Sermon 1/24/21
Created by: Associate Pastor Shelby Baxter-Andrews
Sermon Series: Living in the Light
Title: Afraid of the Dark
Scriptures: Psalm 27:1, 13-14, John 12:27-36
Audio link here.
Psalm 27:1, 13-14
1 The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Should I fear anyone?
The Lord is a fortress protecting my life.
Should I be frightened of anything?
13 But I have sure faith
that I will experience the Lord’s goodness
in the land of the living!
14 Hope in the Lord!
Be strong! Let your heart take courage!
Hope in the Lord!
John 12:27-36
27 “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. 34 The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” 35 Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.”
After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.
Sermon:
Throughout this sermon series, Living in the Light, we have (unsurprisingly) focused a lot on light. Today, though, I’d like for us to take a look at something else - the thing we most compare to the light - darkness.
I would love to be able to tell you that I am not afraid of the dark. But that simply isn’t true. Darkness hides things - like the sharp edge of the bed frame that I whack my knee on every night without fail as I stumble through the darkness to my side of the bed, too stubborn to turn on a light. Darkness represents the unknown, the unseen.
I remember when the Haunting of Hill House came out on Netflix. I was hooked. I stayed up all night binging every episode. But you better believe that I did it with the living room lights on.
Even the bravest among us probably had a fear of the dark when they were younger. Night lights are a thing for a reason. They are small beacons of comfort. There’s just something about the dark that makes us uneasy.
So when we read scriptures assuring us that God is light and that the darkness is as light is to God, we find comfort. When we are afraid of the physical dark or of what it represents, we remind ourselves that God, the true light, is with us.
Now, I don’t want to discount that. I think that the metaphor of God as light serves a beautiful purpose - hence the sermon series. However, I think that darkness gets a bad rap. And I’d like to dig a little deeper, to challenge our assumptions about what darkness means.
In an article about metaphors for darkness, Richard Watkins writes this: “The dictionary first offers us a physical reality, describing darkness as “1. the partial or total absence of light”. When we are offered darkness as “2. wickedness or evil” we are suddenly deep into metaphor. “Light as good, darkness as evil” is a duality so firmly embedded into western language that it affects almost all of our cultural associations. But, whilst you can see where a connection can be drawn between darkness and danger (or at least uncertainty), there is nothing inherently evil about darkness. And an attachment to this metaphor can unnecessarily trap us in unwarranted insecurity, mistrust and fear.”
Watkins isn’t the only one who challenges us to think more about darkness. Theologians and Christian thinkers have also taken up the mantle. Barbara Brown Taylor, author and Episcopal Priest, wrote a whole book about it called Learning to Walk in the Dark. She writes about how darkness is “sticky,” because it picks up definitions and associations so easily. Taylor writes about the trouble with associating God with only the light, “It implies things about dark-skinned people and sight-impaired people that are not true. Worst of all, it offers people of faith a giant closet in which they can store everything that threatens or frightens them without thinking too much about those things.”
Later on in her book, she writes “There are so many darknesses I will never know. The more I talk to other people about their experience of the dark, the more they remind me how personal it is. Someone with dark skin tells me what it is like to live among people who do not think twice about using ‘dark’ as shorthand for sinister, sinful, tragic, or foul… someone holding the harness of a seeing-eye dog asks me if I know what ‘darkness’ means to someone who is blind. No, I do not… I do know how often scripture equates blindness with spiritual failure… When Jesus berates the Pharisees for leading people astray, he calls them blind guides. Even now, when we criticize others for being aimless or idle, we say that they are shortsighted or have no vision. If the metaphors work, it is because those of us who can see rely so heavily on our sight.”
And that’s the beauty of metaphors, right? They use our own experience to compare something we don’t quite understand, like God, to something we do - like light. But no metaphor is perfect, especially when it comes to understanding God. If we rely too heavily on just a few metaphors, like God as King, Light, and Shepherd, we limit ourselves to a narrow understanding of an expansive God.
What if God is like the darkness, too? Darkness can represent what is hidden, what we can’t see. And we can never fully comprehend God. Darkness is needed for rest, and don’t we find our rest in God? Darkness is as much a part of creation as light, and don’t we find God in the beauty of creation? According to Genesis, God was there in the beginning, before anything was created, when darkness was over the face of the deep. God created out of darkness. So, it seems to me, that darkness does not mean the absence of God. Perhaps, it more accurately represents the times that God is present, but difficult to find.
