Lost in the Dark?

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 15:15-21 Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:8-20

When I was just nine years old, I learned the truth about what “darkness” means. That year, my family went on vacation in Kentucky which may not seem like a very exciting trip, but any trip was fun for my brothers and me at that point. And we got to camp out for nearly a week right near a field that we covered in grasshoppers – really big ones! That was great in and of itself, but the highlight of the trip for me was a visit to Mammoth Caves.

That system is one of the biggest known, easily accessible caves in the country, and it is something to see. There are rooms filled with sparkling stalactites and columns that seem to glow pink in the light of the lamps. There were ceilings filled with sleeping bats and the messy white floors that accompany them. There was a stone waterfall, and there was even a real waterfall when we visited, though I seem to remember that it sometimes disappears during dry spells. (I suspect it’s quite a torrent right now.) Yet, the most memorable part of our journey into the bowels of the earth was the two minutes that we spent in darkness – the two longest minutes of my life.

For those of you who have never had the experience of standing without lamps in a cave, the darkness there is not like the darkness we usually think of. It is absolute. … There is no starlight. There is no soft glow from reflected city lights. There is no light whatsoever, and as you stand there with your eyes wide open and the afterglow fades from your retinas, you do not feel like you have your eyes closed. You feel like you have lost the ability to see and even to remember what seeing was like.

There is no question that those moments in the cave were scary. I’m pretty sure I would have been lost to absolute terror if I wasn’t old enough to know that I wasn’t alone and that the lights would come on soon, old enough to have that knowing be a comfort to me. My younger brothers were not so lucky, but they were safely held in my parents’ arms. So, their crying didn’t start immediately, and it never took on the panicked tone of an abandoned child. And, even with the sure knowledge that the world was not actually gone, the feel of the stone under my feet, and the sounds of rustling and whispered conversations around me, I still felt lost and alone – isolated in the darkness with no sense of where I should or could go for help.


I was forcibly reminded of that childhood brush with terror last year when I heard the news that 33 Chilean miners had survived the Copiopo mine cave-in. The men, it seemed, were in reasonably good health and were gathered together in a survival pod some 2,300 feet underground. The news anchors assured us that the men had food and light and would probably be able to survive until rescuers got to them. But they also said that it would be at least two months until an exit shaft would reach them. The thought of that actually kept me awake that night and images of being trapped in the darkness haunted my dreams.

Over the course of the next sixty-some days, we got regular updates on the situation. Exploratory shafts made it down to the emergency shelter. Food and water were lowered down. A telephone line was put in so that the men could talk with their families. Movie equipment and books were sent in to fight cabin fever. And, as the rescue shaft approached completion, several sessions on media management and public relations sought to help the men prepare for their reentry into society and instant fame.

As a result of those sessions, there has not been a deluge of story-telling or competing interview tours as different miners vied for the spot light. There were a few sensational stories in the news in the first flush of excitement, and a few miners gave rather cursory interviews. By and large, though, the story has been saved for the “official” account that will be published on behalf of the whole group sometime in the next couple of years. But there was one rather extensive and unique conversation that I remember. I haven’t been able to find a record of it. So, I’ll have to share what I remember with apologies to all.

It was one of the older miners who, I think, had lost a son in an earlier accident at the mine. When he was asked about his memory of the cave-in, he responded by telling his story:
‘When I was down there in the dark and everything was shaking all around me, I took shelter under the nearest archway and waited there for the mountain to fall on me. Rocks started to fall around me, and the lights went out. When it stopped and I was still alive, I called out to see if anyone else was there, and nobody answered me. After a while I stopped yelling because I knew I was alone. That was the most afraid that I have ever been until now.
At first, I sat there … I just sat there. I was so scared that I wasn’t even thinking about anything. But then I began to feel around me to see how much space there was, and I started groping my way through the darkness in the direction I thought would take me back out. And as I began to move, I got less scared. I thought, “I must have survived for a reason,” and I had a sense of peace then because I knew I would see my family again. It was the closest I have ever been to God when I was down there in the darkness.’


