A sermon on Genesis 28: 10-19a; Psalm 139:1-12; 23-4; Romans 8: 12-25 & Matthew 13: 24-30; 36-43 by Jill Manton

Earlier this year, I was on holidays in a remote place on the coast. The nearby houses were unoccupied and I was alone with the sea and sky at my door. It was wonderful. But one night as I sat reading, the electricity suddenly failed. There were no candles and I was plunged into thick darkness for nearly an hour. It was a disorienting experience, not helped by the noise of gun fire coming from a nearby military base! I could not see, I did not know what was happening. Moving about was difficult and I wondered whether I would have light again that night.

I reflected that it is easy to understand why darkness has become an appropriate metaphor for some of our life experiences! Some events come upon us swiftly, without warning – sudden illness, death, retrenchment .We are shocked, disoriented, often ill-prepared and frightened. Emotionally, psychologically, spiritually – it is dark.

At other times this darkness comes upon us more slowly – we gradually realise that it is no longer light and we wonder when and how this happened – the disintegration of a relationship, the disillusionment of faith, the foolish lifestyle we have developed, deep prolonged suffering of some kind. Either way, we can’t see where we are going, or even where we are. We are frightened, bewildered and we wonder if it will always be like this. The description of darkness is apt.

Sometimes, we long for darkness – for obscurity, for a hiding place from the demands of life, faith and God. A place where we can rest a while, or cover the foolish or wrong things we have said and done in a cloak of anonymity.

The different experiences of darkness which come to us raise the nagging question “where is God in the darkness?” and the fearful thought ”will the darkness engulf us finally?” Will the light be extinguished altogether?

In one way or another, the Scripture readings this evening uncover some of the darkness we encounter in our ordinary lives. The psalm may be understood as a response to the readings and at its centre are words which may help deepen our appreciation of the stories of faith we have heard tonight.

“If I say surely the darkness shall cover me
and the light around me become night
even the darkness is not dark to you
for darkness is as light to you” (Psalm 139:11-12)

Listen to those stories of faith again

The story of Jacob’s dream

We travel with the young Jacob, who is fleeing with haste from the anger of his brother Esau, the disillusionment and grief of his father Isaac(both of whom he has mercilessly deceived) and from the comforting presence of his mother who colluded in and helped develop his treachery. He is alone, weary, frightened, troubled in conscience and on a very uncertain journey. Night falls in a foreign place and the fugitive finds himself a stone for a pillow and rolls over into exhausted sleep, hoping no doubt that the cover of darkness will protect him from the pursuit of those seeking vengeance and from the eyes of God.

Not only the physical darkness of night engulfs him – but emotional and spiritual darkness too – the experience of alienation from family, the sense of having violated relationships of trust and offended against the justice and truth of God, the fear of retaliation and judgment. There is confusion too as to how he got himself into this mess and the part his mother played in it all. These realities weigh on him heavily. In addition, these circumstances have thrust him out on an unexpected journey – ill prepared and with ambivalent feelings – excited at the prospect of new places and adventures, fearful of the unknown and his inexperience – hoping, yet at the same time dreading that he can escape from God, the Holy One

He dreams strangely – sees a ladder reaching from heaven to earth with angelic beings moving up and down its rungs. When he wakes he is amazed. Here in this place of loneliness, fear, guilt and an uncertain future – he finds the Presence of the Holy One and receives a blessing and reassurance that surpasses the wildest dreams of his waking hours. “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!”
At a very dark moment in his life, Jacob was utterly surprised by God – the silence filled with the Word, the darkness with a kind of light, the stillness with dancing, the emptiness with Presence.

He was catapulted into the experience the psalmist sings about
“Even the darkness is not dark to you”

The story of the wheat and the weeds

We sit again with people in each generation and listen to the parable Jesus told about what the kingdom of heaven is like. A farmer woke one morning to the worrying news that the field of good wheat which he had planted so carefully was polluted with a large amount of weeds all growing robustly amidst the ripening grain. What is to be done to ensure the wheat is not lost amidst the weeds? How can the farmer best ensure a good harvest?

In our times, perhaps the story might have been about the unfortunate shareholder
who wakes one morning to the news of corporate deception and massive fraud which threatens to swallow her life’s savings and the financial security she had planned for retirement! Jesus’story raises what we may describe as the human experience of finding the darkness of evil mixed up inseparably with goodness. “Why is this so?” we ask, or like the people in Jesus’ story, “where then did these weeds come from?”

