The Power
of Darkness
Third in a Lenten series from Luke
Luke 22:45-53
Psalm 55: 12-14, 20-21
March 3, 2013
©
2013 Robert J. Elder, Pastor
When I was with you day after day in
the temple,
you did not lay hands on me.
But this is your hour, and the power of
darkness!
Take a moment to think about the verses from Psalm 55[1]
that we said together a few moments ago. Just to remind us of the bitterness
the psalmist must have felt as this psalm was composed, I’ll read the words
again:
It is not enemies who taunt me –
I could bear that;
it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me –
I could hide from them.
But it is you, my equal,
my companion, my familiar friend,
with whom I kept pleasant company;
we
walked in the house of God with the throng.
My companion laid hands on a friend
and violated a covenant with me
with speech smoother than butter,
but with a heart set on war;
with words that were softer than oil,
but in
fact were drawn swords.
I wonder if these words, or words
like them, were on Jesus’ mind that night when he looked up and saw a crowd
headed his way, with Judas leading the mob, pursing his lips for a kiss of
betrayal?
I once heard about a struggling
little non-profit agency on the East Coast, a local effort that helped to house
people who were in need, people who, without someone to stand up for them,
would be on the street. The agency struggled along doing its good deeds for the
needy until one day, when a few fresh faces came onto the board of the
organization, people with all the enthusiasm and promise that seemed to suggest
they could help in significant ways. The first task they chose, however, was to
begin exposing the weaknesses of the executive director to other members of the
board. Finally, enough of the board’s energy was taken up with this discussion
that their mission began to suffer, the director finally resigned, and the
organization went out of business. An organization that for thirty years – with
all its shortcomings and warts intact had still managed to help hundreds of
families with housing needs – ceased to exist.
One observer of the human scene once
said that some people, like Judas, cast out devils for a while … and then
become one.
I find Jesus’ words about the power
of darkness to be particularly chilling. Still, we need to recall that this is
not the only “hour” about which Jesus spoke in his ministry. It is a word that
comes straight across from Greek and Latin into our language: hora, meaning the time, the right sort
of time, the opportune time, the
blacksmith’s proverbial “strike while the iron is hot” sort of time. There had
been other opportune “hours” in Jesus’ ministry, you can spot them running all
through Luke’s gospel: The time when Jesus healed many, when he rejoiced, the
hour of the disciples’ trials, the hour when the Son of Man comes like a thief
in the night, the hour when the Pharisees warned Jesus about Herod’s evil
intentions toward him, the time when the authorities expressed their desire to
arrest him, the time when the Passover meal was eaten with his disciples.
Jesus had been among all these people
who came to arrest him, day after day, yet they were afraid of the friendly
crowds that followed him. How appropriate that they decided to come under the
cover of night, when his loyal crowd, most of them, were home in their beds. In
Luke 4, Jesus was tested in the wilderness and resisted, and Luke says that the
devil left him until an “opportune time.” Alas, that time has come. Jesus is
arrested. It is the devil’s hour, and the power of darkness provides the cover
for their action which the light of day might have foiled.
All of us have known times when we
intend something good, but we find no means at hand to accomplish it. The human
tendency, then, is to take up any means at hand, the “ends justify the means,”
as the old saying goes. But we all have seen, time after time throughout human
history, that the means become, and even displace, the sought-after ends. The
17th century philosopher, Frances Bacon, once observed his own
culture struggling with questions of means and ends, and reflected that when
improved means are found to pursue unimproved ends, we discover that, as Bacon
declared, “it is singularly amazing how long the rotten can hold together.” In
the end, to abandon legitimate means to seek legitimate ends ultimately means
the loss of those legitimate ends. Means become ends, methods become outcomes.
Sometimes we have the good in mind
but have no power to accomplish it. Jesus knew this, but trusted enough in
God’s future to realize that though this hour was not his, other hours would
be. There would be other hours, triumphant hours to come. In this situation,
surrender and self-sacrifice were his only choices[2]
as he held on to the confidence that the end of the story had not yet come,
that there was more to be accomplished through God’s own time.
Here is a little something that I
find interesting in this passage. Though they have come to arrest him, and
Jesus knows this, he continues with the same sort of ministry that has
characterized his life since his baptism in the Jordan: teaching and healing as
signs of his kingdom. Even here, even as he is about to be handed over to those
who are only too willing to do him ultimate harm, he teaches and heals. He
teaches his disciples about the special impotence of violence to accomplish
ultimate things, “No more of this!” he declares, and then he works to heal the
effects of violence as he touches the servant’s ear and restores it. When it
has been at its best, his church has been at this work ever since, teaching and
healing, proclaiming and restoring.
Jesus knew that if his disciples took
up the means of those who came to arrest him – the sword, the club, retaliation
and bloodshed – it would ultimately taint and spoil their aim, which was to
live out the love of God for all the world to see.
So the power of darkness has found
its hour. What then? What is to become of the betrayer as well as the betrayed?
Betrayal moves in two directions, it moves against the welfare of Jesus, but it
also moves against the potential hopes and future Jesus saw in Judas when he
called him to be one of his chosen disciples. Jesus had once chosen Judas, had
seen something in him, some potential, had invested his time and energy into
his relationship with him. Here we find that Jesus’ hopes and dreams for Judas
are also betrayed. Maybe betrayal between intimates is always be like that, as
tragic for the betrayer as for the one betrayed, perhaps more so.
There is a Fra Angelico painting in
the Academy in Florence, Italy, where Judas is pictured with a black halo. In
the island nation of Haiti, in the ragged city of Port au Prince, there is an
Episcopalian Cathedral, in which you can find another depiction of the last
supper. In the scene, Peter and Judas are depicted as white people, because, after
all, they both denied Jesus, and white was the skin color of those devils who
once enslaved the people of Haiti. The rest of the disciples are black. Yet
Jesus appears as mixed race, a mulatto, neither black nor white, because of a
local tradition in that culture that when the Messiah returns, he will save
both white and black, the betrayer as well as the betrayed.
The power of darkness is not
ultimate. The hour that Jesus mentioned passes, and another hour comes. A seed
planted in dark soil, a baby after nine months in the darkness of the womb,
they know the time when darkness has its hour, but they prepare there for
other, brighter hours to come.
The power of darkness is proximate,
but it too has lessons to teach, if we will attend to them. I’ll close this
sermon with two bits of poetry, the first by contemporary Welsh poet, R.S.
Thomas, the second from a hymn verse written for a hymn competition back in
1999, in anticipation of the new millennium.
Via Negativa, R.S. Thomas
Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the
interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
and places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.
Through the Darkness of the Ages[3], Hilary Jolly
Through the darkness of the ages,
Through the sorrows of the days,
Strengths of weary generations,
Lifting hearts in hope and praise,
Light in darkness joy in sorrows
Presence to allay all fears,
Jesus, you have kept your promise, Faithful
through two thousand years.
If we find ourselves deep in the hour of
darkness, where there is betrayal all around us, remember there is another hour
coming. Watch and be faithful.
