God in Darkness (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

September 11, 2013

God in the Darkness

“Then Solomon said, 

‘The Lord has said that he

would dwell in thick darkness.’” (1 Kings 8:12-13)

“Truly you are a God who hides himself.” (Isaiah 45:15)

Today is the twelfth anniversary of terrorist attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York City.  A friend of mine sent me a message today, saying, simply, “It’s a dark day, hard for me to get through.”  He was living in New York 12 years ago, and lives there again now, and lost friends in the attack. 

I have told elsewhere the story of what happened to me on that day (http://www.ellipticalglory.blogspot.com/2011/09/font-face-font-family-times-new-romanp.html).  I know that many of our parishioners have sad stories to tell of that day, or of other horrors they have experienced.  I don’t want to talk about the details of these stories here, but rather about what the darkness we sometimes see in life has to do with our faith. 

Some people say that the problem of evil—the darkness, atrocity, and horror in life—is the reason they cannot believe in the existence of God.   I think, however, that the very fact that evil horrifies us is a sign that there’s something or someone more out there than just what we see before us.   Though it may make us doubt at times the proposition “there is a God,” it actually triggers in us yearning and desire, the basis of giving our heart to, of “believing” in God.   God must always be experienced as a “Thou,” not as an “it.” 

In her profound book Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil tells the story of two prisoners in solitary confinement whose cells are next to each other.  A stone wall separates them and they never have seen the other.  But over years, they discover each other’s existence and learn to communicate using taps and scratches.   The very wall that separates them is their sole means of communicating. “It is the same with us and God,” she says. “Every separation is a link.”

Nietszche, that pure example of heroic modernism, of godless honesty and will to power and giving sense to what is meaningless, says that if you stare into the Abyss long enough, the Abyss stares back.  Poet Christian Wiman takes this image further and turns it inside out.  For him, the “Bright Abyss” is God, whom we desperately desire because he is absent, and yet is constantly with us in our desiring. 

Dark things and dark days are not justified or justifiable.  But they can be redeemed. The Beatitudes of Jesus all find blessedness in some kind of horror: hunger, poverty, broken hearts.  The Absent God is present in his apparent distance.   Far off, yet near, but to the Presence bent, we are pilgrims walking in a desert land.   Our pillar of fire by night and cloud by day, our God who “has chosen to dwell in darkness,” and “who hides himself” is always speaking to our heart, if only in our inchoate yearning for something better that what is before our eyes.     

Letting ourselves be drawn to that mysterious yet fascinating Other is the beginning of trust and faith. 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+