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Grace in the Dark-2: Jesus in the Dark · Deep-Grace Diving with Tim Wright and Terey Summers

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_01: Darkness brings up all sorts of thoughts,
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  SPEAKER_01: especially as we move toward Halloween,
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  SPEAKER_01: that thin line between human beings and the dead,
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  SPEAKER_01: horror movies,
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  SPEAKER_01: monsters under the bed,
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  SPEAKER_01: and that scary moment when God seems to have abandoned us
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  SPEAKER_01: and we find ourselves living in the dark and wondering what we've done wrong.
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  SPEAKER_01: So last week we sort of started by talking about darkness
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  SPEAKER_01: and what some people would say are mixed messages the Bible has about darkness
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  SPEAKER_01: and light, that the Bible seems to be pro-light and anti-darkness.
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  SPEAKER_01: But as we saw, it's not that simple.
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  SPEAKER_01: There are certain types of darkness where, yeah, we need light.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then there are certain types of darkness where we're called to live for a while
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  SPEAKER_01: because God is there and God is at work even though it seems dark
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  SPEAKER_01: and God seems absent.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so it's both and, it's not either or.
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  SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to look at a story.
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  SPEAKER_01: We talked a little bit last week about the dark night of the soul,
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  SPEAKER_01: where we feel abandoned by God.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that is probably one
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  SPEAKER_01: of the darkest, most human experiences that people of faith go through.
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  SPEAKER_01: I would I would hazard a guess that every person of faith will go through it
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  SPEAKER_01: at some point, but maybe not.
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  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of faith-based people do,
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  SPEAKER_01: where they go through that moment when everything is sort of stripped from them
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  SPEAKER_01: and they wonder where God is.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to look at a story today where this actually happened to Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: Now,
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  SPEAKER_01: it's interesting to note that For all of the
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  SPEAKER_01: feelings we have that the Bible's kind
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  SPEAKER_01: of anti-dark,
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  SPEAKER_01: there are a lot of stories that take place at night in the life of Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I have, this is called Jesus in the Dark.
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  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we can think about, for example, he met with Nicodemus in the dark.
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  SPEAKER_01: Nicodemus came because he didn't want to be seen.
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  SPEAKER_01: Darkness was cover for him.
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  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus met him there.
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  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, he met Jesus there in the dark.
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  SPEAKER_01: And in that moment,
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  SPEAKER_01: the light,
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  SPEAKER_01: the darkness became light,
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  SPEAKER_01: but it was the darkness that set the encounter for Jesus to begin with.
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  SPEAKER_01: We have the story of the disciples out in the boat at night.
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  SPEAKER_01: A big storm hits and a ghost comes toward them walking on the water.
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  SPEAKER_01: You know, your worst nightmares coming true.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't a ghost coming toward them walking on the water.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was Jesus coming to them in the dark, in the storm, to tell them that they were okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: They were not alone.
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  SPEAKER_01: Jesus spent many a night in prayer.
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  SPEAKER_01: So while his disciples are sleeping, Jesus is in prayer at night, in the dark.
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  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
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  SPEAKER_01: we know that The stories about the arrest of Jesus
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  SPEAKER_01: and his crucifixion all take place in darkness.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we're going to look a little bit today.
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  SPEAKER_01: I want to start with the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
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  SPEAKER_01: Just to set the stage, John, for people, Jesus is in sort of his final week.
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  SPEAKER_01: He has done some things to really hack off the religious elite,
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  SPEAKER_01: one of them cleaning out the temple.
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  SPEAKER_01: And who does he think he is to do that?
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  SPEAKER_01: He's also sort of challenged the religious leaders, called out their elitism.
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  SPEAKER_01: And finally the religious leaders have had enough and they want to get rid of Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so they find a willing accomplice in Judas who is willing to sell Jesus
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  SPEAKER_01: for 30 pieces of silver.
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  SPEAKER_01: Just as an aside, there's some debate.
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  SPEAKER_01: Did he do this because he wanted money or did he do this because he wanted to force
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  SPEAKER_01: the hand of Jesus?
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  SPEAKER_01: Because he thought Jesus was going to be a political Messiah who was going to overthrow Rome.
