Meg Peery McLaughlin
Speaking to God in the Dark
March 29, 2024 (Good Friday)
Luke 23
God, it is dark.
And we are here
here in the dark to speak to you,
speak directly to you tonight.
To tell you the truth we need this darkness, God,
these shadows.
We came on purpose for this dark.
It will make the light of Easter all the more blindingly beautiful.
We can’t go from the singing of Hosannas straight
to the singing of Alleluias
without this silence,
without this descent,
this dive into the dark.
Of course we know this dark encircles us now,
because these readers have extinguished the candles,
and because the sun set right when it was supposed to at 7:36pm
and because the worship leaders have flipped off the switches on schedule.
But there is other darkness, O God,
that is far less choreographed, far less controllable.
It is the wild darkness, the stuff of nightmares,
the moments we are most prone to wonder where in the world you are.
When Luke tells your story,
he says that on Friday, it was dark at noon.
When the sun was to be at its height in the sky, the sun refused to shine.
Was that creation’s way of saying this dark was not natural?
Betrayal and denial. Wrong.
Abuse of power, abuse of bodies. Not as it should be.
The incarnation of your love, O God, crucified? It cannot be.
And yet the thing that happens next is absolutely natural.
When a body is strung up on a tree, the sagging weight of that body
eventually causes suffocation.
Luke says that there on the cross your son breathed his last.
When breath became air,
God, what happened in your heart?
What was it like for you in the dark? When he died. Jesus your beloved.
We confess that we are the kind of people,
or at least we live in the kind of culture that doesn’t speak directly about death.
We talk around it. We say things like:
He passed on.
She slipped away.
Was taken into the arms of angels.
He completed his mission, finished his journey.
And yet, we’re inconsistent, God,
because as much as we like to avoid stating the reality of death,
we are insistent on searching for the why of it,
probably as a way to try to control it for ourselves, as if we could.
You’ve seen us on our quest for explanations
asking: how did she die?
what could they have done differently?
So many mental gymnastics.
We ask medical questions,
circumstantial questions
theological questions.
Yes, when death comes — we search for meaning.
We search frantically.
But when has an explanation ever taken away the pain of death?
God, why are we like this?
We did it with Jesus too.
You’ve been here in this sanctuary
this entire Lenten season
as we’ve been exploring all the theories,
all the ways your people,
your thoughtful, faithful people,
have tried to make sense of tonight, attempted to make sense of this death.
And not that you’d ever shame us
for wondering about you out loud,
not that you’d discourage
a faithful wrestling with your word,
but perhaps,
perhaps,
you invite us
at least for tonight
you invite us
not to reach for an explanation,
but simply sit in the dark.
Jesus breathed his last.
He died on the cross,
and no matter what meaning we’ve attached to the shape of this symbol,
it doesn’t save us the reality of this death,
it doesn’t lessen the sorrow of this night.
You know it, God.
Jesus died
and so
never can we say you don’t know what that feels like,
never is there a darkness you have not known.
never is there a darkness you have not known.
God, it is dark.
And we are here tonight.
Here in the dark to speak to you,
we said we needed this darkness,
before the light of Easter,
but maybe we spoke too confidently, too hastily.
Because, whew the suffering of this night is too close.
The reality of death too raw.
The other parade too strong.
The injustice of it all too obvious.
How do we bear it, God?
When Jesus was in the darkest dark.
When he knew his death was near,
he did two things:
he relied on his relationship with you.
Even there, even then, you were Father.
And he reached back for words that gave voice to his trust,
trust in you, God, trust in your good hands.
He said, Father, into your hands, I commit spirit.
Were those words that he’d prayed to you too many times to count?
They are the Psalter’s version of Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
God, in the dark:
He relied on your relationship.
He found old words to speak his deepest trust,
he placed himself utterly and entirely in your hands.
Could we follow him?
Could we follow Jesus
into such an implicit trust
even in the darkest dark?
–
God, it is dark.
And we are here.
This is hard to bear, so we place ourselves in your hands.