A Dark Text

1st Sunday in Advent, Year C
Texts: Jer 33.14-16; 1 Thess 3.9-13; Lk 21.25-36

When we read this gospel lesson in Bible Study this week, the first comment was, “Wow, that’s dark.” This is a dark text; it may be hard not to feel a bit frightened or discouraged by it. Nations confused by the roaring of the waves, people fainting from fear and fleeing to escape calamity, the powers of heaven themselves—the sun, moon and stars—being shaken. Maybe it’s hard for you to hear any good news in this; nothing Jesus talks about sounds like anything we’d be anxious to experience. And yet, he says, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” That’s all we have to hang our hat on in these dark, bleak images: the vague assurance that somehow it heralds the coming of our redemption.

If Advent is the season of hopeful anticipation leading up to Christmas, this may not seem like a very good Advent text at first, but I think it speaks directly to our experience of Advent. Advent is the darkest time of the year. Throughout the season we direct our focus to the light which is coming, but as we wait for that light, we are, by definition, waiting for what is not yet here. Advent, then, is a season of experiencing the darkness, rather than light; of reflecting on the absence of God, rather than God’s presence. Advent proclaims that this darkness itself is holy because it points us to God—not by it’s destruction or defeat, but that the darkness itself is a sign of God’s presence.

That may be hard for us to wrap our heads around, because darkness makes us so uncomfortable. Look at how we even use the language: “dark” means bad, frightening, depressing. God is light, God is brightness; dark is the antithesis of God. That may be what makes this text so hard to access: God is revealed in the darkness, the “bad” and frightening things rather than the “good” and pleasant things.

But we know that darkness isn’t inherently bad. Darkness is necessary, good even. We need darkness in order to sleep. Dark colors contrast bright ones and give beauty to art and nature. Perhaps the darkness of this story can provide us an alternative way of understanding darkness itself, a fresh perspective that will allow us to see good news in it when it looks so bleak and terrifying otherwise.

It’s like when, on a bright, sunny day you walk into a dark room with the curtains drawn. At first, you can’t see anything; but as you wait and let your eyes become accustomed to the dark, soon you can make out shapes and figures and maybe even find enough light to read by. The temptation in our culture is always to avoid and ignore and defeat the darkness, to drive it away; but by sitting in the darkness, we may begin to see things we wouldn’t otherwise.

For example, as I come to this text, my first experience, perhaps like many of you, is of discomfort and fear. The dissolution of everything I know sounds unpleasant. If God is life and creation, destruction sounds fundamentally evil rather than good. The text is dark because I cannot see God in it. However, as I sit in the darkness of this text, I become aware of something.

In this case, I become aware that I am reading it as a White person. As a White person, living in the time and place that I do, I have an immense amount of privilege. Because of that, I am, of course, frightened to hear about the kinds of things Jesus talks about in these verses, because he is talking about the passing away and the ending of the systems that give me that privilege, the systems that benefit me.

A person who lacks the privilege I have may hear something else in this story. Such a person might respond to Jesus’ predictions of calamity and disorder with hope, because those same systems that benefit me oppress them; they may be waiting with hopeful anticipation for the end of the same systems I fear to lose. As it happens, many people who may read this story in that way have skin that is dark, and often that causes people like me to regard them with fear or suspicion.

Isn’t it interesting how not only my bias against darkness but even the Whiteness of my skin can blind me to this entire way of reading this story; how my experience as a person of privilege can keep me from seeing the hope that Jesus explicitly tells us is in this vision? What if there are other things, even other ways of experiencing God, that might keep us from seeing the whole picture, just like the bright sunlight of a summer’s day can keep us from seeing the furniture in a dark room?

Maybe that’s why it’s so important for us to have this time of Advent darkness. Maybe we need this darkness—not to help us better appreciate or perceive the light, but to actually experience what it is impossible to see in the light. In order for that to happen, we have to be willing to sit in the discomfort and uncertainty of Advent for a while, and to trust that God is in the darkness, transforming us through it.

Darkness can be not only necessary, then, but even healthy and holy as it helps us to enter into deeper relationship with God. St. John of the Cross recognized that those feelings of satisfaction or fullness we experience as God’s presence can actually blind us to God. Those feelings—and the things that make us experience them, like prayer or blessing, as well as the minds with which we experience them—are all finite. God being infinite, he realizes, cannot be contained only or even adequately in those finite experiences. In order to know God more fully, we must also come to know God in the absence of all those consolations, as he calls them.

He calls that process of learning to see in the dark the “Dark Night of the Soul.” We’ve come to associate the Dark Night with angst or suffering, but it actually describes simply the inability to see God in the places we are used to finding God: in things like spiritual practice, or pleasure, or religious experience. John writes of the Dark Night as a blessing, because through it, God invites us into knowing God more fully, beyond simply the “good” things in life.

If we only ever experience God in the pleasures and joys of life, then those pleasures and joys risk becoming our gods, and we risk seeking only our own comfort. We reduce the cosmic redemption Christ offers to some piddly prosperity gospel and lose sight of God entirely.

But we know from Christ that God is present in the darkness, even when we can’t see them. In fact, that’s what John means by calling it a “dark night,” simply that God is present in a way that we can’t see, just as we can’t see in the dark. Knowing that God is present, if not seen, Jesus encourages us to “be on guard,” to “be alert” to God’s presence in the darkness.

In our on-demand culture of instant gratification and convenience, this darkness, this time of waiting and sitting in the absence, is the gift of Advent. If we are ready to sit in the tension without attempting to resolve or release it, perhaps we might just learn something new about God, and come to know God more fully.

That is why, this Advent season, our midweek worship services will focus us on the appreciation of darkness. We will explore how darkness is not only natural and necessary to our understanding of God and ourselves, but also good and beautiful in its own right. Our culture is so often preoccupied with action, presence, and substance, and so we will take time intentionally making space to seek God in the waiting, in the absence, and in the emptiness of Advent.

Jeremiah was able to see God in the darkness of Exile, and testified to the promise of renewal which was inconceivable in the moment, and although his vision of a righteous Branch of David was never realized in the way he imagined with the restoration of a sovereign nation of Israel under a Davidic king, his vision made room for people generations later to see God doing something great in Jesus.

Paul wrote with such effusive glee and thankfulness to the Thessalonians because he had been chased out of the city before having the chance to finish organizing the congregation. You can read that story in Acts, chapter 17. He was convinced that the nascent church there fell apart when he left, so imagine his surprise when he learned that they not only endured in his absence, but also became known for their steadfastness in faith and the love with which they shared the gospel. He writes to them today with longing and anticipation to return to them, a longing which he sees mirrored in the Church’s longing to see the return of Christ.

The story of Christian faith is a story of darkness. It is the story not only of light shining dimly in the shadow, but of God working in the shadow itself to bring about something new. When Jesus says, “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place,” he’s telling the truth: those first Christians did see the Son of Man return; maybe not coming in the clouds with power but cloaked in shadow. They saw the miracle of the cross played out again and again. They experienced resurrection.

I wonder if the good news in this dark story is that it remains just as true for our generation as it did for theirs, and for every generation since and every one yet to come. If God is in the darkness, unseen and unfelt, then when things seem most dark, isn’t there good reason for us to stand up and raise our heads and look for the kingdom of God? But we must first be taught to recognize God in the dark.

Where is the darkness most prevalent in your life? Where does God seem most absent or most impotent to you? Is there a way for you to sit with that darkness? Is it possible for you to safely encounter it without turning away? I wonder what you might learn by being alert in that darkness. I wonder if you might even find yourself standing before the Son of Man.