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  SPEAKER_01: Whatever the reason he got it wrong.
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  SPEAKER_01: So they have had the Last Supper together.
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  SPEAKER_01: They are now in the darkness at the Garden of Gethsemane.
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  SPEAKER_01: And there we know that Jesus prayed three times for God to remove what was about
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  SPEAKER_01: to happen to him, this cup of suffering that he was about to go through.
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  SPEAKER_01: And he was in such stress,
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  SPEAKER_01: according to Luke's Gospel,
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  SPEAKER_01: who was a doctor,
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  SPEAKER_01: That he began to sweat drops of blood,
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  SPEAKER_01: which some doctors suggest was a man who was under extreme pressure.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that the setting is the Garden of Gethsemane, which means grape pressing.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's where they were pressing grapes to make olive oil.
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  SPEAKER_01: You get the sense that the biblical writers are not only speaking about
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  SPEAKER_01: an actual place,
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  SPEAKER_01: but they're speaking metaphorically about what Jesus is going through.
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  SPEAKER_01: He's being pressed.
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  SPEAKER_01: He's being crushed.
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  SPEAKER_01: Already,
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  SPEAKER_01: I sort of imagine at that point,
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  SPEAKER_01: as Jesus is being pressed,
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  SPEAKER_01: that what's pressing him, what's weighing him down is the sin of the world, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: It's the brokenness of the world that he's having to absorb,
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  SPEAKER_01: the pain,
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  SPEAKER_01: all of the human stuff that started in the Garden of Eden,
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  SPEAKER_01: he begins to take on to him in the Garden of Gethsemane.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it begins to weigh on him.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then we have Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: He goes through several different trials throughout the night, takes him into the early morning.
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  SPEAKER_01: And he has now been crucified on the cross, nailed to a cross.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that brings us to Mark chapter 15.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to have John read verses 33 and 34.
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  SPEAKER_00: When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.
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  SPEAKER_00: At three o'clock,
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi,
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  SPEAKER_00: Eloi, lemma sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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  SPEAKER_01: All right.
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  SPEAKER_01: First of all, very nice pronunciation of the Aramaic.
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  SPEAKER_00: I had a good coach.
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  SPEAKER_01: So what we have here going on, again, would be, I think, both real and metaphorical.
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  SPEAKER_01: Darkness has descended on the land.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because God,
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  SPEAKER_01: the creator of the universe,
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  SPEAKER_01: somehow in some way in the person of Jesus, is dying on that cross.
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  SPEAKER_01: And the life The life giver, all of it being pulled into the darkness of death, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: And death,
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  SPEAKER_01: none of us who can speak from experience,
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  SPEAKER_01: there are some people who've had death-like experiences and so on,
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  SPEAKER_01: but death in some way,
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  SPEAKER_01: shape or form is a darkness, at least metaphorically speaking.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so you've got sort of this death-like experience hovering over in the form of darkness.
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  SPEAKER_01: You've got real darkness coming.
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  SPEAKER_01: And in the midst of that darkness, Jesus makes the cry that so many of us have.
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  SPEAKER_01: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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  SPEAKER_01: The dark night of the soul.
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  SPEAKER_01: When we need God the most, when we are most desperate, God seems to be absent.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that is a darkness that is absolutely frightening.
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  SPEAKER_01: And for those who have ever been through it before in any shape or form,
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  SPEAKER_01: it not only feels like darkness,
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  SPEAKER_01: it feels like the trap door has opened and you are just falling into nothing.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's horrible.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's a time when you feel abandoned, you feel lost.
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  SPEAKER_01: You wonder, you wonder, what did I do?
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  SPEAKER_01: Why is God doing this to me?
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  SPEAKER_01: Why is God punishing me?
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  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of those moments where the darkness frightens us,
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  SPEAKER_01: and for good reason,
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  SPEAKER_01: because it appears to be that the darkness,
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  SPEAKER_01: at least in this story, is equated with the absence of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
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  SPEAKER_01: Now, we used the phrase last week from Barbara Brown Taylor from her book,
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  SPEAKER_01: Learning to Walk in the Dark, full solar Christianity.
