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The Rev. Frank Logue
Overshadowed by God’s Love The weekend has progressed well with your studies in ethics. By now, you’ve figured out consequentialism and utilitarianism without getting enmeshed in paternalism. You’ve done your duty to the study of deontological ethics as well as some justice to justice issues and are ready to go put your new found moral thinking to work in the real world. But before y’all leave this important weekend of study behind, we pause. We pause to worship our creator, redeemer and sustainer. We pause to hear and reflect on God’s presence in Word and Sacrament. In our Gospel reading, we heard the story of the Transfiguration, or as Mark’s Gospel puts it in the Greek of the New Testament, this is the story of Jesus’ “metamorphosis.” Like a caterpillar transformed into a butterfly, Jesus metamorphosed before their eyes. It is a story of light. Mark tells us that Jesus’ clothes “became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.” Yet I don’t want to get so transfixed on this brightness, that we miss the darkness in the story. Mark tells us that Peter is so terrified that he doesn’t know what to say. In the midst of his terror and lack of understand, a cloud overshadowed the mountaintop. Then God speaks in an audible voice saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” The theophany occurs, God’s voice is heard, but only after terror and being overshadowed. The word “overshadowed” fits with the idea of darkness rather than light. A search of scripture reveals that for all the images of God in scripture relating to light, there are others that also draw on imagery of darkness. In Exodus we are told “The people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:21). In the second book of Samuel God speaks to David who describes the event saying, “Thick darkness was under his feet” and “he made darkness around him a canopy” (2 Samuel 22:10-14). The first book of Kings tells how the glory of the Lord came upon Solomon’s Temple as it was dedicated, “And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. Then Solomon said, ‘The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness’” (1 Kings 8:10-12). In Psalm 97, we hear, “The Lord is King! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne” (Psalm 97:1-2). The prophet Isaiah, who wrote that the Messiah would be a light to the nations, also wrote, “I will give you treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by name” (Isaiah 45:3). The fifth-century Syrian monk we know as Pseudo-Dionysius wrote that God sometimes cuts through our lesser light of understanding with what he called “a ray of darkness.” This concept of a ray of darkness means that just when we think we understand who God is and how God acts, God shows us that we cannot contain the Holy Trinity. This revelation cuts through our complacency like a ray of darkness. A ray of darkness is a good expression for what happens in our Gospel reading. The reading begins, “Six days later.” As good exegetes you know to thumb back and read what happened six days sooner. Tracing back, we find that six days earlier Simon Peter responded to Jesus question “Who do you say that I am” with the confession of Jesus as The Messiah. Now, six days after the light of certainty on that day, Jesus’ transfiguration breaks into Peter’s life like a ray of darkness. Though Peter knew Jesus to be The Anointed One, he didn’t yet fully understand what was meant The Messiah. The images connecting God and darkness reveal that God is calling us to a deeper experience of the mystery that is divinity. God calls us deeper into God’s own glory, the secret places of which we as of yet know nothing. Writers through the centuries struggled to describe how experiencing God can plunge us into darkness. In the 1600s, the Welsh poet Henry Vaughn wrote, “There is in God (some say), a deep but dazzling darkness.” Dazzling darkness is just the sort of paradox writers often used, not unlike Pseudo-Dionysius writing of a “ray of darkness” to describe what it is like to have the deep and hidden things of God break into our lesser understanding of God. While God does break into the darkness of uncertainty with a ray of light piercing the gloom, God can also take our certainty or complacency and break in with a ray of deep, dazzling darkness, showing us that we have not arrived at some safe destination where we know and understand God. How can this concept of a ray of darkness help you as you leave this weekend of studying ethics? We learn from this darkness imagery primarily that God is God and we are not. