Darkness

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
September 12, 2021

19 Proper B 

          The morning sky was a brilliant blue and I was looking forward to a meeting with some colleagues in a town about a 40-minute drive from home.  I was enjoying the day and mindlessly listening to my country station on the radio, when a voice broke in to announce that a small plane had hit the World Trade Center.  My first thought was that the weather in New York City must be pretty awful for a small plane to hit such a towering building.  But by the time I arrived at my meeting, clearly pilot error was not the problem, nor was the weather.  My colleagues and I quickly realized that we needed to head back to our respective churches and figure out what we should do.

          On the way back to the church, I stopped at the gas station and topped off my tank.  I ran by the bank to get enough cash to buy groceries and other necessities for a few weeks, and then went to the grocery store to stock up.  On the one hand, these were practical actions to care for my family in the face of great uncertainty about the future.  On the other hand, I will freely admit that I was acting on fear of the unknown, wanting to feel like I had some control over my life when everything seemed to be spinning out of control.  On a beautiful fall day and in an instant, our world had changed in fearful unimaginable ways.

          I felt much the same way in the days before Covid-19 shut down much of life.  I went to the gas station, the bank, and the grocery store so that Don and I would have what we needed in the event that stores closed, or supplies were disrupted, or we got sick.  And again, on the one hand, these were practical actions of preparation.  And on the other hand, fear of the unknown was driving a lot of my actions as life spun out of control.  All of a sudden, our world had changed again in fearful ways we had never imagined.

          The people for whom Mark’s gospel was originally written were also in a frightful situation.  When the gospel was written, the Romans were either about to destroy Jerusalem and the temple or had already done so.  Either way, military occupation was a fearsome reality and the Romans had little use for Jews or Christians.  The great hope of Christians was that Jesus would return and save his followers from the Romans, but that was not happening.  Where was Jesus when his followers so desperately needed him?

          This morning, we hear Jesus say to his disciples “Who do people say that I am?”  We are a little more than halfway through Mark’s gospel.  Jesus has been preaching, teaching, and healing his way through the cities and the countryside.  Who do people say that Jesus is?  Clearly the people hold Jesus in high esteem as they believe him to be John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets, any one of whom would have had to return from the dead to be Jesus.  Then Jesus asks “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter replies “You are the Messiah.”  But instead of saying “Right answer!” Jesus commands the disciples to tell no one about him.

          Why?  Perhaps because Peter has the right title but the wrong identity.  When Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah, perhaps Peter is thinking of someone who is going to right all wrongs, end Roman occupation, and restore Israel to her former glory.  But Jesus teaches his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be killed, and after three days rise again.  Peter only hears the part about great suffering and being killed.  This is clearly not in Peter’s Messiah job description for he rebukes Jesus for even thinking such a thing.  Jesus replies with perhaps the harshest statement Jesus ever makes in the gospels.  “Get behind me Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

          In times of darkness, whether after 9/11, or in the midst of a global pandemic, or in whatever personal or systemic darkness we might find ourselves, Jesus asks us “Who do you say that I am?”  We can all too easily think, like Peter, and like James and John who will soon ask to sit on the right and left hands of Jesus in glory, that if we are faithful in following Jesus, there should be no darkness.  But Jesus says “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  In telling the disciples that he will undergo great suffering, and be killed, and after three days rise again, Jesus is telling the disciples and us, that as the Messiah, the anointed one of God, he will go through the challenges, through the darkness, even through death, and not around it, but that the darkness will not have the final word.  In telling the disciples, and us, to take up our cross and follow him, Jesus is telling us to take up our cross, the cross with which we were anointed in baptism, the cross of Christ and follow him.  Jesus will go first into the darkness, not around the darkness, and Jesus calls us to trust and follow where he leads.  Jesus never says following him will be easy, or painless, or risk-free. Jesus says “Those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will save it.” 

          In the darkness, Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am?”  In the darkness, Jesus reminds us that there is no darkness he has not already encountered in his suffering and death, and that after three days he did rise again.  In the darkness, Jesus calls us to follow where he leads, which is through the darkness, not around it, and to remember that darkness, hatred and death did not have the final say.  Love, light, and life won, as Jesus said they would.  In the darkest of times, Jesus calls us to be people who follow Jesus, whose very lives demonstrate in all we say and do that even in the darkest of times, love, light and life have won.

                                                                             Amen.