Posts Tagged ‘darkness’

‘There’s a crack where the light gets in’ – the beheading of John the Baptist

July 13, 2024

Pentecost 8 – 2024

Mark 6:14-29

Marian Free

In the name of God whose light shines in the darkness and whose strength holds us in the midst of our pain. Amen.

I confess that I am a great fan of Leonard Cohen and while I can’t claim to fully understand the lyrics of his songs, I think I get the gist of what he is saying. By and large he presents a bleak view of the world and the people in it. For example, in what I believe was the last song he wrote before he died, ‘You want it Darker’, Cohen wrote: 

‘If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame.’

Later he repeats a line: ‘A million candles burning
For the help that never came’, replacing the word help with love the second time around. ‘A million candles burning for the love that never came.’ (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=you+want+it+darker+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

Cohen’s lyrics could be a song for our time. We live in a world which appears to be fracturing along many different fault lines. The Russia/Ukraine war has divided nations along much the same lines as the Cold War. Across the globe countries which are proudly refusing to become directly involved in the war are not so reluctant to supply one side or the other with arms and military equipment thereby deepening the rifts between them. The Israel/Gaza conflict is threatening to split once harmonious communities in all corners of the world. Natural disasters are wreaking havoc on a scale not witnessed before and the gap between rich and poor are increasing at an alarming rate.  

These and other events are enough to drive the most hopeful among us to despair – to sing with Cohen that there are a million candles burning for the help that never came. We live in a time when we cannot ignore the very real presence of evil, the impact that human greed and selfishness are having on the planet and the capacity of human beings to inflict horrendous suffering on others.

Cohen is not afraid to name the darkness that hovers over us.

In the same way, the Bible refuses to paper over the ugliness of human existence, to sugar coat the terrors that human beings inflict on each other or to pretend that God can once and for all miraculously sweep away all that is wrong with the world. From the beginning to the end of our scriptures we are confronted with the capacity for evil that resides in each one of us. Cain kills Abel, the Israelites destroy the inhabitants of Canaan, Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah murders anyone who stands between herself and the crown and on it goes. The story of the death of John the Baptist is just one story in a litany of accounts of the frailty and insecurity of human beings. 

There is no way to gloss over or to find good news in the story of the beheading of John the Baptist. Here, Mark, who is known more for his brevity than his attention to detail, does not spare us. In his account the worst of humanity is exposed – Herod’s pride and insecurity, and his need to keep face (honour and power) at whatever cost.  Herodias’ spite at the Baptist’s moral stance and the supposedly innocent pawn – the daughter – who refuses to trust her own judgement but defers to her mother and who not only willingly enters into the unfolding drama but who adds her own particularly gruesome detail in asking that the head of John the Baptist be brought to her on a platter.

In placing the story here, Mark does two things (apart from reporting on the event itself). Firstly, he is making it clear that it is not only demons and evil spirits who cannot bear their wickedness to be exposed by Jesus’ goodness. Evil is not external to but integral to the human condition. Herodias wants John gone because he makes her feel uncomfortable (just as Jesus unsettled the demons). John has pointed out what Herodias already knows – that her divorce and remarriage are against the law – something she does not want to be reminded of.  

Secondly the account of John’s beheading acts as a sort of corrective to any misunderstanding about Jesus – his role and his powers. For the readers of the gospel who have been caught up by the miraculous events of the story – Jesus’ ability to cast out demons, heal the sick and even to calm a storm, Mark, through this story makes it clear that there is no magic wand or miracle cure for the ills of the world. The world and all its wickedness will not suddenly be transformed by the presence of Jesus. There will always be Herod’s – the immoral, the volatile, the power hungry, and the selfish. The evil that resides in the human heart will have to be confronted one person at a time.

That said, the story ends on a hopeful note. Mark tells us that John’s disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. John’s life and ministry have not come to an abrupt halt. Herodias has not won. In the midst of darkness and despair God’s goodness and love has broken-in.

To return to Leonard Cohen. Another of his songs include the line: “There’s a crack in everything that’s where the light gets in.” Rabbi David Sachs tells us that this image comes a story in Jewish mysticism, known as: “The breaking of vessels”. According to the story, when God created the world and filled it with light the world was simply not strong enough to hold that light, so the vessels containing the light broke and everywhere there are broken vessels and within those vessels is divine light.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s3kQSZ_Qxk)

The death of John the Baptist is a stark reminder of humanity’s ability to defy God, and to desecrate goodness, but just as John’s disciples faithfully took and buried his body, so there are in every generation those who, despite the consequences will be the presence of goodness and holiness in the world. Despair, horror and evil will never hold sway because wherever there is an act of courage, of kindness or selflessness, we are reminded that there is a crack in everything and that’s where the light gets in.

