Hope in the Darkness

sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 64: 1-9 Mark 13:24-37
Advent 1


There is an interesting paradox involved in preaching. Some things that are harder to talk about in everyday life are easier to speak of. Other issues are harder to do justice to without a conversation partner adding their own perspective. Finding hope in the midst of the hard times of life belongs to the latter category. Somehow, whatever words I put together seem to sound trite and naïve without the presence of real suffering hanging there to bring a balanced feel and a measured tone. Yet, it is important to say, as often as we can, that even in the darkest moments of our lives there is always a loving, compassionate presence among us that speaks the words of promise and hope.


All of us have experience with the sadness, grief, and depression that can color life in muddy shades of dark brown and gray so completely that there seems to be no light. Faced with the death of a dear loved one, we find ourselves bathed in grief – grief that threatens to suck the joy from life and continues to rise up within at unexpected moments for years to come. Struggling with the guilt of the sins we have brought into our lives and our relationships with others, we find the happiness and contentment of our daily routine shadowed by doubt and pain. Dealing with the struggles of addiction in ourselves and others we care about, we find our thoughts, our emotions, and even the mundane tasks of life focused on the darkness in our midst as we struggle to break the chains of dependence and compulsion that imprison those in thrall to something less than holy. Living through months, weeks or even just days when one thing after another brings failure or unexpected judgment to catch us off guard, we find our strength sapped, our perspective warped, and our faith in the future stretched to the breaking point. We are pulled into a spiral of melancholy, depression and despair that takes us down, down, down into a darkness where we feel abandoned and alone, facing what lies before us without support and with little hope of finding a way back into the bright warmth of the joyful life we had before.

Sometimes we even feel like we are on an unending roller coaster ride – flying down into the low points and finding our way back only to slide again … down, down, down into dark places and wondering when and where we’ll be able to get off. One of my favorite cds – which I actually get to listen to fairly often since Sebastian also likes it – has a song that reflects this feeling with a healthy bit of humor. The song’s them is “have I hit the bottom yet,” and at one point the singer couches his frustration in the image of Humpty Dumpty saying,

“Humpty Dumpty sat upon a wall took a fall,
and said ‘I am a super baaaaaaalll.’
As he plummeted from the summit he repeated the affirmation,
‘the power of positive thinking has reverberations’
and he bounced and it hurt, "oww," and the king’s men were amazed when he did it again. He said "falling is my calling, so I'll get it over with; I'm bound to go down. It’s a necessary rhythm. Have I hit the bottom yet?"

Well, childish imagery aside, if you have never found yourself sliding down into that pit even once, I profoundly hope that you never will. I fear, though, that such a path will come before all of us at some time in this life. The weight of human experience points toward that inevitability, and if we sometimes feel alone, at least we are not alone in that experience. Our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends, and neighbors – all those we know and care about have been to that place as well, possibly at the same times as we ourselves. And that is just the beginning of the list. The Psalms are filled with the passionate prayers of our spiritual ancestors reaching out to God for a reprieve – for even the slightest bit of hope, the tiniest ray of light showing a path out of the suffering and despair. Prophets from our tradition and others around the world give voice to our pain in the midst of their challenges to find new and better ways to live.

Even today’s reading from Isaiah which is a prayer of penitence ringing with judgment on a people who have fallen away from God, sinning and turning away from the law in letter and spirit – even this text gives voice to our cries for comfort and relief:

“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away… Yet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people…. [Will] you restrain yourself, O Lord? Will you keep silent…?”

Can you hear it there? It’s the cry of one who is lost in guilt and despairing yet cries out to the God they know as merciful – cries out for something, some hope to grab hold of as a lifeline pulling them back from the depths.

Isaiah is no stranger to the darkness, nor are the other prophets. Even the greatest prophet, Jesus of Nazareth – the Christ who brought the promise of God to all of us – plumbed the depths. He mourned the death of loved ones despite his sure knowledge of the eternal life that awaited. He suffered hunger and pain. He struggled against the demons of addiction, doubt, and despair that possessed those around him. He felt the pain and loneliness of abandonment. And in that darkest moment, he turned to the words of others who had been there before, crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” And those words were a prayer for comfort and release – a prayer of faith in the future provided by the mercy and grace of God. They are the opening lines of Psalm 22, a psalm that describes the feeling of being poured out like water into the eternally dry dust of death while expressing an unquenchable faith in the power of God to bring us back to life and the passionate love that assures our salvation.

And those words are our source of hope as well. That God, the God of Christ, is our God as well. That God loved us enough to set aside the power and insulation of divinity and take on human flesh with all that entailed. That God has experienced human life at its best and its worst, has plodded along the dark paths and skipped along the easy ones, has felt the exhilaration and the despair. That God is with us all the time. Father, mother, brother, teacher, guide, companion, whatever name gives us comfort or inspiration, God is with us –
ready to comfort us when we find ourselves in the depths,
waiting to reveal the light of hope to our darkened eyes,
hoping that we will turn and find the path back into the promise of
communion with our brothers and sisters that awaits our seeking.

Our world is filled with the voices of those whose laments cry out the question “Where are you, God? Why have you hidden yourself? Why do you let us suffer?” They are questions we have all asked – in the midst of our own suffering or when we consider the suffering of others trapped in suffering or surprised by pain and loss. When I read about hundreds killed in Mombai or thousands raped and tortured in Sudan or men, women, and children walking the streets of Morgantown as they try to find some way back to self-respect and self-sufficiency, I find myself asking same questions. When I remember conversations I have had with parents and grandparents who have lost children and grandchildren to accidents or alcohol or drug overdoses I hear them echoing back to me. When I have set with my grandfather as he struggled to deal with my grandmother’s passing – they sat there with us…. And, as my grampa reminded me, so did God.

Just as Isaiah finds comfort in the image of God as the loving Father, we can find hope in the image of God as a potter who cherishes all the creations that come off the wheel, finding use and beauty in them no matter if they are perfect, broken, or misshapen. Just as Jesus’ proclamation of the Day of the Lord, as fearsome as they sound, speaks of the dawning of a new world, we can find a new vision for the future in our certainty that God brings new life even, and perhaps especially, in the midst of the darkness.

And there they are – the words that sound so easy and trite, that feel so out of touch with reality. Yet, as we stand at the beginning of Advent on the brink of the new and renewed revelation of God to humanity, they are also powerful words of faith and promise. Emmanuel has come. The source of light and hope walked among us. The Lord of our lives, the spring of our salvation, the lover of our souls, our brother and our companion on the road – the Christ is coming again. Coming to light our darkness.
Coming to warm our hearts and comfort our pain.
Coming to bring peace and joy.
Coming to quicken our spirits.
Coming, once more, to remove the veil shadowing our eyes and invite us
into the Realm of God awash in the joy of life made new by the
shining radiance of God’s face.

Let us open our hearts and our minds – all that we are – to welcome the promise that has been and the restoration that will be.