Questions in the Night

A sermon by Currie Burris

(With thanks to William Willimon)

 John 3:1-16

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. And darkness was over the surface of the deep . . . and God said let there be light, and there was light.” (Genesis 1: 1-3) The first sign of God’s presence in the world was light. God pushed back the “darkness” and let the light shine.

The world is made up of light and darkness – that which we can see, and that which we cannot. Our eyes are designed to receive light within a very specific band of frequencies. Light itself is much broader. Along the infrared and ultraviolet spectra, there is much that we simply cannot see. Moreover, astrophysicists have told us recently that the visible universe is only a small portion of what actually is. All the stars, constellations, and galaxies, all the planets, asteroids and gasses, all the matter and energy of the universe (as we perceive it) is only about 4% of what is really there. The rest is made up of a mysterious mix of dark matter and dark energy which we know is there, but that we cannot see or apprehend in any way. Darkness and light.

A few years ago, my wife and I went to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, one of the largest and deepest caves in the world. We signed up for a special tour of the caves called the “Wild Cave Tour.” They had special requirements for the participants: you had to be in good physical condition, and most importantly, you could not be the slightest bit claustrophobic. You could not be afraid of the dark or small tight spaces. They outfitted us with kneepads, and helmets with flashlights attached to the top. We trouped down into the caves, going deeper and deeper, into smaller and smaller caverns, until we got to one area, where they instructed us to drop to our knees. We began crawling through a narrow tube, no wider or taller than our shoulders. We could see only the tail end of the person in front of us. Then the leader stopped us and said, “You are now 300 feet below the surface. Turn off your headlamps.” We turned off our lights and were immersed in pure darkness. I held my hand to my face and could see absolutely nothing — no reflections, shadows, and no movement. Nothing. Pure darkness.

John’s gospel opens with the declaration that Jesus is the light of the world. “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of humanity. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” (John 1: 3-5) Spiritually Jesus is the light of the world. Later in John, Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (John 9:5)

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. Why did he come at night? He was a teacher of the law, a prominent, upstanding citizen, a Pharisee, a leader. Other Pharisees had approached and questioned Jesus during the day, in public. But Nicodemus comes at night. Was he embarrassed? Was he afraid to be seen? I think he did not want to engage Jesus in a debate, as he might have been forced into in the day time. He wasn’t testing or trying to trap Jesus. He didn’t want to defend a position, to prove a point. He really wanted to know. He was hungry. He was confused. All that he ever had thought he knew was coming apart. He was struggling. He was hurting. He was asking questions about his religious faith. He was asking questions about God. He was spiritually “in the dark.”

It is important to say that when I say “darkness” I do not mean evil or bad. And darkness does not mean color. Through the centuries people of color have suffered because some people associated “darkness” with skin color and equated dark pigmentation with evil. “Darkness” here contrasts with light, sun, daylight. It is illumination. All colors shine. All are beautiful.

In the midst of his darkness, Nicodemus comes to Jesus. I suspect that there are more people here today like Nicodemus than we want to admit. Church is supposed to be a happy, praise-filled, affirmative place. But many of us come less than praise filled. We come hungry. We come searching. We come looking for answers. Grieving the loss of one dear to us. Struggling with life — our jobs, our family, and our loved ones.

We may be confused, struggling with faith: What do I believe in? Where is God? Perhaps some of us even stay away from church because we don’t know what to do with all this struggle when everyone else seems to be so happy. We are present here in the daytime, but our spirits are here at night.

St John of the Cross, the sixteenth century spiritual teacher, has described this experience of faith and called it “the dark night of the soul.” It begins with the journey of Nicodemus, a step out into the night, a step out with questions, with struggles, with suffering and loss. The dark night is a place where all the familiar answers no longer seem to fit. It is a place of emptiness. It is a place of being totally alone. It is a place where you can no longer see the hand in front of your face.

I know this place. It is a place of pain and confusion, of loss and hurt. I have been there. I confess to you that I know the emptiness and desperation. This week I felt more like Nicodemus than a confident disciple. Our text for this week included the powerful passage, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him sought not perish but have everlasting life,” a foundational passage in our faith. Yet when I tried to gather a sermon around this word, I came up empty. More than that, I came up spiritually empty. I felt out of touch with God, out of reach, out in the dark. I don’t know the reasons why, maybe it was fatigue, maybe it was illness, maybe it is the time in my life. I reached down into my storehouse of theological answers this week, and found nothing. I had more questions, and more questions. I found myself confessing, “I have nothing.”

Yet John of the Cross says we go forward into this night, into the darkness. Because as empty as it seems, as difficult as the struggling may seem, as alone as we may feel, we are not alone. Jesus meets Nicodemus in the night. In the dark night of the soul, we are not alone. We ask our questions, we struggle with the answers, reach out, take a chance, take risks. We open our hearts to receive what we cannot begin to see or comprehend. Out of the darkness, we see the light. Out of the darkness, we are born of the Spirit, born from above, born again.

Jesus’ life ultimately led him to a hill outside Jerusalem where he gave his life for us, and the sky turned completely dark for three hours. Yet out of this darkness came our redemption, came our renewal, came our light.

It is good that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, just as he was, without show or pretense, without trying to impress, with all his questions in order. Whatever we do or say this morning in our worship together, this is a place for Nicodemus, a place to come with all the searching of our lives intact. Whatever shadows of the soul you bring, nighttime is welcome here.

William Willimon, a pastor/teacher in the Methodist church has said “Rejoice that we have a savior who keeps evening hours. Rejoice that God works the nightshift! By night is a great time to come to Jesus and let him talk to you, sit with you, reveal God’s way to you. When it’s dark at night, it a good time to call on God.”

            Amen.