christ—the crux of our faith. Rather than write more commentary, I think I'll just give you a taste by sharing a short quote from each chapter.

The First Word - Luke 23:34
"Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing."
"To so be made part of God's love strips us of all our presumed certainties, making possible lives...[that are]...lived in the confidence that Jesus, the only Son of God, alone has the right to ask the Father to forgive people like us who would kill rather than face death." [p. 33]

The Second Word - Luke 23:43
"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise"
"How could we ever think we need to know more than this thief? Like the thief we can live with the hope and confidence that the only remembering that matters, is to be remembered by Jesus." [p. 44]

The Third Word - John 19:26-27
"Woman, behold thy son!" ... "Behold thy mother!"
"So may we never forget that we, the church, comprise Mary's home. A home, moreover, that promises not safety but rather the ongoing challenge of being a people called from the nations to be God's people. A people constituted by faith in the One who refused to triumph through the violence the world believes to be the only means possible to achieve some limited good..." [p. 54]

The Fourth Word - Matthew 27:46
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
"...any account of the cross that suggests God must somehow satisfy an abstract theory of justice by sacrificing his Son on our behalf is clearly wrong. Indeed such accounts are dangerously wrong. The Father's sacrifice of the Son and Son's willing sacrifice is God's justice. Just as there is no God who is not the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so there is no god who must be satisfied that we might be spared. We are the spared, because God refuses to have us lost." [p. 66]

The Fifth Word - John 19:28
"I thirst."
"...the thirst of the Son through the Spirit is nothing less than the Father's thirst for us. God desires us to desire God. We were created to thirst for God (Psalm 42) in a 'dry and weary land where there is no water' (Psalm 63)." [p. 77]

The Sixth Word - John 19:30
"It is finished!"
" 'It is finished' is not a death gurgle. 'It is finished' is not 'I am done for.' 'It is finished' will not be, as we know from the tradition of the ordering of these words from the cross, the last words of Jesus. 'It is finished' is a cry of victory. 'It is finished' is the triumphant cry that what I came to do has been done. All is accomplished, completed, fulfilled work." [p. 83]

The Fifth Word - Luke 23:46
"Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."
"Jesus has become the Father's Psalm for the world, fulfilling Israel's undying hope that death, and the judgment death must be and always is, is not the last word." [p. 101]