Semon: 3 Advent (16 December 2007)

3 Advent : 16 December 2007
(Isaiah 35:1-10/Luke 1:46b-55/James 5:7-10/Matthew 11:2-11)
Dark Night of the Soul

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Great saints – men and women like us in kind though perhaps different in degree – often experience a dark night of the soul, a time when the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit are apparently withdrawn. It is a time when the presence of God is known only by its absence, when his mercy feels harder than stone, when prayers reach no higher than the ceiling and are met only with silence. It is a wilderness time. I’m not referring to the typical waxing and waning of devotion, to the cycles in the spiritual life that we all experience. I’m not referring to the gradual cooling of fervor of the newly converted. I’m not referring to a falling away from the faith. No: I’m referring to the utter desolation of the utterly faithful. I’m referring to Jesus crying out from the cross in extremis, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” I’m referring to Jesus, utterly abandoned, utterly alone in his moment of deepest need, searching, crying for his God and Father who has gone inexplicably missing. The dark night of the soul, the Spanish mystic John of the Cross described it in the 16th century. Thérèse of Lisieux knew it in the 19th century and Mother Teresa experienced this sense of abandonment almost continually from 1948 through her death in 1997. Some think it a great grace given to great saints by God, a gift to draw them even closer to God-As-He-Is by destroying all false images of God-As-We-Want-Him-To-Be. Some think it a weaning from the selfish love of the gifts of God – peace and consolation – to the pure love of God himself solely for himself. If it is gift, I am not anxious to receive it. If weaning, I’m not anxious to mature.

It’s all there in Scripture, too. Job lost wealth, family, standing, health. And all this he could stand. What nearly broke him was his loss of confidence in the righteousness of God, the destruction of his understanding of God, the loss of the presence of God. He longed, more than anything else to plead his cause before the LORD, to see the LORD face to face. This was Job’s dark night. Elijah, that faithful prophet of Israel, running for his life from the idolatrous Queen Jezebel, ran right into the dark night of the soul and asked the LORD to take his life. He could no longer sense the LORD: not in the earthquake, wind, or fire – until finally the LORD spoke in the quietness, in a still, small, voice. Read the Psalms. David was no stranger to the darkness. That man after God’s own heart was often left alone and desolate, seeking for God but not finding him. This dark night of the soul seems to be common to our great ancestors in the faith; I suspect it is common to the great saints among us even now, though it seems rarely mentioned.

And now there is John, son of Zechariah, called the Baptist: the herald of the kingdom, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, the forerunner of the Lord, the one of whom Jesus himself said, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist” (Mt 11:11a, NRSV). This John, the prophet of the Most High, sits alone, chained in Herod’s prison, in his own dark night of the soul. The certainty with which he proclaimed Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” is but a dim memory. His own sense of calling – of being caught up in God’s great messianic plan – seems to be evaporating. He looks for God but his eyes do not see. He listens for God but his ears do not hear. He seeks to walk the way of God but his ankles are chained. He remembers those days by the Jordan when he confronted the Pharisees and Sadducees: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Mt 3:11, NRSV). One is coming. John cries out in prison, perhaps in confusion, perhaps in desolation, certainly in his dark night of the soul: “Are you that one, Jesus? Or must we go on waiting?”

John sent his disciples to ask Jesus those very questions: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another” (Mt 11:3, NRSV)? These are simple enough questions, almost yes or no. Yes, I am the one. No, you need wait no longer. But Jesus doesn’t give simple answers; Jesus almost never gives simple answers. Instead he speaks into John’s dark night of the soul: speaks light into being there dazzling dimmed eyes, speaks words of life there shattering the silence.

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me” (Mt 11:4-6, ESV).

I don’t know about the dark night of the saints and mystics. Beyond the seemingly random ups and downs of my own spiritual experience I’ve never felt a profound absence of God, a prolonged time when prayer seemed especially empty. Perhaps you only notice such things when your normal experience of God is much more acute than mine. But this I do know: Jesus came to end the dark night of the soul, for all and for ever. Jesus came to be Emmanuel – God with us – and not Deus Absconditus – God absent from us. Jesus came to be the Logos – the Word of God – for all with ears to hear and not the silence of God. Jesus came to be the Light of the World in whom there is no darkness at all. Jesus came to be the way for the crippled and lame to walk, the good news for the poor to hear, and the life eternal for the dead to live. Jesus came to be the Daystar and not the dark night. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist – that John who now sits in his own dark night awaiting word from Jesus – Zechariah prophesied about the end of the dark night of the soul in and through the Messiah, Jesus – the Messiah that John, himself, had announced.

