Silence & Grace
By Joshua Cheng
If you have not yet seen Project Hail Mary yet, spoiler alert!
Happy Eastertide! Eastertide is the 50-day liturgical period celebrating Christ’s resurrection, from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday. Reflecting on this Easter season, I was particularly moved by the silence that Christ experienced on the cross. During MPC’s Good Friday service, Pastor Joe Palekas described how Christ endured sin, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Jesus experienced the result of emotional sin by the betrayal of Judas and the denial of Peter—two friends He kept close. He felt the slow physical torture of the cross. But most horrifying, He felt the absolute silence from His Father when He cried out to Him. He was alone. As service ended, the congregation was asked to leave in silence in remembrance of the silence that Christ experienced on the cross. For me, that silence was piercing and desolate.
I recently watched Project Hail Mary after friends raved about it. Grace wakes up from a coma on a spaceship with his crewmates dead. He is alone. There is no one to talk to and no one to ask for help, just the hums of the ship and the emptiness of space. He was sent out against his will to save humanity, a coward who had to be induced into a coma to go.
Eventually, Grace befriends an alien he names Rocky, whose planet is also in danger. For the first time, Grace is not alone and the silence breaks. They learn to communicate, to trust, to care for one another. And when the moment comes for Grace to choose between saving himself or saving his friend, he chooses Rocky. He lays down his life for a friend.
The silence Christ experienced on the cross was not of auditory silence. It was the silence of being cut off from the Father so that I would never be. He didn’t have a Rocky. He didn’t have a friend to save Him. He hung alone, abandoned by the ones He loved, crying out into the darkness. Yet Hebrews 12:2 says: “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” His joy was seeing His bride—us. John 15:13 says: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Christ lovingly laid his life down for us—that’s the greatest love we could ask for.
Nine months ago, at the kick-off retreat, John Kyle shared that our class had been prayed for regularly. For months. By people we did not know. What stuck with me most was his emphasis that this group was chosen by God—placed in this season to be in community and to learn to love one another. Another thing JK says: these are eternal friendships.
Because Christ faced the silence, we never have to. He took the loneliness and the abandonment. He cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” so that when I sit with the people He has placed in front of me, I can do so without fear. We were once strangers, but now they are my brothers and sisters. And none of it was accidental—but a purposeful act of grace from God.
Josh Cheng is a member of the Capital Fellows class of 2025-26. He is from Burke, VA, and is a graduate of Virginia Tech. This year, he is working at Everfox in Herndon, VA.
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