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  SPEAKER_01: And full solar Christianity doesn't allow these dark nights of the soul.
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  SPEAKER_01: They happen because they're a normal rhythm of life.
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  SPEAKER_01: But full solar Christianity tries to ignore them or distract from them
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  SPEAKER_01: with You know,
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  SPEAKER_01: positive Christianity,
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  SPEAKER_01: whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely,
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  SPEAKER_01: excellent,
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  SPEAKER_01: praiseworthy, think about these things, don't think about being in the dark.
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  SPEAKER_01: Jesus came to bring light into the darkness.
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  SPEAKER_01: But what we miss is that Jesus entered into the darkness.
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  SPEAKER_01: And if Jesus experienced everything that we as humans experience,
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  SPEAKER_01: then this darkness must be a human experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: It is the darkest of dark experiences for people of faith when you are trying
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  SPEAKER_01: to hang on and there's nothing to hang on to.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_01: Right.
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  SPEAKER_01: So here we have Jesus going through this.
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  SPEAKER_01: Hebrews tells us that he became like us in every way without sin.
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  SPEAKER_01: So this darkness is a part of the human experience and God entered into it.
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  SPEAKER_01: Now.
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  SPEAKER_01: What's interesting is that according to,
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  SPEAKER_01: not every gospel of the four gospels has all of the,
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  SPEAKER_01: what we call the seven last words of Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: So at Easter time on Good Friday,
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  SPEAKER_01: churches will,
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  SPEAKER_01: some churches on Good Friday will do the seven last words of Jesus,
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  SPEAKER_01: the words that he spoke from the cross.
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  SPEAKER_01: And what they do is they sort of take from each of the four gospels
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  SPEAKER_01: The different words that Jesus said,
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  SPEAKER_01: and by words they mean phrases,
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  SPEAKER_01: not just words,
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  SPEAKER_01: and they put them into some sort of an order based on how
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  SPEAKER_01: the different Gospels read.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so you have in this word, Jesus says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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  SPEAKER_01: And then in the order of the seven last words,
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  SPEAKER_01: after that comes,
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  SPEAKER_01: Father, Into your hands I commit my spirit.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then his final word is, it is finished.
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  SPEAKER_01: Because he has fulfilled everything he needed to fulfill.
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  SPEAKER_01: So you have this experience of Jesus who is in the dark, feeling abandoned my God.
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  SPEAKER_01: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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  SPEAKER_01: The trap door has been opened.
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  SPEAKER_01: He has fallen through that thing with nothing to grab onto.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's in that moment That he says, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.
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  SPEAKER_01: And he realizes the truth of darkness, that his father was there all along.
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  SPEAKER_01: And rather than grabbing and hanging on for dear life,
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  SPEAKER_01: darkness is the invitation to let it go and fall into the hands of a father
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  SPEAKER_01: who loves us more than we can imagine.
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  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't make the darkness any easier.
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  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make it less dark.
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  SPEAKER_01: But what Jesus wants us to say is that in the darkness,
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  SPEAKER_01: and these moments are real, if Jesus experienced it, we're going to experience it.
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  SPEAKER_01: And what we're going to find is that when we let go
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  SPEAKER_01: We fall into the hands of a God who's been there all along.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so the darkness is not to be feared.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's a scary place.
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  SPEAKER_01: But there's more to the story than the darkness in the absence of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: If Terry were here, she'd have a better comment than I do because she's very good at going deep.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm kind of processing what you're having to say,
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  SPEAKER_00: and not all of it makes me feel comfortable,
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  SPEAKER_00: of course,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is what I think we all want in the darkness is we would like comfort.
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  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that I think that is really important here is Jesus saying,
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  SPEAKER_00: why have you forsaken me?
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  SPEAKER_00: And clearly God has not forsaken him and the humanity involved in feeling that way,
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  SPEAKER_00: but also Isn't it fair,
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  SPEAKER_00: Tim, to say that God's presence is not conditioned on us feeling His presence?
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  SPEAKER_01: That's very well said, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: Just because I don't feel God's presence doesn't mean God is not present.
