Do Not Fear the Dark: A Good Friday and Triduum Meditation

Like many Good Friday services, the imagery tends to focus on the dying of the Light as the Church remembers our Lord’s tortuous and deadly path to Calvary.  In the opening chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus is rightly identified as the Light and Life of all men, and throughout John’s New Testament testimony, the Light of Christ is a counterpoint to the darkness of the world.  Through the Incarnation, God entered the darkness of this world by taking our human nature upon Himself in the Person of His Son, so that in the Person of His Son, He might vanquish the darkness forever.  It was the people of the world sitting in crippling darkness who saw His great Light, and it is that Light which shall pierce the veil of death by Resurrection on Easter Day.

 

There are many rational reasons that people seem afraid of the dark.  From a physical perspective, the eye cannot see what lurks in the darkness, and both reason and imagination speculate on the motives of what dwells there.  In nature, many predators hunt in the darkness, and people in the wilds build fires to push back the darkness and keep those creatures at bay.  Theologically, it is God who reveals Himself as the Light of the World which no darkness can overcome, and that in God there is no darkness at all.  In this revelation is the acknowledgment that those who dwell in spiritual darkness are enemies of God—either fallen men, or depraved demons—who at the instigation of Satan prowl about the world seeking souls to devour.  In our natural and fallen state, all people have an understandable aversion to the darkness, because somewhere deep down, all people know that unlike the Light which brings life in the fellowship of God, the darkness brings only death and separation from Him.  Deep down, all people know that somewhere in the outer darkness there is weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth only echoed in this world’s mournful funeral laments, where all hope is lost and the nefarious enemies of mankind wreak hellish havoc upon lost souls forever.

 

There are real enemies in the darkness, and they are greater than the greatest of mortals.  Therefore it is something wonderful and peculiar that our Lord walked resolutely into that darkness, without fear or dread.  Certainly Jesus expressed anguish in His humanity while praying for this awful cup to pass from Him, yet submitted His human will to the Divine Will so that He could accomplish the salvation of the world.  It is Jesus who stepped into the darkness for us, and not timidly as if hoping to avoid its worst denizens—but rather directly into the gaping maw of death and hell itself.  There, beyond the brutal tortures of Romans and the betrayals of Jewish authorities, where the darkness moved in to extinguish the Light of Jesus’ life, His Words echoed into the darkness like a thundering from the heart of Creation:  It is finished!  Jesus’ life poured out upon the Cross, His soul descended to the place of the dead where all fallen men must go, but not as a victim or prisoner.  There, in the deepest, darkest stronghold of Satan, Jesus’ Light penetrated and repudiated every foul and twisted creature, and loosed the bonds which held all those who awaited His coming from the dawn of time.  Jesus entered the darkness where our greatest enemies plotted the demise of mankind, so that He might shatter the darkness and put all evil to flight.

 

What death, hell, and the devil had hoped to achieve by swallowing up the Lord of Life, they lost by being themselves swallowed up in His Vicarious Atonement and Resurrection.  The vanity of Lucifer’s boast to be like the Most High was eviscerated before the all the witnesses of the whole created universe, when his impotent strike upon Jesus amounted to a bruise upon His omnipotent heel, which in turn came down to crushed his infernal head.  No longer were the great enemies of mankind armed with weapons that easily fell human beings who bore the image of God, but now were disarmed and put to flight by the Immortal and Eternal Word.  Jesus not only conquered our enemies who dwelt in the darkness, but after His Resurrection, He gave the Light, Spirit, and Power of His Word to His people, that they might never fear the darkness again.  Once victims without hope before the yawning chasm of death, now all those who abide in Jesus by grace through faith are victors through His Victory, with the crown of eternal life placed upon their brow.  The Light which man had lost in his fall has been restored by Jesus Christ, who has become the Light and Life of all those who put their trust in Him.

 

So now we walk with our Savior as He treads the path of darkness and death, knowing that His victory is eternal and sure.  No more do the saints need fear the darkness of sin, death, hell, and devil, because the Lord of Life has won for us the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation from every evil under heaven.  And not only have we no need to fear the darkness, but we are called and sent into that darkness with the Light of Jesus’ Word, that the straggling denizens of darkness who presume upon the world their dark designs, might be put to flight once more.  This world does not belong to the darkness, for the Lord of Glory has won it back to Himself through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  What man had lost, God has regained and given to us as the riches of His grace, so that no man might fear the darkness ever again, ensconced forever by Baptism in His marvelous Light.  Gird up the loins of your mind and make strong the weak knees, so that we might walk all the more boldly with our Lord into the darkness, and emerge with Him in the incomprehensible Light of that glorious Easter morn.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.

 

To Serve Rather than Be Served: A Meditation on Mark 10 for the 5th Sunday in Lent

But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them,

Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles

exercise lordship over them;

and their great ones exercise authority upon them.

But so shall it not be among you:

but whosoever will be great among you,

shall be your minister:

And whosoever of you will be the chiefest,

shall be servant of all.

