It’s dark.
It’s been dark for hours, now – almost three hours – dark in
a way it’s not supposed to be dark on a spring afternoon.
The sun’s light failed,
Luke tells us, and you and I are supposed to know that this isn’t about weather,
it’s about cosmic significance. The sign of the death of a king, or of the
coming of the Day of the Lord.
The sun and the sky and the world together felt that something monumental was
happening, and standing there, in the afternoon darkness, feeling the sun’s light
and warmth pull away, you and I, among the crowds, the Jerusalem passers-by,
the women of Galilee, friends of Jesus, we would have all felt that darkness, as
grief, or doom, or portent.
That day long ago in Jerusalem isn’t the only time it’s been
dark at midday. Metaphorical but vivid darkness enfolds us, you and I, when
grief, or fear, or depression or tragedy take hold. When children die and it
overwhelms the news – or when children die and the news takes no notice;
when a loved one dies, and the emptiness surges in the
middle of a busy day;
when the tides of depression, or anxiety, or fear or
physical pain suck you under while everyone else is doing just fine;
when the doctor says, “Cancer,” and “stage four” and “we
don’t know.”
Kate Bowler, a religious historian at Duke Divinity School, has
written about being diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer at the age of 35, and about
the tragedy – and occasionally, comedy – of living with an incurable cancer.
In her memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other
Lies I’ve Loved, she describes the lonely, sometimes angry, darkness of hearing
other people’s interpretation of her suffering, and of wrestling with a world
in which suffering implies fault, even when there is nothing that you could
have done.
She writes about the messiness of helplessness and hope, the
burdens and blessings of community, friendship and family. And although the
memoir is streaked with grace and even joy, you can tell that there are times
when the sun’s light has failed her, when the darkness of grief and loss and
fear and pain come over everything, when shadows fall with a sense of doom.
She might know what it’s like, I think, to be there, in the
darkness of that hill outside Jerusalem, with Jesus slowly dying as the sun’s
light fails.
We’ve been standing there – sitting here – in that shadow
for nearly three hours, today. We’ve been present to the tragedy, the sense of
significance, feeling the weight of uncertainty, history, grief, and omen.
And now, in that darkness, the curtain of the Temple is
split in half. We can’t see it from where we are, on that hillside or in this
sanctuary, but perhaps there is a sense of change, a wind blowing out of the
Holy of Holies, an unseen wall coming down, so that nothing can block us from
the glorious presence of God, and nothing will shield us from that devastating
presence, either.
And now, in this darkness, loud and clear in a way you would
never expect from a dying man, Jesus speaks again. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
And exhales,
and dies.
Into your hands, I commend my spirit.
Jesus dies with the words of Psalm 31 on his lips, words
that resonate to his hearers with the sound of refuge and protection and even
redemption.
Words of trust.
Psalm 31 is embedded in the night time prayers of the
Episcopal church – and maybe of your churches, too. It might even have been
taught as a bedtime prayer in first century Jerusalem.
“In you, O LORD, have I taken refuge;” the Psalm begins,
“let me never be put to shame…
Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe,
for you are my crag and my stronghold;
for the sake of
your Name, lead me and guide me.
Take me out of the net that they have secretly set for me,
for you are my
tower of strength.
Into your hands I commend my spirit,
for you have
redeemed me,
O LORD, O God of
truth.”
The Psalm goes on, describing the experience of suffering,
of rejection and affliction, but holds strong to the expectation of God’s
protection and redeeming power, ending
Be strong and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait
for the LORD.
As Luke tells the story, Jesus dies in darkness, in the gloom
of tragedy and portent and loss, but not forsaken. Jesus dies proclaiming,
breathing, trust.
Jesus speaks into the darkness of our loss, and uncertainty, and fear, at the foot of the cross, when
it is all really, truly ending, and breathes out trust.
Can you hear it now?
Can you feel the shock, the awe and wonder of it, that this
man – condemned as a rebel, tortured by the government as a public spectacle, lost
to his friends, who have fled in spite of themselves in the grip of fear,
disappointment, and grief – this man, dying, speaks loudly and clearly his
trust in God; trust so great he can willingly surrender his life, his pain, his
death, for you have redeemed me, O Lord,
O faithful God.
