Job 3:1-10; Ps 139:11-12

6 July 2003

“Darkness”

            I’ve mentioned before a certain type of horror movie that I like—the kind dealing with vampires!  Obviously, the movies vary in quality, but it’s an appreciation I share with Banu.  An appreciation she does not share with me is that of another kind of horror movie:  zombies!  And after my attempt a few years ago to walk the length of the house, zombie-style, I’m pretty certain our dog is no fan of zombie movies, either.

            There’s certainly an air of…darkness present in horror movies, especially ones dealing with the undead, like vampires and zombies.  An example of a different kind of darkness is featured on our bulletin cover.

            It portrays something that I find both fascinating and impossible to understand.  It’s a depiction of a black hole, something formed when a star collapses in on itself and gravity forces it into an incredibly compact state.[1]  The gravitational field of a black hole is so intense that not even light escapes it.  It literally warps the space and time around it—that’s the only way one can even be detected.  Everything pulled into a black hole gets compressed into a tiny central region called a singularity, which basically is infinitely dense and infinitely small.  (If you try real hard to imagine that, you’ll probably get dizzy and pass out!)

            Astronomers are discovering that the universe is much more heavily populated with black holes than was once thought.  In fact, it’s even believed that the cosmic rays sent from our sun have enough energy to form tiny black holes in our atmosphere.  Don’t worry, though, there’s no fear of our being sucked into one.  These black holes would be millions of times smaller than the nucleus of an atom, and they would fizzle away almost immediately—so they’re not big enough, and they don’t last long enough, to do any damage.

            I don’t suppose they intend it, but it seems like there’s something almost… sinister about black holes.  Lurking as they do, visible only by the tremendously destructive effect they have on everything around them—even the name “black hole” suggests the absolute heart of darkness.

            I mention black holes, not because I think everyone’s as interested in that kind of stuff as I am, but because they’re very much like the darkness in our lives.  You know what I mean?—those times and places in which we’re pulled, as if by the force of gravity, into the dark, shadowy areas.

            Judy Cannato, a spiritual director in Cleveland, has commented on “the places [where] we know the darkness,” places like death of a loved one, job loss, marital problems, illness, parenting, prayer, even faith.[2]  There’s the darkness of wondering who we are and just what the heck we’re doing—the darkness of our own wasted potential.

            Cannato says, “Sometimes our crisis seems to be quite specific; at other times there is simply a miserable malaise that cannot be dispelled by simple efforts or good humor.”[3]  A miserable malaise.  It’s like there’s something below the surface of the water, something we can’t quite see, but we know it’s there.

            We have an image of this in Job 3.  This is right after Job loses his children, his wealth, and his health.  This is also where Job, having been sucked into a black hole of despair, curses the day of his birth.  In verse 8, he calls for “those [to] curse it who curse the Sea, those who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan.”  Job wants people who are good at cursing, people who can even conjure up the great sea monster.  The ancient Hebrew dread of the open ocean, of the great deep, is reflected here.

Leviathan is a creature symbolic of those malevolent, chaotic forces that well up from the hidden places.  We can’t see these forces—after all, it is dark down there!—we don’t understand them, but we’re still aware of them.  Sometimes it takes a lot of work to put our finger on just what it is that troubles us.

It turns out that I’m not the only one to use the image of the black hole.  Eugene Peterson, in his recently-published translation of the entire Bible, entitled The Message, presents verses 3 and the first part of 4 this way:  “Obliterate the day I was born.  Blank out the night I was conceived!  Let it be a black hole in space.”

Judy Cannato also speaks of darkness in a more positive way.  The crises that come our way during life, the trials and tribulations, the places of darkness—whatever we call them—can serve to “disillusion” us.  And that’s a good thing.  The reason it’s a good thing is that these events, these things that we would just as soon avoid, can strip away the facades, the masks, that we have either accidentally or deliberately gotten used to wearing.

The darkness can remind us that we’ve forgotten who we are.  Cannato says, “Unwavering adherence to values that we have not consciously chosen as adults exposes our lack of freedom and keeps us living in illusion.”  It’s not good enough to do or to be something because mommy and daddy wanted it for you.  It’s not good enough to rely on the Sunday school faith you learned as a little kid.  Many people leave the church because they’ve never let their faith grow up.  They’ve never gotten past the outer shell of the faith.

Consequently (and this is true of all of us to some degree) such people have never really thought about what they believe.  The way is open to being lost in illusion.  And being stripped of one’s illusions can be painful.  Seeing one’s idols get smashed hardly makes for a fun time.

Scripture presents us with more than one image of darkness.  In Job 3, it represents Job’s desire for death, his wish to be obliterated, his longing for nothingness, the void.  Psalm 139 says something different.  Here the psalmist affirms that even in darkness, God is present.  Verse 12 says that “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

Once again, we have the often-repeated theme of God’s faithfulness.  Even in the midst of hell on earth, the Lord refuses to abandon us.  Almost by definition, darkness means confusion.  After all, in the dark, we can’t see what we’re doing or where we’re going.  Still, God wants to show us the way.

Darkness can affect a community as easily as an individual.  Our epistle reading in 1 John 4 says something about that.  The “beloved” of verse 1 isn’t a single person; it’s a group.  Like today, there was confusion in the late first century.  There were all kinds of people claiming to have received all kinds of messages from angels, and spirits, and even Jesus himself.  Who to believe?

The scripture gives a warning.  “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (v. 1).  Okay, fine, so how do you do that?  “By this you know the Spirit of God:  every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (v. 2).  That clarifies things a bit!  But there’s also a flip side to that coin:  “every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.  And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world” (v. 3).  You do realize that “spiritual” and “divine” or “holy” aren’t necessarily the same thing?

There are some folks about 20 miles up the road who talk to a lot of spirits, and not all of those spirits proclaim Jesus Christ as being God in the flesh.  Some might respond that the folks at Lily Dale are good people.  I have no question about that.  I myself interact with people who believe all kinds of things.  I think it’s important to strengthen those kinds of bonds, especially when working toward a common goal.

But that doesn’t negate the truth of Jesus Christ.  It doesn’t negate the light that Christ is and that Christ brings to the dark places.  It doesn’t negate our calling and privilege to be bearers of that light.  If we share the light of Christ in faith and humility and love, only good things can result.

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