Deliverance from a Dark Time

There are times when God does not make sense. There are times when we feel abandoned by God. There is a kind of Christianity that pretends that if we only believe, we will be saved, God will love us, and bad things will not happen to us. No Christian lives very long without coming to understand that this is too simplistic. Bad things do happen to good people. Devout Christians do go through periods of time when God seems distant.

images-1Take the case of a young woman who grows up in a Christian home, goes to a Christian college, marries her Christian boyfriend, has a Christian family, and yet is deserted by her husband in mid-life. She prays for the restoration of her marriage; but it does not happen. She prays that her children will not be injured by this abandonment; but they are. In due time, she prays for a companion; but no one appears. This dark time doesn’t last a day, or week, or year, but for a decade.

Or, take the case of a mid-level executive who devotes his life to the company. imagesHe gets good performance reviews. His loyalty is noticed and affirmed. Then, at fifty-five, when the children are in college and expenses are high, suddenly he is laid off. The company to which he was so loyal has abandoned him. Then, despite the fact he has an unblemished record, it takes a long time to find a new job. It doesn’t take a week, or month, or quarter, or even a year. It takes a year and a half, and in that time, almost all the family savings are gone. His new job pays less than the old job.

We all go through times when we pray for good things, and pray with good intentions, but God seems silent. Today, we are talking about what is sometimes called the “Dark Night of the Soul”—times when we feel abandoned by God.

The Last Week of Jesus.

For the past several weeks, we have been reading and thinking about the last twenty-four hours of Jesus’ life. During that time, Jesus experienced some of the worst things that can happen to a human being. He was betrayed. He was disappointed. He was treated unfairly. He was mocked, ridiculed, and physically tortured. Finally, he was crucified. He was on that cross in deep pain for six long hours. Today, we pick up at Matthew chapter 27, verse 45:

From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lemasabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.” Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.” And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs.  Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of Zebedee’s sons (Matthew 27:45-56).

God of Life: As we contemplate the death of Jesus, we know that there are other deaths we endure, sometimes with the feeling that we are abandoned by you. Come this morning so that we can begin to understand your presence even in your absence. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable in you sight. Amen.

The Forsaken Messiah.

On the Thursday night before Passover, Jesus was arrested. He was first taken to the home of Annas, the former High Priest and “Kingmaker” of the Jewish priestly class (John 18:22). After an interview, he was taken to the home of Caiaphas (v. 14). There, he was subjected to a trial (Matt. 26:57-67). imgres-4The Sanhedrin, or a kind of “Executive Committee” of the Sanhedrin, agreed he should be executed. At dawn, they met again briefly and formally convicted him of blasphemy (27:1). He was then sent to Pilate, who conducted yet another trial (v. 11).

Although Pilate was aware that Jesus was not guilty of a crime warranting death, the frenzy of the crowd and danger of a riot persuaded him that he would have to release Barabbas, a dangerous criminal, and execute Jesus (vv. 12-26). Pilate washed his hands of the entire affair and turned Jesus over to be flogged and crucified. After the flogging, he was taken to Golgotha, “the Place of the Skull,” to be crucified with two common criminals. A sign was put over him, “Jesus, the King of the Jews.” The criminals, the onlookers, and the leaders of the people mocked him.

The crucifixion began about 9:00 in the morning (Mark 15:25). About noon, darkness filled the earth. At about the ninth hour, or about 3:00 in the afternoon, Jesus cried out Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabbachthani, or “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). This is a direct quote from Psalm 22:1. Psalm 22, which I cannot read to you this morning, contains many verses that reflect what Jesus suffered. It reflects that scorn he endured from the crowd (Psalm 22; 6). It reflects the taunting he endured (v. 8). It reflects the opposition he endured from those in power (v. 13). It reflects the pain of the crucifixion (v. 14-15; 16). It reflects even the soldiers gambling for his clothing (v. 18).

imgresPsalm 22 is a Psalm of dereliction, which begins with a sense of God’s absence and ends with a prayer of faith and assurance. What is going on here? Some people focus on the sense of absence Jesus felt. Part of Jesus’ enduring the depth of human suffering, and especially the suffering that comes from sin and alienation from God, creation, and others, is suffering the absence of God.

The Dark Night of the Soul.

This week, I had to reacquaint myself with one of my least favorite subjects in theology. images-2Many years ago, the Carmelite brother, St. John of the Cross, coined the phrase, “the Dark Night of the Soul”. The Dark Night of the Soul is a time of spiritual dryness when God seems absent. It can come upon us for a variety of reasons. Generally however it occurs at times when we no longer experience God in ways we once did.

