“A time of darkness”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Monday, December 16, 2024
Luke 22: 39-53 (Forward, p. 48) CEV p. 1094
It is certainly appropriate that people have commonly used the image of darkness, darkness as of the night, as aptly expressing those dismal and frightening times of life. These times are so uncertain and unnerving that we often experience such times as being dark and dismal and lacking the light of hope and clarity.
In today’s passage there are two episodes of ‘darkness’. The first is the darkness of soul that Jesus encountered, a time of pain and sorrow, a time of wrestling with the will of God. Thinking of Jesus as being fully God, we can often fall into the trap of thinking that submitting to the will of God was always that came easily for Him, that He never had to struggle with it. And, perhaps this was true, for the most part. But here, in facing up to the Cross, and submitting to it, there was something entirely different. He would know, not only the pain and anguish and the suffering that it entails, but He would also know sin, sin in its fulness, and experience the separation from God that it brings about. This would have been something that He had never experienced before, and its prospect was harrowing, daunting, frightening. This was a darkness as He’d never known it before. This was an interior darkness, but there was an exterior darkness as well, His betrayal at the hands of a trusted friend and disciple, Judas, and His arrest at the hands and bidding of a jealous, vindictive, and ruthless Jerusalem hierarchy. The powers of darkness were certainly in control at this turn of events.
So, what are we to ‘take’ from all this? Firstly, I would suggest that none of this came as a surprise to Jesus. He knew what was ‘in man’s heart’ and what we humans are capable of. And, most assuredly, He knew what was afoot. Moreover, He just ‘let it be’, as it were, submitted to it. He knew that it, this present darkness, did not have ‘the last word.’ As the Prologue to John’s Gospel reminds us, ‘the light shone in the darkness and the darkness was not able to overcome it’. The light of Christ dispels, overcomes, defeats, even the worst darkness of our world, whether that be on a more global or communal level, or in our own individual lives. And what great news this is, to each one of us. Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives” (verse 39).
“Our kitchen table wasn’t particularly special, just a small, square mahogany table with pits and grooves. I did homework at that table, ate meals, and argued with my brother. I played hide-and-seek and even carved my initials underneath it (don’t tell my mother). I loved that table. It was almost like a member of the family.
“As an adult, I learned that the table had been made by my grandmother’s grandfather, who was enslaved at the time of its construction. That table is a tangible connection to my ancestors. Each time I sit at it, I remember those who came before me and how, through their struggle, they allowed me to take up the mantle.
“Before Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives, he breaks bread with his disciples and invites them to remember. Each time we gather at Christ’s table, we sit in the Upper Room with Jesus and the disciples and we remember. I often think of the ministers and people who have said this same prayer—and imagine the ones who will come after me, who will take up the words, the prayers, the bread.”
Moving Forward: “What item in your home connects you to your ancestors?”