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No room for neutrality

March 10, 2018

Lent 4 – 2018

John 3:14-21

Marian Free

In the name of God who so loved the world, that God sent his Son to save it. Amen.

Most of us would agree that it feels as though the world is teetering on the edge of disaster. We feel distressed by Trump’s apparently erratic behaviour, by Kim Jong On’s threats of nuclear war, by the intractable nature of the war in Syria, by the civil war and famine in south Sudan and Yemen, by the rise of the ultra-right in Europe and by the grab for power by dictators in more countries than one. We are rightly distressed by the plight of refugees, the increasing gap between the rich and poor and by corruption and the misuse of resources by those in power. We feel helpless in the face of terrorism and are frozen in indecision when we think about the damage that we are inflicting on the environment.

The world seems to be falling apart and we feel powerless to stop it.

That, at least is one way of seeing the world.

It is possible to see the situation quite differently. On Tuesday[1] Radio National’s Big Ideas presented a lecture by Gregg Easterbrook – writer for the Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times. Easterbrook pointed out that despite what appears to be evidence to the contrary, there are good reasons for optimism. Worldwide, malnutrition and extreme poverty are at historic lows, he says, and the risk of dying by war or violence is lower than at any point in human history. Everywhere in the world people are living longer and healthier. Contrary to what we see daily in our news, the frequency and intensity of war in the last 25 years is 5% of the rate wars of the previous century. According to the United Nations malnutrition is at its lowest point ever.

And those are just a few of the statistics that Easterbrook produced.

The world is an interesting and challenging place. On the one hand we as humans are capable of inflicting unimaginable suffering in places like Syria, and on the other hand we have not only reduced the threat of nuclear war, but in the last few decades the world as a whole has reduced its spending on all things military. On the one hand, we as humans are capable of the most appalling abuse of our fellow human beings when we traffic them into sexual or other forms of slavery and on the other hand, we are capable of acts of utter selflessness when we risk our lives to prevent the spread of deadly diseases or to bring relief to victims of wars and natural disasters.

The future of the world is both hopeless and hopeful, the nature of humanity is both heroic and despicable.

“God so loved the world, that he sent his only Son.” The world of the first century was no less violent, corrupt or inequitable than the world of the twenty-first century. Humanity was as cruel, as greedy and as violent then as it is now. Despite this, despite all the reasons for pessimism, God remained optimistic. God saw the potential in God’s creation and risked everything to save it.

That is not to say that God was or is naïve. The presence of Jesus in the world was not benign – anything but. Jesus was not and is not a comfortable Saviour. Jesus was (and is) confrontational and challenging. His very presence was divisive because it forced people to declare their hands. As the presence of God in the world, Jesus shone a light on injustice, oppression, greed, cruelty and exploitation. Jesus’ love and compassion exposed the baseness and insensitivity of those around him. His generosity and selflessness made people uncomfortable with their own greed and self-absorption. No one wants to feel that they are less than perfect. No one wants to have their flaws opened to the light of day, visible to the scrutiny of others. (They would rather remain in darkness.)

The person of Jesus revealed the true natures of those with whom he came into contact. People were either drawn to or repelled by him depending on their openness to change or their desire to maintain the status quo, their self-awareness or their smug self-satisfaction; their willingness to surrender control or their determination to hold on to their independence. Those who shared Jesus’ love of God and love of humanity found in him a source of hope and strength. Those who sought only their own advancement and gain, saw in Jesus a threat to their way of life. Those who desired to create a world of justice and peace found in Jesus a sense of purpose and direction. Those who were happy with the world as it was saw in Jesus only chaos and disorder.

“God so loved the world, that he sent his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John 3:16 is not simply a comforting, comfortable verse that can be easily and blithely turned into some sort of simplistic Christian slogan. It challenges us to think about what it means to believe. The verses that follow tell us that unbelievers are those who do not want to have light shone on their selfishness, their meanness and their desire to dominate others. Unbelievers are those who are happy with the world the way that it is and do not want it to be saved.

