The Park Road Pulpit

The man was pulled from the sea, his body riddled with bullet wounds. Once on deck, a curious crew found a faint pulse but no identification. Inside the fishing vessel this stranger was slowly, tenderly nursed to consciousness. The crew was anxious to know his name, to learn his story. But when he awoke, his English tongue was foreign to theirs, and, though they managed a broken communication, he could tell them nothing.. Whatever trauma had sent him into the sea had also taken his memory. Their anxious desire to know his story, became his own anxiety.

With this opening scene, the main character of Robert Ludlum’s, “The Bourne Identity,” recently made into a motion picture, thus began a journey toward his identity. As Jason Bourne left the safety of the boat that had saved his life, he quickly became aware that he was a wanted man. Not knowing who he was, however, he had no way of knowing who was after him, or why. Adrenalin surged, and as he fled for safety, he watched, carefully, for any clue, which might make the picture of his life come into focus. He came to recognize that survival was his strength. That running was his game. That in some previous life he had been trained for danger.

Piecing together the life-and-death puzzle of his own identity, as one “hard day’s night” began to fall, in the darkness that encroached, his senses alerted him to another dim reality. Though I can’t quote it verbatim, one line from the novel has stuck with me for over twenty years. As that night fell, his body relaxed, and in the shadows of darkness, he found peace. He recognized that in some strange way, the night was his home. It was a Lesson in Darkness.

Fearful though most of us may be of darkness, it can be a wonderful teacher. As it did for the fictional character, Jason Bourne, the darkness awakens our senses and calls for a subtle, but vital watchfulness. Our scriptures for today speak of two, very different, but equally important Lessons in Darkness. Both are instructive to us as we ask that all-important question, “Who am I?”

The first is a lesson, which I will call the “darkness of an unknown welcome.” It is a lesson that gives little comfort. A lesson which many choose to deny, or ignore. It is the lesson of God’s judgment.[1]

I have turned again this week to the wisdom of Kathleen Norris, as she writes of her own uncomfortable experience with this word. Concerning another of Matthew’s parables of judgment, she says,

[This story] confused me because my grandmother Norris seemed to love it for the very reason that I found it terrifying. She often spoke of Jesus as a thief who would come in the night and destroy the world, her voice trembling with excitement at the thought of a final harvest, when weeds would be burned up by fierce, implacable angels.”[2]

Many of us, in our religious sophistication, have chosen to relegate “judgment” to the realm of the revival tent preacher. To the hellfire and damnation theology of a faith we have long since discarded. As one who searches the Bible, regularly, for a Word from God, I find no room for preaching as a fear-filled, guilt-inducing indictment against our humanity, for it is the very weakness of our (very) fallen-ness that is the perfect platform for God’s perfect love.[3] I was taught in seminary that in scripture judgment is never pronounced without a corresponding offer of Grace. Judgment always comes with a hint, however subtle, that God’s mercy is, and will always be, the final word.

But… there is no love without judgment. There is no forgiveness without judgment. There is no life without judgment. Judgment is discernment. Decision. Choice. (We tell our children they must learn to judge wisely. To choose their friends, carefully. To make mature, decisions. Because bad things do happen, even to good people.) In Matthew’s vocabulary “judgment” is separating the wheat from the tares, the sheep from goats. Judgment divides the wise from the foolish.

There is no love without judgment, for love without sacrifice is no love at all. And sacrifice involves demanding discernment, deliberate decision, costly choice. Judgment is intrinsic to every act of love.

There is no forgiveness without judgment. For forgiveness means knowing, rightly, that I have been wronged – and, yet choosing reconciliation over retaliation. Judgment is implicit in every act of forgiveness.[4]

There is no life without judgment. This is simple fact. Again, I quote Kathleen Norris:

The idea of judgment, of being called to account for the way we have lived in the world, is solemn, and terrifying. But as I began to read and meditate on the gospel story, I could appreciate the way that [the parables] were being used to convey a truth of human psychology.”[5]

The philosopher might argue that there can be no light if there is no darkness. No goodness if there is no evil. How could we know that something is “true,” if nothing were ever “untrue?”[6] In the same way, the scriptures recognize the stark, inevitable[7] reality of God’s judgment, even in the presence of a God who is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”[8]

In Jesus’ parable of judgment, the five foolish virgins experience the “darkness of an unknown welcome” because they have lived unprepared. When they returned, with replenished lamps, the bridegroom will not open the door -- “I do not know you.”

It is frightening to be “unknown.” If you have ever moved to a new city or joined a new church, where no one knew you, you know this can be the case. Marianne Anderson said to me after Friday’s funeral for Byron Hamrick. “I did not know Byron as you described him in your eulogy, and it is terribly sad that this is so often the case. We need to learn to live lives that are not hidden from each other.”

