Seven Last Words: Cross and Creation

By Andrew McGowan and Bettina Clowney

The cross is regarded as Jesus Christ's great work of salvation. But is it also a work of creation? Excitingly plumbing Scripture and Christian tradition, Andrew McGowan shows that it is. "Each of Jesus's seven words from the cross can be understood as a creative act, as a new divine work," he writes. From the cross, Jesus works forgiveness, bestows Paradise, enacts human relationship, identifies completely with humanity, fulfills Scripture, and reenacts Sabbath. From early days, Christians--for good reason--linked the original seven days of creation with creation and re-creation at the apex of salvation. Seven Last Words recovers this linkage in all its power and perennial freshness.
But that is not all. In addition to surveying the seven last words Jesus spoke, McGowan insists that at the cross "the eternal Word not only speaks, but listens." And so he turns to the "conversations" spoken not only from but to the cross. Here he opens new vistas on the words of Judas, Dismas (the criminal crucified beside Jesus), Mary, God the Father, Longinus (the centurion), and Nicodemus, and ruminates fascinatingly on the accompanying silence of the angels.
Profound and endlessly edifying, Seven Last Words will richly repay reading and rereading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Mar 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781725298279

Andrew McGowan

Andrew B. McGowan is McFaddin professor of Anglican studies at Yale Divinity School, and dean and president of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale.

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Seven Last Words

Cross and Creation

†

Andrew McGowan

Illustrations by Bettina Clowney

Seven Last Words

Cross and Creation

Copyright ©

2021

Andrew McGowan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-9826-2

hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-9825-5

ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-9827-9

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: McGowan, Andrew, author. | Bettina Clowney, illustrator.

Title: Seven last words : cross and creation / Andrew McGowan.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2021

| Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-7252-9826-2 (

paperback

) | isbn 978-1-7252-9825-5 (

hardcover

) | isbn 978-1-7252-9827-9 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LCSH: Jesus Christ—Seven last words—Meditations.

Classification:

BT457 .M40 2021 (

paperback

) | BT457 (

ebook

)

02/22/21

Table of Contents

Title Page

Part I: Creation and Cross

Chapter 1: Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.

Chapter 2: He replied, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.

Chapter 3: When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, Woman, here is your son. Then he said to the disciple, Here is your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

Chapter 4: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Chapter 5: After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), I am thirsty.

Chapter 6: When Jesus had received the wine, he said, It is finished.

Chapter 7: Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Having said this, he breathed his last.

Part II: Conversations at the Cross

Chapter 1: Judas

Chapter 2: Dismas

Chapter 3: Mary

Chapter 4: The Father

Chapter 5: Longinus

Chapter 6: The Silence of the Angels

Chapter 7: Nicodemus

The first set of these sermons was given on Good Friday in

2016

at St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York City, and then in a different form at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on Good Friday

2018

. I am grateful to the Rev’d Canon Carl Turner for the initial invitation and to the Rev’d Dr Will Lamb for the second.

The second set was written during the later part of a sabbatical from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale in Spring and Summer of

2020

. I thank the trustees of the School, and Dean Gregory Sterling of Yale Divinity School, for the opportunity. They have not been preached as such, but formed as responses to the events of that year, including the illness of my father, Brian McGowan, in whose company they were written, the first preacher I knew and to whom I owe more than words can hope to say.

I am very grateful to David Clowney and Matthew Clowney for their generous provision of images from the work of the late Bettina Clowney.

I

Creation and Cross

†

Prologue

Each evangelist offers a similar account of what Jesus did on the cross, but a somewhat distinctive account of what he said. This devotion based on the seven sayings gleaned from the different narratives thus embodies the character of the gospel and the Gospels—a diversity appropriate to the variety of human experience, and a commonality appropriate to the depth of human need.

Seven sayings. The medieval Christians who first excerpted and counted them thus doubtless saw something in this number itself. Sevens occur across Scripture and tradition as significant groups and sequences; seven gifts of the Spirit, seven virtues and vices, seven days of creation not least. Of these seven sayings the great Franciscan theologian St Bonaventure said:

Our Vine uttered seven words while he was raised upon the cross. They are, as it were, seven leaves that are ever green. Or if you prefer, your Bridegroom can be thought of as a kind of lute, which is an instrument that consists of a piece of wood shaped like a cross. His body, in place of the strings, is stretched across the wood, but the seven words are the individual strings (Vitis Mystica).¹

Other medieval commentators drew parallels between the seven words from the cross and seven wounds sustained by Jesus—counting them as the four nail piercings, the crown of thorns, the lash, and the spear.

But the seven days and acts of creation invite particular comparison and reflection with these words. Each of