The Powers of Darkness

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
April 7, 2023

Good Friday

          Heavy on my heart this Holy Week is the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville last week.  Don and I lived in Nashville not far from that church while we were in graduate school and we worshipped there one Sunday when I had an assignment to worship at a church in a tradition other than my own.  One of the children killed was the daughter of the pastor, and the sister of the substitute teacher killed was a friend of one of our own parishioners.  The powers of darkness had won, once again, and this time with very few degrees of separation.

          Tonight, we heard the account of the passion of Jesus in John’s gospel.  In the beginning of that gospel, we hear the words “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We hear the ending of the story before the story is even told.  On this Good Friday, as we wait and watch with the dead body of Jesus, as we live in a world where terrorists, violence, fear and suspicion seem to win way more often than not, how are we to live as followers of Christ and bear witness to a story in which light ultimately triumphs?

          I am sometimes asked what it means to be a Christian.  While being a Christian does mean patterning our lives after the life of Jesus, that is not the primary meaning.  There are a great many people after whom we would do well to pattern our lives. But being a Christian is fundamentally different from simply trying to live like someone we admire.  At the most primary level, being a Christian means that I am not defined by the sum total of my success minus my failures or vice versa, and certainly not by anything that happens to me or in the world, good or bad.  As Christians, we are defined by the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Our baptismal liturgy tells us that in baptism we are joined with Christ in his death and resurrection.  We are people who follow a crucified AND risen Lord. 

          On Good Friday, our liturgy holds together death and resurrection.  We will hear “We glory in your cross, O Lord, and praise and glorify your holy resurrection; for by virtue of you cross, joy has come into the world.”  On this holy and somber night, when the powers of death and hell have taken their best shot, we hold fast to the belief that the darkness cannot overcome the light.  The death of Jesus is real.  Evil is named, not denied.  But even on Good Friday as we stand before the cross and witness the power of evil at work, and the pain and horror evil causes, we praise and glorify the resurrection, bearing witness to the light.

          Jesus was not alone at the cross.  Good Friday calls us to gather at the cross with Jesus as did Mary, Mary’s sister, Mary Magdalene, and the disciple whom Jesus loved, and be people who can look evil in the eye without living in the shadow of fear.   Good Friday calls us to gather at the cross and not look away as Jesus gives up his spirit, recognizing those places where we are complicit in the forces of darkness and fail to receive the gift of Jesus’ life, which no one took from him but which Jesus gave out of his great love for humankind.  Good Friday calls us to tend to the broken body of Jesus as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea did, tending with the same extravagant loving care to those who are victims of violence, injustice, and hate in our own world.  In the midst of the pain and grief wrought by the powers of darkness, in the midst of this Good Friday world, we are called, not to deny the power of evil, but to be the very embodiment of the words “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We are called to let our lives be defined by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

                                                          Amen.