Verses 35 and 36 from our John passage today say this: Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.”
He’s right! Unless you have night vision, you can’t see where you are going in the dark. Jesus recognizes that it is easier to find our way in the light, so he encourages the crowd that has gathered to listen to him to take advantage of the opportunity. Walk while you have light! It’s easier that way. And I’m sure it was easier to follow Jesus, who we understand to be the light, when he was in human form, enfleshed and embodied. He’s telling them that darkness is coming, a time when God will be hidden from them. He’s foretelling his own death, knowing that it will be harder to be a Jesus-follower once he is no longer living among them. Jesus wisely advises those around him to take advantage of the time they have left with him - the word translated as “walk” in verse 35, peripateō, can actually be translated to mean live, or to make use of opportunities. Jesus is encouraging them to believe, to follow while it is easy, while he is still with them, so that they may become children of light. So the light can live inside them, so they, too, can become the light.
For if they, if we, become the light, maybe it will be a little easier to find our way when the darkness comes.
I don’t think Jesus is demonizing the darkness in this passage. I think he understands that the darkness can make things harder; but I think he also understands that we need the darkness, too. He, himself, goes off to hide from them after he says this. He needs rest, privacy, things that the darkness actually makes easier!
So what if Jesus was preparing the people to learn to walk in the dark. Try it out in the light, first, when it’s easier, he says. But he doesn’t say to stop when he’s gone, when the darkness comes. He just doesn’t want them to be overtaken by the darkness. To be overwhelmed by it so completely that they can’t do anything! In a way, Jesus is preparing the people by making them their own little night lights. Calling them to be children of the light, letting the light inside of them lead the way through the dark nights.
Jacques Lusseyran, a blind French resistance fighter who wrote about his experience in a memoir called And There Was Light, writes about his experience of becoming blind after an accident, “The only way I can describe that experience is in clear and direct words. I had completely lost the sight of my eyes; I could not see the light of the world anymore. Yet the light was still there. Its source was not obliterated. I felt it gushing forth every moment and brimming over; I felt how it wanted to spread out over the world. I had only to receive it. It was unavoidably there… This was something entirely new, you understand, all the more so since it contradicted everything that those who have eyes believe. The source of light is not in the outer world. We believe that it is only because of a common delusion. The light dwells where life also dwells: within ourselves.”
The light, God, dwells where life also dwells: within ourselves. Even when we cannot see it, it doesn’t mean that it is not there.
In the last chapter of her book on darkness, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about what she learned from Pema Chödrön, an ordained Buddhist nun, “ We are all so busy constructing zones of safety that keep breaking down, that we hardly notice where all the suffering is coming from. We keep thinking that the problem is out there, in the things that scare us: dark nights, dark thoughts, dark guests, dark emotions. If we could just defend ourselves better against those things, we think, then surely we would feel more solid and secure. But of course we are wrong about that, as experience proves again and again, The real problem has far less to do with what is really out there than it does with our resistance to finding out what is really out there. The suffering comes from our reluctance to learn to walk in the dark.”
I don’t quote that to discount people’s lived experiences of things we commonly talk about as being dark, like depression and grief. I, too, have lived with the difficulty of depression. Rather, I would like to re-brand them - to at least temporarily separate them from the label of darkness.
Learning to walk in the dark is not about never feeling suffering. I think it’s more like facing our fears - of the unknown, the unseen - and moving forward despite them. I think it’s about realizing that darkness does not mean we are alone - that God doesn’t disappear when night falls.
We can walk in the dark, because we are children of the light.
Right now feels like a time of darkness to me. I don’t know what the future holds - our country is at a turning point, the pandemic doesn’t yet have an end in sight… I can’t see the path ahead. But I was inspired this week by the words of Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman from her poem, “The Hill We Climb” and I want to leave you with some excerpts. I think they are good inspiration for when we walk in darkness.
“When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade.
We've braved the belly of the beast,
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace,
and the norms and notions
of what just is
isn't always just-ice.
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it.
Somehow we do it…
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid,
the new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.”
I’m going to say that last bit one more time - let it move you to be a child of the light even in times of darkness.
“For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.”
Amen.