This life, this pain, this death are not lost, not the final
erasure that the Roman state intended, but already redeemed, rescued, brought
into the heart of God, by God’s faithfulness.
In the face of death, anger makes sense. Grief makes sense.
So does fear, whether we are the ones dying, or threatened by death, or whether
we are watching someone we love die. In the middle of torture and senseless
pain, trust makes no sense at all.
But that doesn’t stop it.
Kate Bowler writes of how, after her first thoughts on
living with incurable cancer were published in the New York Times, she heard from one man who told the story of having
been held hostage, and
watching helplessly as the
intruders pressed guns against his children’s noses while his wife and daughter
were threatened with rape. But God was there and he can’t explain it. [He can’t
explain how he and his family escaped unharmed.] He doesn’t rationalize why
some people are rescued and others are hanged, and doubts there is a way that
God “redeems” situations by extracting good from them. But he knows that God
was there because he felt peace, indescribable peace, and it changed him
forever.
The man wishes Kate that peace in her own threatened life.
And she remembers a study in which “Thousands of people were interviewed about
their brushes with death in every kind of situation – being in a car accident,
giving birth, attempting suicide, et cetera – and many described the same odd
thing: love.”
I’m sure I would have ignored the article,” she writes, “if
it had not reminded me of something that happened to me, something that I felt
uncomfortable telling anyone. It seemed too odd and too simplistic to say what
I knew to be true – that when I was sure I was going to die, I didn’t feel
angry. I felt loved.”
“At a time when I should have felt abandoned by God,” Bowler
reflects, “I was not reduced to ashes.” She tells of floating on the love and
prayer of those who cared for her.
And she tells of the love that poured out of her as well. In
the hours after her diagnosis, she writes, ”The way that doctors are delicately
picking up and handling the words “Stage Four” suggests that I am a spaghetti
bowl of cancer. And oddly, this reality has filled me with love. Love for my
son. Love for my friends and family. Love for my husband, sitting beside me,
squeezing my hand moments before the surgery.
“This is proof,” he says, “even though I never questioned it. But the way you look at me….’ ”
“This is proof,” he says, “even though I never questioned it. But the way you look at me….’ ”
Love pours out of and into Kate, vivid and tangible, right
in the face of grief and hope and the certainty of death.
And love, as she reflects earlier in the book, is how trust
feels when you don’t know what it means any more.
When Jesus calls us to follow him to the cross, he’s not
just calling us to suffering, he’s not calling us to abandonment. He is calling
us to experience that trust, when all trust is lost; to experience that love –
to know ourselves loved, and loving, and capable of responding to that love, in
our very worst moments.
It’s dark, on that hill outside Jerusalem. It’s dark –
still, again – over the whole land. It should be lonely. Should be fearful,
uncertain, tragic. There should be anger and pain and fear, because that’s what
makes sense here. And at the foot of the cross, there is all that.
Then into that anxious shadow, Jesus speaks trust.
Father, into your
hands I commend my spirit.
A centurion, a soldier of the empire, standing guard in the
darkness hears it,
and responds, Truly, this is a righteous man. Not just
innocent of wrongdoing, but actively righteous, one whose way of being is
wholly conformed to the will of God,
one who is, perhaps, one with God.
In speaking that word of trust, Jesus is, as always, wholly
one with the Father, and now by that word of trust is revealed as the living
will of God.
And by that same word of trust, that whole-hearted
overflowing love, you and I, the crowds, the disciples, the centurion, all of
us at the foot of the cross, are also made righteous.
With the protective, restrictive curtain of the temple torn
apart, the pure and powerful presence of God running free, nothing can stop us
from being one with the Father, wholly conformed to the will of God, love
poured into and out of us in our own tragedy and loss and fear… and joy.
Today, you and I spend time at the foot of the cross. We
feel the darkness of that death two thousand years ago, or of the grief or fear
or pain or tragedy outside the doors of this building, or carried in here in
your heart.
We know, already, that the story does not end here, but for
today we stand in darkness, we stay in the darkness.
This is a darkness, though, where the protective,
restrictive barriers between us and holiness cannot stand; where death is an
act of trust; where devastation and
desolation are also an outpouring, indwelling love.
Father, into your
hands we commend our spirit,
for you have redeemed
us, O Lord, O faithful God.
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