As we mature in faith and life, we realise that the mixture of weeds and wheat exists within us as well as in the external circumstances of life Although to a certain extent, we become accustomed to this reality, it is always a shock to awaken one morning to a deeper realisation of the presence of evil in ourselves and in the world. Like the servants in Jesus’ story who were obviously familiar with weeds growing among the wheat, our shock comes from a fuller realisation of the size and extent of the invasive plants and of their threat to the good grain.

Like the servants we are perplexed and fearful in the face of this realisation. What can be done? Will the wheat be strangled by the weeds? Are our hopes of goodness being greater than evil, being dismantled before our very eyes?

Jesus’ story tells of the farmer’s decision not to uproot everything in an attempt to rid the field of the weeds, but to allow both weeds and wheat to grow until harvest time, when the difference will be clear and the weeds more easily identified and disposed of without harm to the precious wheat. The story does not so much encourage tolerance as assure the listeners that evil will be dealt with appropriately by God and that goodness will not be destroyed. It reassures the hearers, that God is not overcome by evil, and nor will the followers of God be consumed by it finally. There is also a caution to the servants that it is not their ultimate responsibility to purge the world of evil.

We are reminded that there are many harvests throughout our life-time, as well as the final harvest at the end of time. There is wisdom in recognising the weeds amongst the wheat, wisdom in waiting until the growth of both distinguishes each from the other more clearly, so that both may be dealt with appropriately. There is hope in the the strong reassurance that the wheat will be harvested successfully.

Within our Christian tradition, this hope is anchored in the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Writing in the 16th Century in Spain, Teresa of Avila tried to describe this:
“let’s suppose that God is like an immense and beautiful palace and that this palace…is God Himself. Could the sinner, so as to engage in his evil deeds leave this palace? No certainly not; rather, within the palace itself, that is within God Himself, the abominations, indecent actions and evil deeds committed by us sinners take place. Oh, frightful thought and worthy of deep reflection and very beneficial for us…
Let us consider ..the mercy and compassion of God in not immediately destroying us there… The greatest evil of the world is that God, our Creator, suffers so many evil things from his creatures within His very self”
(St Teresa of Avila: The Interior Castle)

Is not this the revelation of the Cross? That all our evil takes place in God and is held there and redeemed? In this alone is our hope for deliverance from destruction and our planting in life.
“Even the darkness is not dark to you”

The story of Creation and Transformation told to the church in Rome:

We sit as the descendants of those first Christians in Rome. With them, we listen carefully to words of the apostle Paul. Like us, those people were confronted with the stark reality of suffering in their personal lives and the life of the known world. Unlike us, they were also confronted with the fear and suffering of persecution for their faith. The apostle Paul, aware of his pastoral responsibilty for them, wrestles with the dark mystery of suffering in our lives and the hard questions it raises for us.

Paul reaches as deeply as he can into his own human experience of suffering and of God. He hears the personal cries of anguish which permeate the universe and the terrible communal wails of the larger creation. But within and behind these he hears the deeper groaning of God who is like a woman in the throes of hard labour – bringing forth people and a world transformed and alive with the glory of God. The vision of that glory helps sustain him in the dark hours of suffering. The knowledge of God with us, bringing to birth new life gives him needed courage and endurance.

Seventeen centuries after Paul, George Fox was undergoing his own struggle with the suffering and evil he encountered in life. It threatened to overwhelm him, when unexpectedly he received a vision from God which transformed his life and sent him out in energy and hope to preach the Gospel and to live an active life of justice and mercy. He was the founding father of the Quakers. In his journal of 1647, he describes the vision which transformed his life –
. “I saw … that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but also an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that I saw the infinite love of God;” (George Fox : Journal 1647)

Some final thoughts

“If I say, surely the darkness will cover me
And the light around me become night
Even the darkness is not dark to you”
For darkness and light are both alike to you”

Like all poetry, the psalmist’s words may be understood at many levels and we have only begun to touch some of these. What they certainly do not infer, is that the darkness does not matter, or that it is not real. On the contrary, the darkness is taken very seriously.

We are invited into an encounter with the God who engages the darkness in costly ways and redeems its destruction. We are reminded that God is not overcome by darkness and enfolds us also in this reality.

We see too, that darkness cannot conceal from God the things we would like to hide. In this sense, the text is confronting and disturbing and invites us to change. But in this experience, we find that the God who confronts us with truth and justice, invites us to choose life and promises to help and bless us in that choice.