Believing in Jesus means being committed ourselves to Jesus’ programme of loving the world. It means allowing both the good and the bad in us to be exposed to the light of God’s love and it means understanding that unless we allow ourselves to be changed we might be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

God so loves the world that, through Jesus he enlists our help to save it. There is no room for neutrality – we are called to make a decision to come into the light or to remain forever in the darkness.

 

 

[1] March 6, 2018, Radio National, Big Ideas.

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Standing with our feet in two worlds

February 4, 2017

Candlemas – 2017

Luke 2:22-40

Marian Free

Candlemas

         Candlemas

Loving God, light in our darkness; give us the courage to allow your light to reveal the darkness in our lives. Amen.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple – an event in Jesus’ life that is recorded only by Luke. As early as the fourth century, the Church Fathers considered that this was an event of such significance that it needed its own feast day. At that time, the Presentation was marked on the fourteenth of February – 40 days after the feast of the Nativity on the 6th of January. Four hundred years later, sometime after the celebration of Christmas had been moved back to December 25, the feast of the Presentation was moved to February 2 where it remains to this day.

It appears that around that time, in the 700s, influences from the pagan festival of Imbolc began to creep in to the Christian celebration. Imbolc is the word for ewe’s milk in old Irish. In Northern Europe Imbolc marked the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. In a world in which winters were dark and bleak, the lengthening of days and the first signs of spring growth were a cause for celebration. They were proof yet again that the darkness had not triumphed over light and that the earth would once again bring forth life and growth. It was a time of promise and possibility. White candles were lit as a symbol of purifying fire and of the rays of the sun.

Imbolc took place at the same time as the feast of the Presentation – on February 1st or 2nd. It appears that the church absorbed the practice of lighting candles into its own practice. The liturgy incorporated a procession of candles followed by a blessing of the candles for use that year hence the alternate name for the feast – Candlemas.

Just as Imbolc marked a mid-point in the astronomic calendar, in the Christian practice, Candlemas signified a movement away from the wonder and joy of Christmas and Epiphany and a movement closer to the sobriety of Lent and thus to the shadow of the cross. The changing seasons and longer days encouraged spring cleaning and the preparation of the ground for sowing and in the church Candlemass signified a movement away from festivity and feasting towards self-reflection and fasting.

Today’s gospel clearly depicts the tensions of being caught between celebration and solemnity, joy and apprehension, between Christmas and Good Friday. When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple, Simeon’s gratitude and relief was matched by Anna’s exuberance and excitement as they both responded in their own ways to the encounter with their long-awaited Saviour. The joy of the meeting was tempered by Simeon’s warning and sense of foreboding as he says to Mary: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Simeon might have identified Jesus as the one who was promised as “light to the gentiles and the glory of God’s people Israel” but at the same time he cautioned that God’s promised salvation is not without cost.

Light, you see, is a mixed blessing. Light is threatening and benign, welcome and unwelcome. Light lifts the burden of darkness and enables us to see clearly. It allows us to walk without stumbling, but it has the potential to expose the dark corners and secret places of our lives – the cobwebs and dust that have built up over a long winter of neglect, the self-deception and arrogance that have been allowed to hide in the shadows, the inner thoughts that we would prefer to keep to ourselves.

When Simeon announced that Jesus was “the light to the Gentiles” he was fully aware that not everyone would welcome his presence among them. There would be many who would prefer to remain in the shadows rather than have their shallowness exposed and their self-deception revealed. He predicted that they would resent, resist and even oppose Jesus whose very presence would show them up for the charlatans that they were. The light of Jesus’ goodness and love would be greeted with delight by those who, like Simeon have looked forward to a time when God’s presence will be more fully known and who would feel the warmth and glow of that presence in Jesus. That same love and goodness, would serve to reveal the complacency, self-satisfaction and blindness of those who thought that neither the world nor themselves needed changing and who experienced the light as a scorching flame and a glaring beam that must be extinguished so that their lives could remain the same and their falsehoods unchallenged.

For those who recognise that the world lies in darkness, light is a welcome relief, but that same light is perceived dangerous and threatening by those who recognise that the light will shake and shatter their place in the world.

Today, as we celebrate Candlemas and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, we stand as it were with our feet in both worlds – between Jesus’ birth and the cross, between joy and sorrow, between the darkness and the light. As we follow the church calendar from Epiphany to Lent, we have time to consider whether we will allow our darkness to be exposed to the light or whether, content with the way things are and unwilling to accept that different could be better, we will turn our backs on the promise of change and renewal and consign ourselves to the shadows.

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