Johann Sebastian Bach’s The St. John Passion was first performed on Good Friday in Leipzig, Germany, some 280 years ago. I heard it for the first time this week in a small Lutheran church in Houston, Texas.

The libretto combines the text of John’s Gospel, stanzas of old church hymns, and poetic text. It is not known who ordered the words to accompany Bach’s achingly beautiful score – perhaps he had some hand in selecting them; perhaps not.

As they were sung in German, I followed the English translation in my lap, but I could have closed it – and my eyes – and still understood. The familiar story unfolded on a current of sheer emotion, carried along by the music’s inflection and intensity, and the sometimes harsh, sometimes hushed interplay of voices.

Loud, angry cries of “Kreuzige ihn!” needed no footnote. I got it. And the music itself told me the moment my Lord said “It is finished!” I waited to hear the rocks split, and the temple veil tear top to bottom, and for tombs to open and darkness to fall, and I did. I heard it all.

Then a soprano voice sang these words: Dissolve in tears my heart, in floods of weeping in honor of the Most High. Tell the earth and the heavens your anguish: Your Jesus is dead!”

That’s as dark as it gets.

Have you ever been in utter, total, can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face dark? The kind of dark that makes you wonder if there’ll ever be light again? Once, near midnight in a tiny house in a Hill Country canyon, I blew out an oil lamp and the world fell away. I didn’t know black could cover so much, so fast. And I thought to myself, “That must be as dark as it gets.”

Maybe the dark you remember is not physical dark, but dark of another kind. Maybe there was a moment when you lost something so precious that you thought the sun couldn’t possibly bring itself to rise another time. Maybe you thought when it happened, “This is as dark as it gets.”

It wasn’t.

“As dark as it gets” was when the Father’s only Son gave up His final breath, and it looked like death had won. “As dark as it gets” was when communication ceased between God the Father and God the Son – when two who’d never been apart, were. “As dark as it gets” was a sealed tomb, and a buried promise, and the empty hours between Friday and Sunday.

“As dark as it gets” happened once. It will never be that dark again.

“Rest well, sacred limbs;” the chorus sang as the music ended. “I no longer weep for you: sleep well, and bring me too, to rest. The grave which is reserved for you no more dismays me: it opens heaven’s gates for me and closes those of hell.”

“Ruht wohl,” rest well. It’s already been as dark as it will ever be.

“Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen.” (John 24:5-6, NASB)

© Leigh McLeroy 2005