Darkness has a way of doing that, of opening us up to sense the presence of God with us. We are such visual creatures, so attuned and accustomed to sorting and interacting with our world through what we see, that when we can’t see, we find ourselves lost, confused, afraid. First, we sit. Then we begin, slowly, to reach out with our other senses in the hope of finding something we know … something that comforts us – be it the touch of a loved one, or if we are alone, the hand of God reaching out to enfold our own groping fingers.


There are times, though, when the comforting presence of other people can actually blind us to the darkness around us and we wander about lost without knowing it. Sometimes it seems like most of the suffering in the world comes from those blind wanderings. Millions die of hunger and malnutrition that could be prevented if we woke up to the greed that clouds our vision. More suffer from diseases that could easily be cured if we focused our vision on the right path. Still others live with violence because we are lost in the illusion that our self-interests are not linked to the wellbeing of others. Every once in a while, we wake up to these realities and have the chance to take a new path, one that may lead us out of the darkness.

September 11th, 2001 was one such moment – a time when the whole world stopped and looked up to find that the way we had been doing things wasn’t working. For about a week, there were many voices calling for a change – many people groping for a new path that might lead us to a world with less violence, less hatred, less suffering. But it was not to be. Fear and anger stormed in to shroud our vision once more, and we have had ten years of violent conflict which started as a hunt for one man and has grown into a global war.

Osama bin Laden was killed on May 1st and yet the violence seems to be far from over. The War on Terror will never be over because violent force relies on the power of terror itself to succeed, and we end up in the same situation though we may be on the other side of the equation. As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it his book, Strength to Love, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence,” Despite his words of wisdom and hope, despite the infinite possibilities for creative new ideas provided by a global community, it seems that we are still lost in the same darkness he tried to dispel nearly 50 years ago.


There are other kinds of darkness, too. Times when we wander into our very own caves and find that our feet have lost the path back to light and laughter, warmth and friendship. Grief, depression, addiction, or illness … all of them can steal into our lives and drive us deep into those unknowable places where we feel isolated and alone no matter how many people there happen to be around us. They take us to a place that is “The opposite of human vitality,” a place where we feel “ripped from what felt like [our lives.]” And we are “cast into the darkness.”

In those times, the words of Paul spoke to encourage the Athenians seem anything but a comfort. “From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live so that they would search for God and grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us.”

To someone who find themselves feeling lost and alone in darkness, looking for someone or something to hold on to, there is no consolation the assurance that it is all part of some grand plan. There is little sense of relief in words that proclaim that God has put us exactly where we are and intends us to experience the pain we are feeling so that we will turn to seek him, groping through our suffering despair toward the port of our last resort. What little hope we may feel comes only from the hope that when we reach out toward God we will find that “he is not far from … us.” But that little hope and the truth it grows from are greater, truer, and more certain than we may think.


Back in that cave of my childhood, back in the bowels of the earth surrounded by the unknown, the thing that kept me quiet and calm toward the end had nothing to do with reason or courage. I reached out. When I could no longer stand it on my own, I reached out, groping with my hand toward the last place I had seen my father. And I found him there, not far from me. And as he took my hand in his and I sidled up to him, I was no longer alone or afraid. I felt safe and secure.

That’s the promise that God gives us – he will always be there. “[He] will not leave us orphaned, [but] will come to [us].” When we find ourselves lost and searching, whether it be all of us together or any one of us alone, Christ will come to us so that we can know without doubt that our lives are held in the hands of one who cares deeply for us, one who has promised us that he is not just near us, but within us … always … just as we live always within his love.

Comfort … grace … relief ... hope … is there just waiting for us. Whenever we wake up in the deep, lightless darkness and find ourselves groping for any little thing that will bring us back to ourselves,
back to light,
back to warmth we will find God there …
not far from us …
waiting to take our hands
and comfort us
and lead us into life.