+ This morning I want to talk about fear and darkness. I mean it is Lent, right? In Genesis, after quite a long exchange with God, Abram falls asleep and enters a deep and terrifying darkness…but somehow this darkness transforms him, emboldens him. Changes him.
As a kid I was terrified of the dark. I thought I’d had it licked when, after I was widowed in 2017, I again found the darkness forbidding, so the phrase, a “deep and terrifying darkness” speaks to me. In those early days of widowhood, when I had to make a long and lonely walk out to the barn in the darkest days of the year, I was bound and determined to keep that darkness from overtaking me, to let the dark lead me to a new learning, because what I’ve found is that it always does. Darkness called me to courage—that is to feel the fear of it but to enter it and experience it anyway. Darkness, whether that of my own making, that of the world’s making (like what’s happening in Ukraine right now) or the darkness that is our faith, especially in Lent and Holy Week, is something to be entered rather than something to avoid.
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday—are very dark days. Holy Saturday in particular, fascinates me. I’m strangely drawn to the day when our faith is shrouded in total darkness. When we’re stuck in what can feel like an unbearable absence. Jesus’ body lies shrouded in the tomb…it’s a day of emptiness, a day of void.
I think this important because by really feeling the absence the space needed to fully embrace the new life of Easter morning is broken open. We must consider life without Jesus in order to embrace him every other day.
My friends, our world is shrouded in darkness—we can refuse to watch the news because the images from Ukraine are so disturbing. I can refuse to ever mention world events in my sermons, afraid of offending someone. I can post something on social media about how awful things are in Ukraine and then go on with my day feeling that somehow I’ve done my part.
We can avoid darkness, but we can’t deny it, for it is there, it is here. Darkness exists.
Trying to out-run darkness is why attendance is pretty low at things like Ash Wednesday and Holy Week liturgies.These services are uncomfortable and dark because they reveal to us the lesser part of our nature.
This is what Jesus is lamenting about in this morning’s gospel. He loves Jerusalem and yet he knows that Jerusalem will turn on him. That we will turn on him. And we do.
Because the truth is, I would have been in the crowd yelling crucify him. I wish that wasn’t true, but I fear it is. And no doubt some of you would be with me.
Our fallen human nature is capable of great evil and deep hurt. But here’s the deal—if we admit this, enter the reality of our darkness, confronting what we are capable of, we can defeat it. The dark wins when we expend the energy to avoid it, the dark’s defeated when we confront it. It’s what Jesus did in the garden, on the cross, and in his descent into death on Holy Saturday. He entered the darkness and came out the other side. The darkness did not overcome him.And it needn’t overcome us.
Just like Abram did in his dream and Jesus did on Holy Saturday only when we enter the darkness do we find it is beatable.
We can feel overwhelmed but the events in Ukraine, we can feel powerless, but as believers in the empty tomb, as followers of the light, we cannot avoid the horror of it, nor can deny that it is any of our business. When hate marches on, when darkness spreads like a cancer we, the people of God must not look away, instead we must look it dead in the eye and o whatever we can, however we can, for as long as we can to help.
Be not afraid, dear people of God, the hold of darkness is not permanent. The lament of Jesus is not the last word.
Darkness will not win, if we, the people of light, refuse to give into it.
Let us pray for each of us, let us pray for the people of Ukraine, the people of Russia, all refugees and all who are enshrouded in darkness. May our prayers and our actions, reveal the light that darkness cannot and will not overcome.
May God bless us as we endeavor to change this world.
Amen.
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