The rending of the veil of the temple when Jesus breathed his last is usually seen as a symbolic interpretation of his death. As the inner shrine of the temple had been veiled from human gaze by the curtain that separated it from the outer room, so the holiness of God had been veiled in mystery before Christ’s death. Now, as the tearing of the curtain revealed the inner shrine, so Christ’s violent death on behalf of man’s salvation reveals fully the loving heart of God.
Jesus himself, looking ahead to his death, had understood it in terms of the sacrificial system. We know this from the prominent part that the Suffering Servant passages of Isaiah played in his idea of his messiahship, from his belief that he came to give his life a ransom for many, and from his saying at the Last Supper that the wine was his blood of the covenant, which was poured out for many.
The Book of Hebrews, which depicts Christ as the great high priest, makes the sacrificial aspect of his death explicit by saying, “We have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh” (10:19, 20). The reference here is to the biblical regulation by which only the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, and he only once a year, bearing sacrificial blood. So Jesus, by the death that tore his body, carried his own life-blood “beyond the veil” of this life into the ultimate mystery of God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins, thus opening fully for man the way back to the Father.
Whether or not the writer of Hebrews had in mind at this point the rending of the curtain of the temple at the moment of Jesus’ death is an undecided question. Certainly that incident is not specifically referred to. And it is also true that the writer of Hebrews customarily thought in terms not of the Herodian temple but of the biblical specifications for worship in the Mosaic tabernacle in the wilderness.
In this passage the writer might have been thinking primarily about Jesus’ own teaching of the relation of himself and his death to the temple, rather than about the tearing of the temple curtain at the time of Jesus’ death. For the attempted charge at Jesus’ trial, which was also thrown at him during the crucifixion, was probably a garbled account of something Jesus had really been saying. The charge that he had said, “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands,” is probably a reference to his saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), upon which the evangelist comments, “But he spoke of the temple of his body.” There are other clear suggestions that Jesus thought of his own person as a sanctuary for men. One is the well-known “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden” passage, and another is his regret that he could not gather the inhabitants of Jerusalem together “as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings.”
I find that I have always tended to pass over rather hurriedly the account in the Synoptics of the rending of the veil of the temple and go on to the account of the entombment. Perhaps there is a kind of embarrassment in witnessing the crucifixion, even in imagination. Perhaps, important though the symbolic interpretation of the death is, any symbolic interpretation coming immediately after the awfulness of the event it symbolizes seems anticlimactic.
But recently a different interpretation of the rending of the veil of the temple has occurred to me, and I offer it here, not as a substitute but as an additional interpretation of the event. It has often been said that the crucifixion is the point of intersection of many aspects of reality, and so I see no reason why the incident may not have several noncontradictory interpretations.
Mark’s Gospel, the earliest of the four, is a concise, factual account of the activities of Jesus’ ministry and his death, and of the empty tomb. Comparatively little space is given over to teachings, and the book is conspicuously lacking in an interest in symbolism.
So often we forget that our Gospels are very Jewish documents. Perhaps, as Mark understood it, the account of the tearing of the curtain was not primarily symbolic but was simply part of the factual narrative. That is, God in person had acted directly at that point, and had done what any devoted Jewish father, standing by the deathbed of a beloved son, would have done: he rent his garments. On this interpretation that brief event climaxes the pre-resurrection evidence that Jesus Christ was God’s Son.
Christ’s divine sonship is conspicuous in Mark’s account. The book begins with the words, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus at his baptism was reassured by God of his divine sonship. The demons that were cast out had to be told to be silent because, as discarnate spirits, they had extra-mundane information as to Jesus’ true identity. Jesus assumed God’s prerogatives to command the forces of nature and to forgive sins. At Caesarea Philippi Jesus confirmed the statement that he was the Christ, and God himself corroborated the divine sonship shortly afterward at the transfiguration.
I suggest that God’s third direct indication that Jesus was his Son, this time not given privately but made publicly to the nation as a whole, came in the tearing of the curtain.
This strategic use of the customary Jewish mourning gesture has all the directness, finality, efficiency, and economy of motion characteristic of divine intervention. It answers the questions and ties the threads in the account of the final battle for man’s redemption. Jesus had been so sure that he was the Son of God, and that his position and person were vital to what he was to accomplish, that he had allowed himself to be condemned as worthy of death before the high priest on the basis of his claim to be the Christ, the Son of the Blessed. At the crucifixion itself the priests had mocked him with his error, pointing out that obviously he could not be the Christ, since he was so easily and helplessly done in by his opponents. And in this situation God had to leave him unvindicated, just as God had later to leave him unsupported in the final minutes of his life, in order that the complete sacrifice might be fully his. The final battle for man’s redemption had to be fought by the God-man without the Father’s undergirding.
But the moment Jesus breathed his last the great battle was won, and God was free to answer the taunt of the priests by a quick, decisive gesture. By that same gesture he also indicated to Jesus’ followers that he had personally been close by during the whole terrible ordeal. And further, from that token of God’s concerned nearness we can, in imagination, get some hint of the welcome Christ received when he returned to the Father, more footsore and weary after his stay in the far country of sinful men than the prodigal son had been after his sojourn among the pigs. That most poignant of the homecoming parables Jesus had told during the last weeks of his ministry, after he had steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.