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  SPEAKER_01: The presence of God comes to us as a promise, not as a feeling.
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  SPEAKER_01: The presence of God comes to us as a promise, not as a feeling.
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  SPEAKER_01: So that means whether I feel God's presence or not, God promises to be with me.
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  SPEAKER_01: God says, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
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  SPEAKER_01: The Psalms says, where can I go?
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  SPEAKER_01: Nowhere.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's nowhere you can go where God is not.
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  SPEAKER_01: And Paul's great verse, what can separate us from the love of Christ?
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  SPEAKER_01: Hardship or famine or nakedness or sword or peril?
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  SPEAKER_01: Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
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  SPEAKER_01: For I am convinced that neither death nor life,
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  SPEAKER_01: neither hell nor heaven,
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  SPEAKER_01: nothing can ever separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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  SPEAKER_01: So
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  SPEAKER_01: the absence, the darkness is painful because it feels like we've been abandoned.
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  SPEAKER_01: And because when we're going through that kind of darkness, we're going through something tough.
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  SPEAKER_01: Right?
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  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
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  SPEAKER_01: So if you're going through grief,
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  SPEAKER_01: someone asked me when I was up for my high school reunion,
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  SPEAKER_01: were you angry at God when Jan died?
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  SPEAKER_01: And I said, thankfully, I wasn't angry at God.
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  SPEAKER_01: I got angry.
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  SPEAKER_01: I was angry at the cancer.
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  SPEAKER_01: I even got a little angry with Jan, and she had nothing to do with it.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a normal, why did you do this, Jan?
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  SPEAKER_01: And that didn't last long.
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  SPEAKER_01: I was mainly angry at the cancer.
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  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully,
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  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't angry at God at that point because,
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  SPEAKER_01: you know,
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  SPEAKER_01: we had gotten four and a half years and Jan's body just said, now is the time.
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  SPEAKER_01: She couldn't do it anymore.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't blame God for that.
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  SPEAKER_01: But it's still a time of darkness when you're lost.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I had a period of a few days,
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  SPEAKER_01: at least,
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  SPEAKER_01: if not a few weeks where,
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  SPEAKER_01: and this is what I said to this friend,
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  SPEAKER_01: I said, God and I just didn't talk a lot for the first few days.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think God was just,
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say hanging around the edges,
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  SPEAKER_01: God was hanging around the center, just holding me.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I may or may not have felt it,
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  SPEAKER_01: but God was just holding me until I could get to a point where God and I could sort
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  SPEAKER_01: of chat again about the pain I was in.
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  SPEAKER_01: Some people respond by sheer fear.
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  SPEAKER_01: Where is God?
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  SPEAKER_01: Some people respond with guilt.
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  SPEAKER_01: What did I do wrong?
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  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
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  SPEAKER_01: Some people cry out at God in anger.
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  SPEAKER_01: Some people just walk away completely.
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, if this is what God is like, I want nothing to do with that God.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think part of what the cross is trying to say is this is what God is like.
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  SPEAKER_01: In the darkness, the Father is there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think, Tim,
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  SPEAKER_00: the tricky part is you started the podcast by talking about the event where
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  SPEAKER_00: the disciples are in a boat and there's a huge storm.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's at night and it's getting very scary.
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  SPEAKER_00: And, and Jesus walks to them and says, it's okay.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm here.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm paraphrasing here.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I think all of those emotions that you just talked about are,
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  SPEAKER_00: are normal and human and, and, and, and okay.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because I,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think when you're in the boat and the storms crashing around you,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're like,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm ready for you to walk across the ocean and tell me it's going to be okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I think that's a really important point, John.
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  SPEAKER_01: There is nothing wrong with going through a dark time and being... Now, for me,
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  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't angry at God about the grief,
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  SPEAKER_01: but there have been other times I've been angry at God.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing wrong with getting angry at God.
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  SPEAKER_01: Listen to Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_01: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's the cry of anguish.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's a cry of disappointment.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm guessing there's some anger in there.
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  SPEAKER_01: Hey, buddy, look what I did for you the last three years.
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  SPEAKER_01: What the heck?
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  SPEAKER_01: He might have even said, what the hell, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: What the Gehenna?