For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto,

but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

 

In the Gospel reading for today, two disciples attempted to manipulate Jesus into giving them positions of honor and authority, by asking Jesus to give them special seats in the Kingdom of God.  The appeal sounds garish, and in other Gospel writers’ accounts, James and John even enlisted their mother to try for an emotional appeal.  Jesus instead took the moment to teach them what true leadership in the image of God really was:  that anyone who desired to be chiefest among them would by necessity be servant of all, and the greatest of them would be the one who served the most selflessly.  Unlike the worldly or Gentile model of leadership where the most brutal or cunning seized power in order to reward first themselves (cf. Mel Brook’s immortal movie quote, “It’s good to be the king!”) Jesus’ model was one of ultimate sacrifice.  He was leading His disciples to Jerusalem where He knew He would be betrayed, humiliated, convicted in a kangaroo court on false charges supported by slanderous and corrupt testimony, then scourged within an inch of His life, and nailed to a Roman cross so that His agonizing death might showcase the Roman’s brutality, the Sanhedrin’s treachery, and Jesus’ total abasement before God and men.  Jesus, who was about to fulfil in eternal ways the maxim He previously taught His disciples, that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends, was teaching them now that greatness before God is not the exercise of worldly power, but the self-sacrificing works of true love.

 

It is easy, perhaps, to see this teaching as unique to Jesus and somehow out of phase with prior Hebrew revelation.  However, walking through the Books of Moses and the Prophets reveals that God has always been sacrificing Himself for the good of His people, and for the Creation as a whole.  God was not deficient before the Creation of our material universe, nor before He breathed life into the spirits of angels and men.  Indeed, God has revealed Himself to be the perfect Unity in Trinity—a plurality in singularity, where love is perfectly exchanged between the Divine Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all fully God, and yet undivided and indivisible as One True God, now and forever and unto ages of ages without end.  The fullness of God is not increased by the Creation, but the Creation is blessed with both existence and fellowship in the Holy Trinity by the self-sacrificial act of God creating them.  God’s Providence and Grace are moved by His love to share what He authentically and fully has in Himself, so that others might also live and love in Him.  When angels fall from grace and become demons in their rebellion against life and love Incarnate, and when men fall from grace by following the lead of horrific demons rather than the glorious company of heaven, it is God who suffers in His love for those who hate and reject Him.  And it is the selfless, sacrificial love of God for mankind that moves Him to send His Only Begotten Son to Calvary, that we might be restored in the Blood of the Lamb.

 

The selfless love of God expressed in service to even those who reject Him, is a far cry from the models of power and prestige found prevalent in both the ancient and modern worlds.  Too often the mind of man wanders deep into covetous contemplation of how all resources and time can best be spent satisfying himself.  Who among us has not first thought that his life is his own; that he is the captain of his own ship, the crafter of his own fate?  Who has not looked at their money and thought first of what they might procure for their enjoyment, distraction, or pleasure?  Who has not guarded their time for their own comfort and enjoyment, only begrudgingly giving their time to others when it could not be avoided, or when it might win for them some advantage?  Who has not labored hard in their youth, dreaming only to enjoy a self-centered retirement awash in the spoils of business and conquest; or wasted their youth in frivolity and sloth, so that others might support them with their own labors?  The inclination of fallen man to selfishness came with the death of godly love in our souls during our fall away from our Creator, and so our powers of mind and body are too often motivated by the desire to rule over others with power and honors showered upon us, leaving others to grovel or bow before us, so that we might serve first ourselves above all things.

 

Jesus’ teaching is as much directed to us today as it was to His Disciples two millennia ago:  that leadership and greatness in the Kingdom of God will always reflect the loving and selfless nature of God, rather than the depravity of self-loving man.  Yet knowing we are lost in this morass of darkness unable to save ourselves from the curse coursing through our very beings, Jesus illuminated our world by His journey to the Cross, and the demonstration before all Creation that God’s triumph over sin, death, hell, and the devil is His perfect and selfless love.  Unworthy as we are, our eyes are given new sight by the Gospel of that Cross, and our minds given new thoughts by the example of His saving Grace.  No longer must we yield only to the world and it’s passing fascinations, but by the power of Jesus in His Word and Spirit, we are lifted up into Him, our temporal lives resurrected in His eternal life, and our broken image restored by reflecting His divine nature.  The Cross of Jesus Christ is not only our Victory over every dark force that chases rebellious insanity into the depths of hell, but it is our calling into life restored to full communion with the God who both made and saves us.  Jesus’ Cross teaches us that we need not serve ourselves, because our omnipotent God is already serving us; that we need not seek our own good, because in His unconquerable love He has already sought and procured our ultimate good.  And what we learn of God toward us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we are called to reflect outward to our neighbors, that they might know their Savior, too.

 

May all passions for earthly praise be silenced, and all pursuits of selfish gain be quieted:  for Jesus Christ has come not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for us.  Let the tyrant and the sycophant both leave their tainted follies; the manipulator and the extorter be relieved of their foul ambitions.  For all the world has been given to see the saving Truth which sets us free, and the Cross of Jesus Christ which makes satisfaction for every fallen thought and perversity of every broken person to ever walk upon this tortured globe.  Today is the day our Saving Lord calls us to know Him, to trust Him, to believe Him, and to follow Him into a new life born from above by Water and Spirit, where divine love is expressed through us in selfless sacrifice for all creatures, and where we find the font of our very lives in the selfless, sacrificial love of Almighty God.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.