Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words - Stanley Hauerwas

"The darkness of God, a darkness nowhere more apparent than in the cross of Christ, is the excess of light" (20).

Hauerwas offers brief reflections on each of the seven sayings of Christ from the cross. For example, he writes concerning, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?": "God is most revealed when he seems to us the most hidden. 'Christ's moment of most absolute particularity—the absolute dereliction of the cross—is the moment in which the glory of God, his power to be where and when he will be, is displayed before the eyes of the world,' says David Bentley Hart. Here God in Christ refuses to let our sin determine our relation to him. … know that the Son of God has taken our place, become for us the abandonment our sin produces, so that we may live confident that the world has been redeemed by this cross" (65).

He reminds us that "It is finished" does not mean "I'm done for" but is a cry of victory over the evil powers. He writes, "What wonderful news: 'It is finished.' But it is not over" (90).