At Home in the Dark [Lent 4B - John 3:14-21]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

John 3:14-21

 

At Home in the Dark

 

Are you afraid of the dark?

 

I must admit: when I was a child I was.  I was afraid of the dark for the very reason Jesus gives in today’s Gospel.  Because darkness gives cover to the evil deeds of nefarious people.  And when I was a child I was afraid one of those depraved individuals would break into my house while I was sleeping. 

 

You see, we lived beside a junkyard, actually shared a driveway with the junkyard.  And from my bedroom, which was at the end of the house closest to the drive and farthest from my parents, I could hear the cars creeping over the gravel through the darkness.  In those chilling moments of the night my body would tense, my breathing would slow, my ears would become as attentive as those of potential prey: I wanted be ready in the event that my house was indeed the intended destination.  Most importantly, I would scamper across the room to flip the light switch, because I knew the light would expose their evil deeds – and perhaps cause the ne’er-do-well to abruptly abandon his unholy mission.

 

It is true that the darkness can provide the desired cover for those who are up to no good.

 

And yet, as I consider this Nicodemus story, I am also acutely aware that the setting of these statements is the dark.  Nicodemus ventured into the dark, not to hide from God, but to find God…with a poem on his lips: 

 

And in the luck of night

In secret places where no other spied

I went without my sight

Without a light to guide

Except the heart that lit me from inside.[1]

 

Stumbling, but with purpose, a man without sight, without a light to guide, through the night: Nicodemus comes face-to-face with Jesus.  It happens in the dark.

 

Now it is true that some scholars believe that Nicodemus came to Jesus under the cover of night to avoid the watchful eyes of his peers.  And that very well could be the reason, or a reason; Jesus did, as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel, just complete a hostile rearrangement of the Temple gift shop.  And so perhaps this meeting takes place after-hours because Nicodemus knows that an association with Jesus, a Bible-thumping, whip-handling, backwater construction worker who threatened to tear the beloved Temple to the ground, would, perhaps, ding his sterling reputation.

 

But there is another way to avoid watchful eyes and that is to stay home.  Nicodemus does not do that.  He leaves the comfort of his bed, the comfort of his station, the comfort of his status, the comfort of his static soul, to take his chances in the darkness.  Not in search of cover, not in search of a place to hide, in search of transformation, of salvation.  Once in the dark of the night he found Jesus…waiting for him.  Jesus was already there.  The light of the world burning quietly in the pitch black.

 

The world changed one year ago.  We were propelled, against of our will, into a pandemic age.  And we lost a lot rather suddenly – including many of the precious distractions upon which we rely to avoid the existential darkness that haunts our souls.  And for perhaps the first time, we had to wade into the limitless oceans of grief and sadness contained by the human heart.  Drowning is too easy in those oceans.  The suffocating presence of death and despair enveloped a world of people at once.  There aren’t enough flashing screens to scatter the shadows of mortality – the ways it stalks us, the gravity that weighs us down. 

 

The spinning planet is teaching us that half of life happens in the dark.  And that is not as bad as it sounds.  Because even though we might be afraid of the dark, God is not afraid of our dark.  God is at home in the dark.  A Creator who wore the blackness of the beginning, an Incarnation that found a new beginning in the warm darkness of a womb, a divine possibility that came to life in the shadows of a tomb.  God is not afraid of the dark.

 

God is there – in the dark night of the soul, in the bed of tears, in the pit of despair, in the fog of grief, in the enveloping congress of love.  In every dark place.  God is there.  Meeting you under the cover, in the secret of that transformative intimacy.  Like a Nicodemus stumbling into salvation.  Like an Exodus from Egypt.  Like a seed waiting in the soil.  Like the women finding that Easter happened before the sun even came up. 

 

O guiding dark of night!

O dark of night more darling than the dawn!

O night that can unite

A lover and loved one.

 

O Nicodemus, O wandering child of God, O lonely soul, when the night is darkest.  And you cannot find your way.  God will find you.  Love will hold you.  And so you don’t need to be afraid of the dark.          

 

 

 

 

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[1] The italicized texts are excerpts from The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross.  The complete poem can be found at: http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com/2009/09/saint-john-of-cross-dark-night-of-soul.html