In the tender compassion of our God *
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the
shadow of death, *
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
The Song of Zechariah, BCP 21

And so Jesus answers the disciples of John.

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Was that answer enough for John? I’d like to think so. I’d like to think the dawn from on high broke upon him in his prison even as his daddy foretold.

Jesus went about doing what prophets go about doing, proclaiming the kingdom of God in word and in symbolic action. For Jesus, the coming of that Kingdom meant the end of the dark night of the soul: first for his people, the new Israel gathered about him, and secondly for all who would believe on his name, even those far off, even us. And so, by word and deed, Jesus banished that dark night. How many blind men did Jesus heal: ten, twenty, one hundred, more? And each pair of eyes opened was a symbolic proclamation that the dark night was over. How many times did Jesus say, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”: ten, twenty, one hundred, more? And each pair of ears that turned his way was a symbolic proclamation that the silence of God was over. How many paralytics did Jesus set to dancing: ten, twenty, one hundred, more? And each pair of feet dancing along God’s highway – the Holy Way – was a symbolic proclamation that the exile was over. How many mothers’ sons and fathers’ daughters did Jesus call back from the place of the dead: ten, twenty, one hundred, more? And each beating heart was a symbolic proclamation that the gloom of the shadow of death was over.

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

I don’t know about the dark night of the saints and mystics, but I do know a dark night when I see it. And I see it everywhere I look: in the hopelessness of inner city neighborhoods and warehouse schools; in the over-capacity homeless shelters and overflow underpasses; in bullet-riddled school rooms and mall stores; in bombed out communities in Iraq that will never be rebuilt and in flooded out communities in New Orleans that have yet to be rebuilt; in the coal-covered faces of the working poor in Appalachia; in the botoxed and plasticized faces of the formerly famous and powerful in Hollywood; in the pantiless escapades of Britney Spears and the drunken escapades of Paris Hilton; in the sexual exploitation of students by teachers and alter boys by priests; in the binge drinking campus parties – high school and college – and the escalating drug use in our own region; in the desperate fear of deportation in the illegal alien and the desperate fear of the illegal alien in honest, hardworking, upstanding citizens; in the digital addiction of people who cannot stand the thought of being disconnected – of introspective quiet – for more than a few seconds; in the horn-honking, finger-flipping, tail-gating drivers who menace our highways; in the always more-is-better consumers in shop after shop after shop; in the perpetually peppy, prosperity-peddling, mega-church moguls on television and book covers; in the cynical, jaded, been-there-done-that–moved-on critics of the faith; in the looking-for-the-next-fix religion junkies moving from church to church and experience to experience. Yes, I know a dark night when I see it. And I see it everywhere I look.

Are you the one, Jesus, or should we look for another?

Go and tell them what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

Sometimes people come to us – stumbling in their dark night of the soul they’re not even sure they have – and ask just that: Is Jesus really the one, or should we look for another? And how are we to answer? These are simple enough questions, almost yes or no: Yes, he’s the one and No, you need look for no other. But a simple answer isn’t the way of Jesus and cannot be the way of those who would follow him. Come and see: that’s the answer. You must decide for yourself based upon what you see and hear: that’s the answer. But before we dare answer this way, we must be sure that we are busy opening the eyes of the blind, dancing with the lame, washing the sores of the lepers, singing songs of joy into unstopped ears, breathing life into dead bodies and hopeless situations, and preaching the good news to the poor, in part by ending their poverty.

The early church grew, in spite of suspicion and on-again-off-again persecution, because theirs was a community in which the dark night had given way to the dawn from on high.

And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved (Act 2:42-47, ESV).

Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need (Acts 4:32-35, ESV).

Is Jesus the one, or should we look for another? Well, come and see Jesus alive among his people – still opening eyes and ears with truth, still raising up the fallen, still announcing good news to the poor, still visiting orphans and widows in their distress, still welcoming the aliens and the outcasts, still praying for enemies, still forgiving one another, still serving the least and forgotten, still taking up crosses and laying down lives, still loving. Then, go tell what you have seen and heard. Of course this kind of answer only works if we are actually doing all these things.

Amen.