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. God’s ways are not our ways. God cannot be controlled. The Holy Trinity is not tame or safe, but good (and there is a difference). As those who are deacons or are called to the diaconate, you take the light of Christ out into the world as a servant of those in need. While who you are matters much and what you know helps greatly, your ministry never relies on your knowledge, abilities, strengths and gifts alone. The light you bring to those in darkness is not your light. You can not even bring God to a situation. For God is already present. What a deacon does, is what all Christians are called to do, reveal the God who is already present by allowing the light of Christ to flow through them to those lost in darkness. I want to share an experience of letting light flow through. I completed my C.P.E., my Clinic Pastoral Education, as a chaplain intern at St. Elizabeths, a large public mental hospital in Washington D.C. While at St. E’s I got to know a man who knew all about light and darkness. He gave me permission to share his thoughts. The client, who I’ll call Mr. Morgan, had been very combative when he first came to the hospital. Mr. Morgan lashed out against everyone around. He was, as he would later describe it, in a very dark place. Mr. Morgan and I met on my routine visits to his ward. We talked almost daily. He began to attend our weekly church services in his building. He started reading daily devotions and I helped make arrangements for a Roman Catholic chaplain to bring him communion once a week. After reconnecting to his loving Lord, Mr. Morgan talked to me about light and darkness. Mr. Morgan said, “If you were in a cave and you were carrying a torch like you see in a movie, what would you do if it went out?” I replied, “I guess I would try to relight it.” He went on, “But what if you didn’t have a light?” “Well I guess I would wander around in the dark looking for a way out.” I wondered where he was going with his story. I paused trying to picture the scene. What kind of darkness were we talking about? Mr. Morgan was quite philosophical, so I began to think about other kinds of darkness. Depression and despair came to mind, so did loneliness and confusion. What other kinds of darkness are there? Where are the dark places I’ve known or known people to encounter in life? What would someone do if the torch went out in his or her life? I came up with another solution, “Unless someone else came by with a light. Someone else could bring a light,” I offered. He smiled. I was hooked. “That’s what you do. You come around here and shed a little light. Sometimes we don’t even know we’re in the dark until somebody comes by with a light, if you know what I mean.” I did know what he meant. Mr. Morgan was talking about shining the light of Christ into the dark corners of our world. This light can be taken for granted by those of us already basking in its glow. Sometimes we need a ray of darkness to call us from a place of certainty to a further journey with God. But to people fumbling around in the dark night of their own souls the dim glow of God’s grace and love is all they need. To people who have let themselves get disconnected from God even a glimmer of the true light can make all the difference, overshadowing them with God’s love. However, to see Mr. Morgan as being in the darkness and chaplains as bringing all the light misses something vital. My ministry at St. Elizabeths was not a case of me being the one with all the light and Mr. Morgan the one with all the darkness. Your ethics studies this weekend should have revealed that life is never quite that simple. The deeper truth is that we find the light of Christ in those to whom we bring it. We can always meet the God we want to share in the people with whom we wish to share God. When I first went onto Mr. Morgan’s ward at St. Elizabeths, I was the stranger. At first Mr. Morgan sat back, warily watching. But then, he reached out to me. I was the stranger and he offered me hospitality. He began to look for me to visit the ward, to welcome me. He shared with me other clients’ concerns and introduced me to new people on the ward. In his hospitality, I saw the light of Christ and reflected some of that light back to him. I did not go to St. Elizabeths as the one with all the gifts, trying to shed light among people in the dark. I went in all my brokenness to St. Elizabeths. I took my own inadequacy, my fears and apprehension about working with severely mentally ill persons. But thankfully ministry does not depend on my adequacy or yours. Ministry is a work of the Holy Spirit. For those with eyes to see, even in the dingy wards of a large, poorly funded public mental hospital, the light of Christ shone brightly. I am confident that you leave this weekend with new insights and knowledge. I trust that you also leave having connected or reconnected with one another, which is as important. And I hope that you leave having let God break into your current understanding with a ray of darkness, calling you further into the mystery which is life lived with the Holy Trinity. As we continue our worship, we will be overshadowed once more with God’s love in receiving Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist. Then we will be empowered to go back out into a lost and hurting world ready to reflect the light of Christ already present in the darkest of places. Amen.
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