glory in the dark

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN
and at St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN
FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
(May 18^th) 2025

  

READINGS

 

Psalm 1482012 04 06 2240a

Revelation 21: 1-6

John 13: 31-35

 

As a small boy growing up in Africa and England, and then in the bleak realms of a New Zealand boarding school, I was terrified of the dark. Perhaps I still am, but more of that later.

If we were hearing the entire gospel as told by John, we would moments ago have heard his telling narrative comment “It was dark.”

Darkness is such a visceral place for human beings. I remember those childhood terrors of the night. The sounds of the unknown from somewhere outside.

I was a ridiculously hypersensitive child. It didn’t stop as I entered adulthood. I don’t think it ever stopped. By now many of you will know, because I mention it ad nauseum, I will after leaving you head off for my circumnavigation of Australia. Much of it I have covered before, covered it in the same way, sleeping in tents, in a car, on a swag, even on the roof of the car. To do so is to feel the pressure of the night and its loneliness. What is out there just beyond the edge of the light?

But not just Australia’s vast lonely places! To be alone in vastness is always confronting. My trip is not particularly dangerous at all, but the human psyche does not always deal in realities. 

Urban landscapes too can be places of terror, sometimes rightly so. There are many parks I would not cross or roads I would not traverse in the darkness of the night. The Whakatipu is one of few places on earth that I’ve meandered around night time streets without my heart in my mouth.

Ironically that has more to do with socio-economic factors. Low crime because low desperation, because low degrees of random violence on the roads and lanes of these towns. I can name many places in New Zealand and Australia where, in the words of Simon and Garfunkel, I would not wander after dark. I can think of places I would not wander by day, too, though mainly overseas, for we are spoilt here.

It was dark, John tells us. Dark because Jesus is about to confront, even be overcome, by demons of jealousy, disappointment, hatred and a legion more. It was dark. Yet Jesus speaks of love and glory. The  word “glory” draws heavily on the pillar of fire, the light in the darkness, that once guided the people of God through the Sinai wilderness.

And here we are in the Easter celebration season, with altar cloths of white and gold and hymns full of light and joy, yet John tells us it was dark. I even double checked to make sure I had the right readings. The psalm is full of joy, the anthem full of joy, the Revelation reading full of future joy. “It was dark” is not the final word.

This is a brief reminder of the places into which Jesus went to complete his work that we call salvation. We can’t grasp the magnitude of the descent that he made in those 24, 36 hours. On Easter morning we celebrate the darkness being overcome by light. Turn on our news feeds and we know that the darkness remains astronomically great in Gaza, Myanmar, the Sudans. Or in Eastern Europe, and now the India-Pakistan borders, where temporary ceasefires and prisoner swaps may be no more than a parenthesis in hostility.

As the Fourth Gospel was being written the author was not lounging back with a glass of port and a fine cigar. He and most of the New Testament writers knew terror, knew their own vulnerability, the precariousness of their position. They knew these things far more then I will in a quiet jaunt around the remote roads of Australia – though I hasten to add there are one or two places I would not sleep in the back of my car or in a roadside tent.

The New Testament writers knew vulnerabilities each day far more akin to Gaza than my small-boy experience of a twig tapping on the outside of my bedroom window, or the spine-tingling chills of a deserted night time car park.

John speaks these words “it was night” before, immediately before, going on to tell of the glorification, of the unending undefeatable love revealed in Jesus’ last 36 hours.

Because the extent of the glorification of Jesus, the extent of that love is only made complete in those 36 hours. While we will face darknesses, and our sisters and brothers not only in Christ but in the human race face darknesses day by day, our forebears in faith were adamant that these were not the final word.

As a people of the light, John recalls Jesus saying, we must be a people of love.

That commission to be a people of love, of light, is given by Jesus after the resurrection. Only after Jesus has gone through the deepest valleys can light and love be anything but an apparition. Until then the tapping of the twig on the window, or the explosions of military missiles, these drown out all signs of hope. Jesus challenges and empowers us to be in our small ways bearers of light and love. In that way we communicate the glory that transforms every darkness, become bearers of the pillar of fire that enlightens every darkness.