Easter V April 20th, AD 2008
Meadowvale
Lutheran Church
Mississauga,
Pastor Peter Lisinski
"LIGHTING
OUR DARKNESS.'
(Texts:
I Peter 2:2-10; John 14.1-14)
Social
analysts with deeper insight than I have -- for example, the Jewish psychiatrist
and holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, and the Lutheran philosopher and
professor, Paul Tillich (two of my personal favourites) -- identify doubt about
life's meaning and despair over life’s purpose as the most characteristic anxieties
people face today. And I suspect
that all of us have known such times of doubt and despair. But they are not really unique to our modern age.
St. John of the Cross, the sixteenth century mystic for whom the Roman
Catholic Church down the street is named, coined the phrase "dark night of
the soul" to describe his own times of spiritual turmoil.
And
there are lots of things that can contribute to such times of darkness in our
lives: injury or disease; war and
violence; natural disaster; broken relationships; financial hardship; loneliness
or grief; fear or guilt; being a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs! ...
And, no matter how long our list may already be, there's always one more
thing to add to it: the very
darkest of all dark nights of the soul -- the darkness of death that waits to
engulf us all! But it is precisely
there that the Easter promise of the Gospel speaks most hopefully!
On
the very darkest night of his own soul -- the night in which he was betrayed;
the eve of his crucifixion -- Jesus comforted his fearful disciples:
"Do not let your hearts be troubled.
In my Father's house there are many rooms.
I go to prepare a place for you. And
I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be
also."
In
the powerlessness of his own death -- a powerlessness he freely chose out of
divine love for us --Jesus Christ reveals the ultimate power of God's love to
heal all the forces of illness and death at work within us, and to overcome
all the obstacles of sin and evil standing between us and the salvation of
God. By his death on the cross,
Jesus brings the life-giving Spirit of God into our deaths. And by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus brings us into
the life-giving presence of his, and our, heavenly Father, in whose divine image
we have been created, and by whose divine grace we have been redeemed.
In the very moments of our life's deepest darkness, God in Jesus Christ comes to us, remains with us, and leads us to the place in God's eternal presence he has prepared for us by his death and resurrection. Remember the promise St. Peter proclaims today. "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light!" Life can have no nobler meaning or worthier purpose than that!