Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. (Matthew 27:50-51)

In ancient Jerusalem, the temple curtain separated the sacred from the profane. This barrier was seldom crossed, and when it was, there were all sorts of precautions and purification rituals involved. While Jesus’s incarnation reminds us of God’s presence alongside us, the curtain stood as a testament to God’s otherness and separateness from us. At the death of Christ, the torn curtain symbolized free access to God— God’s spirit not contained, but rather dwelling among us always from this moment forward.

Honestly, if you’ve ever attended an Easter service, I don’t expect any of this to be new information. But the other day, Jessi made a passing comment that made me see the temple curtain in a new light:

“When Jesus died, the curtain tore, and we’ve been trying to stitch it back up ever since.”

When I look at the state of modern Christianity, I see countless hopeless attempts to determine who’s in and who’s out. A lot of these attempts have to do with doctrine:
Can you speak in tongues? In.
Do you believe in a literal 7-day creation? In.
Are you a Calvinist? In.
Do you only read the King James Bible? In.

But some of these litmus tests become a lot more personal and a lot more harmful:
Are you a woman who feels called to a leadership role? Out.
Do you not fit within the box of what we consider appropriate sexuality? Out.
Do you ever experience doubt of any kind? Out.
Will your very presence force us to think about racism? Out.

FYI, none of these are hypotheticals. I’ve personally experienced Christians draw a boundary at each of them. I’ve seen each of these become a new temple curtain— an artificial barrier to separate out those not deemed holy enough. Sadly, this problem isn’t unique to our modern era either. Throughout church history and even in the biblical era, we see followers of Jesus desperately trying to establish the rules for who’s in and who’s out. But we also see God chastise them for it. This desire to draw boundaries isn’t a divine problem; it’s a human one, and so I have to believe it can be remedied.

I wonder what it would look like to let the curtain remain torn.
I wonder how our communities of faith might be improved.
I wonder how our society might grow and thrive.
I wonder what new love we might find.

After the death of Christ, God no longer strains at who can enter the most holy place. We do that to ourselves. But the good news of Good Friday is that we don’t have to.

So let the curtain go. Let love in.