A Dark Night of the Soul  can be accompanied by time of disappointment, or unanswered prayers, or physical illness, or old age, or any time we feel spiritual activities or practices that gave our life meaning and purpose have failed us. When God seems absent, our lives begin to lose meaning and purpose, which can be frightful and leave us filled with doubt.

The Dark Night of the Soul is a kind of death. It is a death of an old way of relating to God, while God prepares us for something new. The great spiritual masters speak of this Dark Night as God’s presence in God’s absence. That is exactly what Jesus was experiencing on the cross.

Jesus had experienced and uninterrupted fellowship with God the Father Almighty. Now, so that human beings might be restored to fellowship with God, the Son of God, the Word made flesh, had to endure the absence of God. This was a real and true withdrawal of God from the person of the Son. It involved a real and true suffering of Jesus, which is why Jesus cried out, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).

While it is true that Jesus had to endure this for our salvation, it did not make it any easier. In the same way, when we experience times of dryness, of waiting, of unanswered prayers, of pain, of the absence of God, we are being prepared for a deeper fellowship with God. Sometimes, God has to take away things that gave our lives meaning and purpose in order for us to find our meaning and purpose in God. This is the spiritual reality behind a Dark Night of the Soul.

The Victory Cry of Jesus.

As I mentioned earlier, Psalm 22 begins with a cry of dereliction, but ends with a cry of faith. The psalmist cries out for God to deliver him and then breaks out into a song of praise as he promises to praise God’s name among God’s people (Psalm 22:19-28). It ends with these words:

All the ends of the earth  will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nation will bow down before him,
for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. 
All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him– those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn:  He has done it! (Psalm 22:27-31).

In other words, what began as a cry of agony and abandonment, ends with a cry of faith and victory.

We are told that, in the ninth hour, just after Jesus uttered words of dereliction, he gave a great shout and died (v. 50; see also, Mark 15:37, Luke 23: 46). John identifies the shout as, “It is finished” (John 19:20). imgres-2To us, this may seem to be a shout of desperation, as if he were saying, “My life is finished.” The word in Greek and in Aramaic has a somewhat different connotation. “It is finished,” means, “It is accomplished” or “It is completed.” In other words, Jesus had finished the task for which he came. It is as if he had just passed the finish line in a race, lifted his arms, and cried out, “I’m done!!” [1]

Jesus, like us, endured a dark night of the soul. And, like Jesus, our dark nights will not last forever, either. There will be a cry of victory in our lives as there was in Jesus’ life. The cry of victory, in this world or the next, is the result of having endured the Dark Night, learned its lessons, died to self, and experienced a new relationship with the Living God..

Our Victory Cry.

When I was in Brownsville, there was a man in the congregation who used to fix the sound system. He was in his 70’s when I arrived. He had retired from a position at the local bank. During his retirement, he was never in really good physical condition. In particular, his lungs were weak. One day, Walter had a major stroke. I was called to the hospital. When I walked in the room, a doctor and nurses were surrounding Walter. He was writhing on the bed. The stroke had destroyed his mental capacity, and he was struggling against approaching death. It was a pretty horrible scene.

After a time, the doctors brought me closer to the bed so that I could pray for him. I prayed a short prayer similar to one I’ve prayed with some of you. Because of his condition, I prayed both for his healing and, if he could not be healed, for Jesus to be with him. I don’t think the doctors believed that Walter could understand a word I was saying. However, all of a sudden, he lifted his hands and he began to close his fist and open first with two fingers and then with three. After a couple of times I recognized that Walter was giving me the number, 23. He was signaling me that his mind was not going and he was repeating over and over again, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).

There are times when we face great difficulties. There are times when God seems to be absent. There are times when our prayers are not answered. It is the testimony of Jesus, and of all the great saints of history, that God can be hidden from us, but he is present to us even when he seems absent from us. Jesus can sympathize with us during these times because he too faced a time when God seemed distant. While the primary meaning of Jesus death on the cross involves our salvation, it also means that God can and does suffer all that we suffer and is with us in all that we suffer until that day when we can also cry out in victory, “It is finished.”

This series has been an attempt to show that the Christian life involves living through the same experiences that God lived through for and with us in the Life and Death of Jesus. It has not been an easy or pleasant series. Next week, we will celebrate Easter with joy–the joy we have because we know that betrayal, disappointment, injustice, suffering, and abandonment do not and will not have the lats word. The last word is our assurance of life because of Easter and what Easter means.

Copyright 2016, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] See, William Barclay, “The Gospel According to Matthew” in Volume 2, The Daily Bible Study Series Rev. Ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1975), 369-370.