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  SPEAKER_01: Because all of a sudden,
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  SPEAKER_01: there he is hanging there, gone, separated, or feeling in that way anyway.
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  SPEAKER_01: Nothing wrong with having all those emotions.
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  SPEAKER_01: And we'll talk about, let's do that next time.
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  SPEAKER_01: Let's just talk about faith and emotions, emotions in the dark, because all emotions are okay.
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  SPEAKER_01: Especially when we're in darkness,
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  SPEAKER_01: but not all emotions are going to get us through the darkness.
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  SPEAKER_01: They're all a part of it, but some of them we don't want to be stuck with.
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  SPEAKER_01: You had made a comment before that we're quoting so much
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  SPEAKER_01: from Barbara Brown Taylor's book, Learning to Walk in the Dark.
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  SPEAKER_01: We should probably just have her on the show.
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  SPEAKER_01: Here's some things that she says.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think that I give a nice summary.
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  SPEAKER_01: No one chooses the dark night.
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  SPEAKER_01: The dark night descends.
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  SPEAKER_01: When it does, the reality that troubles the soul most is the apparent absence of God.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: If God is light, then God is gone.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: There is no soft, glowing space of safety in this dark night.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: There is no comforting sound coming out of it, reassuring the soul that all will be well.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Even if comforting friends come around To see how you're doing,
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: they're about as much help as the friends who visited Job and his ash heap.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't very helpful, by the way.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: There is an impenetrability to this darkness that isolates the soul inside it,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: for good or ill. No one can do your work for you while you are in this dark place.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: It has your name all over it.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the only way out is through.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: When the dark night first falls,
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: it's natural to spend some time wondering if it is a test or punishment
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: for something you've done.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is often a sly way of staying in control of the situation.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Since the possibility that you have caused it comes with the hope
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: that you can also put an end to it.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that good?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is why I'm reading her rather than saying these things myself.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Either by passing the test or enduring the punishment.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: The darker possibility that this night is
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: beyond your control is often too frightening to consider it first,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: at least partly because it means that none of your usual strategies
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: for lightening up is going to work.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: One of the hardest things to decide during a dark night is whether to surrender or resist.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: The choice often comes down to what you believe about God and how God acts,
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: which means that every dark night of the soul involves wrestling with belief.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then she talks about a guy, he was called John of the Cross, 16th century monk.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote a book called Dark Knight of the Soul.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: And she quotes him quite often in this book.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he, let me just read a kind of a summary of what she says about what he says.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: One of the central functions of the Dark Knight,
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: John of the Cross says,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Is to convince those who grasp after things that God cannot be grasped.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: I got to read that again because that didn't make sense to me.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: One of the central functions of the dark night,
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: he says, is to convince those who grasp after things that God cannot be grasped.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that makes more sense.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: I read it with a pause.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So those of us who think we can grasp things,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: the darkness of the soul teaches us God can't be grasped.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: In John's native Spanish, his word for God is nada.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: God is no thing.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: God is not a thing.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And since God is not a thing God cannot be held onto,
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: God can only be encountered as that which eclipses the reality of all other things.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: In other words,
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: God will be God,
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: and what Jesus wants to say Father,
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: into your hands I commit my spirit is that God isn't grasped onto.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: We fall into
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: the hands of God, right?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Helplessness, which is really in a sense what faith is, right?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's just surrender.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's sitting on the chair.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're not sure if the chair is going to work or not.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then you sit on it and there it holds you up.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: And in the darkness, you fall into the hands of God.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is not easy, right?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to make it sound easy, especially for those of us who love the light.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: But if we can slow ourselves down in the darkness,
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: feel all the feels, Share all the feels with God.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: The anger that we have at God or ourselves or at other people,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: whatever it is,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: if we can feel all the feels,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: if we can get all the feels out with God,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: even if we don't think God is there,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: and then just sit quietly and breathe and say,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we may have to do that minute after minute after minute
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not necessarily going to take away the dark night either.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: That didn't suddenly take away the dark night.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus spent three dark nights in a tomb.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: But it can change the way we look at the situation.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's certainly going to change the way we experience God.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I, I think that we all want the darkness to just go away.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: That would be my first choice.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what you're saying is, um,
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: sort of like, uh,
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: God oftentimes doesn't remove consequences of actions, uh,