The Apostle Paul talked of faith as “knowing and being known.”[9] And so it is when we find ourselves in the “darkness of an unknown welcome” that we must ask the honest questions: “Who is it that does not know me? And, why? My spouse? My children? My colleagues? Do I even know myself?” Perhaps the most frightening of all questions is implied in Jesus’ parable: “Does God know me?” It is only when the darkness of an unknown welcome comes, that we can ask such questions honestly.

The second lesson is perhaps no less terrifying, but it is a different kind of darkness altogether. The Old Testament scholars whose work we read tell us that “history,” as recorded in our Bibles is given for only one purpose: that “Every generation [might] know God’s sovereignty and God’s sovereign claim, not simply as a matter of information but as a matter of life-saving hope.”[10] In other words, the Bible is not about facts and figures, not about “history” as we understand it at all. The Bible is about a Truth that is greater than any “fact” can ever contain. The scriptures make the un-provable yet indisputable claim that “God Is.” Sometimes this is all the Truth we can claim to know.

The Psalmist makes this claim in the form of speaking “dark sayings from of old.” It is the great wisdom of the ages. It is known-yet-unknown wisdom. A wisdom which we must deliver it to our children.

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.[11]

The second Lesson in Darkness is what I call the “darkness of an unknown wisdom.” It is the ancient Truth of God. It is the Great Mystery. I learned something early this morning. I thought that a fact was, by definition, something that had been, or could be “proven,” empirically. But I learned that a fact is, “information presented as objectively real… Something having real, demonstrable existence.”[12]

How will your children know that God is real? That love, and not brute force,[13] is this world’s greatest power? That mercy, and not judgment, is always the last word? They will know that God is real only as you make God real to them. We must not hide this dark wisdom from our children.

In my preaching, as in my life, I wrestle with the dark reality of God, so I proclaim to you this day the reality and love of God. It is a fact, a reality made known to us through Jesus Christ. It is a fact, a reality made known to the children of the world through your own testimony. I proclaim to you that this is reality. Not as a doctrine to memorize, but as a discipline to live. Not a rule to follow, but a relationship to experience. Not as a formula to fill, but as a faith which is often found in the moments of life’s great darkness.

Our good friend, Roger Lovette, is a retired minister who for all his years of writing sermons has slept with a notebook at his bedside. He finds that his best ideas come when he is relaxed by the peace of night, and his mind is free to learn Lessons in Darkness. Awakened by Truth, he writes down what he has been taught. I think this is a remarkable testimony to a deep spirituality.

It is in the darkness of an unknown welcome (in God’s judgment), that my true self is revealed. It is in the darkness of an unknown wisdom (in God’s love), that we discover the reality of ancient Truth.

[1] Many people are uncomfortable with the word, itself. Someone told me yesterday, that she appreciated the sermon, but preferred to use the word “accountability.” I maintain the use of the biblical word, fraught though it may be with the “baggage” of poor theology.

[2] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace, A Vocabulary of Faith, “Judgment,” p. 316.

[3] Paul calls this love, “power.” “My grace is sufficient for you, for (my) power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12.9). In his book, Suffering: A Test of Theological Method, the late Arthur McGill says, “’Force is no attribute of God’ – that is the basic principle for the Trinitarian theologians. God’s divinity does not consist in his ability to push things around, to make and break, to impose his will from the security of some heavenly remoteness, and to sit in grandeur while all the world does his bidding. Far from staying above the world, he sends his own glory into it. Far from imposing, he invites and persuades… God acts toward the world in this way because within himself he is a life of self-giving” p.82.

[4] I chose to include “forgiveness” here, specifically, because of some recent dialogue with a church member on this very subject. She, being reluctant to talk of the “judgment of God,” suggests that forgiveness does not imply judgment. I’m working out part of my argument against her position here!

[5] Norris, p. 316.

[6] This whole sermon is, I think, a philosophical argument on the concept of judgment as an intrinsic aspect of our humanity. As a sermon, it was probably too heavy, too heady. Perhaps it reads better as an apologetic, a philosophically based defense of God’s love over God’s judgment – but with the recognition of the inherent aspect of judgment in all of life, and therefore in God’s life as well.

[7] I considered using the word “necessary,” but hesitated, fearing the implication that if evil is “necessary,” then God is also responsible for evil. My friend, the late Dr. Gene Owens, suggests just this, that God has a “dark side.” God, being God, is, then, intrinsically “responsible” for all that is. Good and evil. On this, see Isaiah 45.7, “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things.” The Hebrew word for “woe” is ra, which is also translated, “evil.”

[8] This phrase is used many times throughout the Hebrew scripture. In its first usage in Exodus 34.6 ff. it is cited as a quotation, indicating that it comes from a very ancient liturgy.

[9] 1 Corinthians 13.12

[10] J. Clinton McCann, Jr., The New Interpreter’s Bible, “Psalms,” p. 991.

[11] Quoted in Meditations by Thomas Moore, p. 86.

[12] The American Heritage College Dictionary

[13] See footnote #3, above.

[14] Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, “The Sound of Silence.”