Into the Abyss
Philippians 2:5-11[1]
There is a dark side to life that I think most of us would
rather avoid. But if we’re willing to open our eyes, we will see that, along
with the light that is most definitely real, there is also darkness. There are
dark places all over the world. There are dark places in our country, in our
State, in our county—and in our town! For some, the darkness consists of a
loneliness that may feel like it’s choking the life out of you. For others, it
may be a job that is suffocating, or addictions that slowly erode their souls.
For all too many in our own town, the darkness consists of mistaking what may
feel good right now for happiness. There is a dark side to life in this world.
It’s no wonder that most of us would rather “stay on the bright
side of life” and avoid confronting the darkness in our world or in our own
lives. But the hard truth of the matter is that the only way to overcome
darkness is to have the courage to face it squarely. And that usually means
taking a journey into that darkness that can be painful and frightening. The
only way out of the darkness is to go through it. As we allow ourselves to
wrestle with the pain and fear and doubt within, the very process itself heals
us. And as we become healed, we grow strong enough to recognize the darkness
without giving in to it. We grow strong enough to enjoy the freedom to live in
the light.
I believe that’s a part of what our New Testament lesson for
today is about. It’s about Jesus’ journey into the very heart of the darkness
that oppresses the human family in order to set us all free from its power.
That journey led him not only to give up his rightful place with God to become
a human being, just as vulnerable as the rest of us. His journey took him
farther than that: he not only “emptied himself” to become human, he also
subjected himself to the humiliation of a cruel execution and actually tasted
death for us all. He went into the very abyss of all the darkness and suffering
we can experience in this world and took it upon himself.
If we had not heard this story all of our lives, I think at
least some of us would have to ask why Jesus would do such a thing. When you
take a look at our world and the darkness in it today, you do see a few brave
souls who are willing to enter some aspect of it, at least for a time. But the idea
of someone actually taking on all the darkness of this world strains our
ability to understand how anyone could possibly do such a thing. In the death
of Jesus the Christ on a Roman cross there is something more going on than
simple human compassion in action. In Jesus we see God’s love in all its life-changing
power at work. And we learn from this that God’s love is a love that will not
rest until it reaches out to every dark place we can possibly go to bring all
of us back home to the light.
Of course, that answer is also a part of the faith we’ve been taught
all our lives. But it seems to me that if we think about it, this too raises
questions that may not be easy to answer. If we’re honest with ourselves, we
have to at least wonder why this particular expression of God’s love was the
one chosen to set us free from the darkness. Some mistakenly think of God in
human terms and imagine that Jesus volunteered to take God’s wrath toward us
all on himself. But I don’t find that perspective to be very compelling. That
only reinforces the idea that we have to cower in fear before the angry God who
may strike us down at any moment. And I don’t think that’s what was going on
when Jesus embraced his death on the cross.
Jesus embraced the suffering of the cross because that’s who God
is. The God of the Bible is not an angry
God, but rather one who constantly suffers on behalf of his chosen people and
the human family as a whole. That’s how the God of the Bible chooses to love us
all, time and time again. And the God of the Bible is a God who never quits
loving us this way. Part of the mystery of our faith is that it was God who was suffering on that cross. St.
Paul said it this way, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2
Cor. 5:19). It is God who takes on
the suffering we endure when we wander into the dark places of this life.
Now some of you may be feeling like I’m only taking you further
down the “rabbit hole.” The love of God poured out for us in Jesus on the cross
is indeed, as one of our confessions puts it, a mystery beyond our
understanding.[2]
So if you’re wondering “how can this be?,” the only valid answer is a short
one, though it is far from being a simple one. That is, in Jesus the Christ we
see the mystery of God’s love. In Jesus the Christ, we see the God who is the
redeemer of the despised, the savior of the hopeless, the one who chooses the
unwanted. It bears repeating: the death of Jesus on a cross shows us that God’s
love reaches into the very abyss of darkness into which we can go and will not
rest until we are all back home in the light.
The good news of the Gospel is that there is no depth of
suffering that Jesus did not reach in his death on the cross. Truly does our affirmation
of faith state that “An abyss of suffering” has been “swallowed up by the
suffering of divine love.”[3] That means Jesus’ death on the cross has set
us free from all the darkness we could ever experience —the loneliness, agony,
alienation, cruelty, abandonment, estrangement, despair, shame, rejection, and self-destruction.
No one can sink so deep as to be beyond hope, beyond the reach of God’s
love. However far we may fall, the love
of God has already been into the abyss in Jesus Christ, and is waiting there to
bring us back home.
[1]
©2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/25/2018 at
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2]
The Book of Confessions 2016, Confession
of 1967 9.15, p. 289.
[3]“The
Study Catechism,” question 45 (approved by the 210th General Assembly of the
PCUSA, 1998).
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