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: but promises to be there with us through the consequences, but doesn't remove them.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think that sounds a little bit like what we're saying now,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: which is the darkness is unlikely to go away.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: But how you think of it and how you remember Jesus in the darkness makes it
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: a different kind of darkness.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're not really alone.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Darkness is not devoid of life.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Darkness is not devoid of light.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you need to have light, your nightlight is Jesus or God in the midst of it.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe just a tiny little flicker.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: You may not see it at all, but the nightlight is there.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we'll talk more about that next week.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's a couple more comments I want to read from her book to wrap up, but I want to say this.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the dark night of the soul is a chemical imbalance in the brain called depression.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really important for us as Christians,
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: especially in a Christianity that is full-souler,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't believe you should have any darkness, that darkness is punishment.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you're in darkness, it may be that you're depressed.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that may be a good reason to go see a doctor.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there are things,
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: my doctor put me on some medications,
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: really low dose stuff to kind of help me manage the anxieties that come with grief.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a life changer for me.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's just sort of evened me out.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's a thing of God.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's healing, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll talk more about that next week.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're in darkness and you can't get out,
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: it might not be a bad idea to go see your doctor and just make sure that's not
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: the issue for you.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I thought this was really interesting.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: She's writing about, so we've talked about the cross, right?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is in this darkness, forsaken by God.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Then he's in the dark tomb for three days.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: She says,
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: by all accounts,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: a stone blocked the entrance to the cave so that there were no witnesses to
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: the resurrection.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone who saw the risen Jesus saw him after.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever happened in the cave happened in the dark.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: As many years as I've been listening to Easter sermons,
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've never heard anyone talk about that part, yours included here.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies,
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light, but it did not happen that way.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: If it happened in a cave,
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: it happened in complete silence,
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: New life starts in the dark.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it is a seed in the ground,
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really helpful, right?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, yeah.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Resurrection, that's really profound for us to think about here.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Resurrection only happens in the dark.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if we dare say that.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Resurrection only happens in the dark,
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: because there can't be resurrection unless there's death.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, John.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is the Deep Grace Diving Podcast, Tim.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: My mind's being blown right now.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've always sort of thought about that, right?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: You always have to go through chaos or death to get to resurrection.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Just to really hone in on that and say there is no new life
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: without darkness
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: or new life is always birthed in darkness.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we shouldn't be that afraid of it.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's a paradigm shift and also slightly uncomfortable still.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe we need to have a good church service that starts at 11.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we call the midnight mass for our Catholic friends or the midnight Christmas Eve service.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: But then we always have candles going.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it doesn't make it any easier, but it does give a little glint of hope.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: if we can just remind ourselves,
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: new life is always birthed and only birthed in darkness.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Jesus.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know where you are or if you even are, but I'm ready for that new life.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: So bring it on.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I know I got to wait for you, but bring it on.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it might be important to say it may not solve the problem,
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: but it may give us a new attitude toward the problem.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: And And or a deeper appreciation for just how deep the grace of God is,
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: that it can reach down even into death to find us and bring us life.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the two of us enjoyed it.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if anybody else did, but the two of us enjoyed it.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that was good.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, certainly, Ms. Barbara Brown Taylor enjoyed it, too.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you to her and all that she's done.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Guides some really deep inspection in this
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: and what I think could be just really good learning for all of us.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Tim.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you, Barbara.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: I highly recommend her book.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: I highly recommend it.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to find that she's had some issues with faith,
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: and that's what makes the book all the stronger.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I highly recommend it.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to pick up next week.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: We'll just talk about those icky, quote unquote, dark emotions.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: That maybe aren't so icky and so dark.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll be back with you next time.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: The Deep Grace Diving Podcast.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: I got it right this time.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, everybody.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Tell your friends and tune in.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and share this with some friends.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: That would be helpful.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Terry Summers will be back with us in a few weeks.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be back with you next week.
• 32:13
  [music]