"In the Path of Totality

Earlier this week, over 30 million Americans experienced a total solar eclipse in what is known as "the path of totality": the sliver of the United States running from Buffalo, New York, to South Texas. My home, Dallas, Texas, was included in the path. As we counted down the hours and then minutes until the eclipse, I found myself fixated on the word "totality" to the point where I was trying to work it into every conversation humorously. Why was it so captivating? So amusing, even? Why did it both make me chuckle and fill me with a touch of internal angst? 

I have to admit I love the certainty of the word. To a fault, I am a very black-and-white person who tends to wholly categorize things by opposites: good and bad, right and wrong, etc. "Totality" quite obviously lends itself to this tendency. And yet, it's difficult to say "the path of totality" without a hint of exaggeration or bravado. In a world where we do our best to avoid extremes, I felt the need to reinterpret a word that denotes utter and complete seriousness in an ironic way. "The path of totality" seems like a phrase that would best serve an evil - yet silly - villain the likes of Dr. Evil in Austin Powers, not one used to describe a rare and natural phenomenon like Monday's eclipse. 

In 2024, "total" anything seems too certain, too powerful to wield actual truth. And yet, if, like me, you experienced Monday's "totality," you know there was nothing untrue about it. A total eclipse is, in fact, very absolute; those in its path experience a complete shift in reality in just a few seconds. Annie Dillard captures this insanity in her famous essay, "Total Eclipse" (which you can read at the Atlantic): 

It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere; it was a flat disk; it was almost over the sun. That is when there were screams. At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky.

On one hand, there was a gradual countdown to the eclipse's totality, but even the sun's waning couldn't prepare me for the darkness of those four minutes. Darkness that did not mimic the normal dusk of an evening, but instead caused the outdoor LED lights in our backyard to all light up at the exact same moment cheers and yelling rose into the sky in urban Dallas. It was an immediacy like that of a car crash, a heart stopping, or a life beginning. One in which - all of a sudden - night was day and day was night. More than the grandeur, more than the enchantment, it was this uncontrollable change of totality that most impacted me. 

Outside of death, such instantaneous and total changes are rare in this life. (Maybe this is why something like a total solare eclipse sparks not just wonder but some angst.) Because, for the most part, change either takes time or it is the type of change we dread. Lose ten pounds, start a new career, find a spouse, move across the country: each of these has measurable progress over a drawn-out interval. These are the types of change we like - because they require some level of involvement, our effort, or our will to see through to the end (or at least, closer to our idealized goal). Of course, on the other hand, we also experience many unwanted changes throughout our lives: broken relationships, health issues, pain and suffering - when change is quick, it unfortunately tends to be of this sort. The bad changes are either truly out of our control or ones we do our best to claim we played no part in. 

So what about the change - from death to life - we confess as Christians? Like a total eclipse and unlike so many other changes in our world, salvation in Christ is instant, total, and completely out of our control. It is a totality that is wholly unironic. This change takes place in the moment of your baptism - for in that moment, God declares that you are forgiven, that you are righteous, and that you are his. "The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17). 

Bathed in the waters of baptism, you are placed in God's path of totality, a path he won for each and every one of us at another moment in history. A moment when, just like during the total eclipse, darkness overshadowed the land until Jesus breathed his last on the cross, dying for your sins, my sins, and the sins of the entire world so that he could then be raised to new life to give us his righteousness (Rom. 4:25). 

The totality of our justification in Christ makes little sense in a world marked by uncontrollable and devastating changes or the progressive, stair-stepping shifts modern life uses to define success and happiness.

Unlike our normal progression throughout life, in Christ, we don't have to worry about measuring how far we've come and how far we have to go. The change given through the cross to you and me is already complete. In Christ, we live forever on the other side of the darkened moon, in a reversal of the totality we experienced on Monday. In Christ, we have been reborn into God's never-ending light and the glory of Christ's righteousness.

Like those four minutes on Monday, you will get glimpses of this new reality here and there. But even when you don't see it, or don't feel it, or you can't quite measure it, this new reality in Christ remains true for you all the same. And it's yours, not based on any effort you put in, but only on account of God's loving and enduring grace. Like Dillard says elsewhere in her essay, "What you see in an eclipse is entirely different from what you know....what you see is much more convincing than any wild-eyed theory you may know." 

What we see in our baptism is entirely different than how we would otherwise name ourselves or how we would choose to know or find God on our own. The totality of our justification in Christ makes little sense in a world marked by uncontrollable and devastating changes or the progressive, stair-stepping shifts modern life uses to define success and happiness. Yet in the instant when his word meets water, you are buried with Christ and raised to new life: the sky snaps, the brain slams, and the totality of his work becomes yours.