Morning Prayer Homily for April 5, 2011
Richard Maddox, Special Assistant to the President for Community Relations and Institutional Strategy
Reading: Psalm 139
Grace and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen
At Morning Prayer, we have been focusing on different chapters each month from the book “On Our
Way.” In April the chapter for our reflection is chapter 13; “Living in the presence of God.” Our topic for
today is "living in the presence of God when you sit in darkness," or stated another way, “what happens
when a child of light stumbles into darkness where they are helpless to help themselves."
The text chosen to guide our reflection is Psalm 139, just read. Yet permit me to repeat verses 11 and
12:
“If I say, ‘Let only darkness cover me and the light about me be night.’ Even the darkness is not
dark to thee. The night is bright as day. For darkness is as light to thee."
The great Tempter would have us believe, that when we stumble into darkness we stumble out of the
presence of God. That our doubt and despair separate us from the love and mercy of God, and that in
the darkness we only experience God's judgment and condemnation. That in the darkness we are alone,
forgotten, abandoned, and forsaken by God.
Far greater than we realize is the number of those among the children of light who have been and are
now on the journey from anxiety, stress, and depression to the black hole of despair. I began my own
journey into despair in November of 2007, when I sat alone in a doctor's office as he told me:
Dick, you have a progressive and degenerative disease that will rob you of the ability to control your
own body. We do not know what causes Parkinson's and there is no cure. In a moment I went from
being an independent and healthy individual to one who will always now be progressively and
chronically ill. It was a devastating moment to suddenly realize that I will never be free of it.
Medical science possesses only a handful of medicines that address the symptoms but not the
disease itself. Some of the medicines work for a time, but none works for long. Some abate a few of the
symptoms, but are powerless with other symptoms. Some are not just ineffective, they afflict you with
side effects as threatening as the disease itself.
Yet these pills, which I carry with me wherever I go, are the only means to daily provide me with
a semblance of normalcy. But when will they desert me or turn against me? I do not know! Suddenly in
a moment in that doctor's office, the person, who I thought I was, and the future, I thought I had, was
gone. It was like one moment being a free man, and the next moment a man sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
So the tempter whispered in my ear, “See he has deserted you. You are alone, forgotten, forsaken. You
have no hope, no future. All you possess is the darkness of despair.” In the doctor’s office as I sank my
head into my hands I prayed: “Get behind me Satan. Our Father, who art in heaven, lead me not into
temptation. Lord, it is now you and me against the darkness. Amen.”
But neither the tempter nor the darkness was done. They were and are persistent, ever pushing us
from anxiety, to stress, to depression, and beyond to despair. One day over a year ago, I felt myself
sliding into the darkness and I wrote this piece of free verse to give voice to my despair:
I have fallen into a dark place.
The darkness clings to me.
With no light I cannot find my way.
Not seeing I bump into everything.
I rage at the darkness but it does not listen.
Screaming yet unheard intensifies my helplessness.
I sink farther into the darkness.
My rage exhausts and empties me.
Only humiliation fills me now.
So I scream at the darkness once more.
But there is not even an echo.
In the silence humiliation reigns.
Am I doomed to this endless cycle?
Am I trapped in this spiral into darkness?
Is there only surrender?
Is there only surrender? The Tempter says, “ Yes.” The Gospel of Jesus Christ resoundingly proclaims,
“No.”
Psalm 139 proclaims that we cannot flee from the presence of God. From heaven to Sheol, God is with
us and never abandons us. He pursues his own with his grace and mercy which continue to guard and
protect us wherever we go. No matter how dark and no matter where, the psalmist proclaims, “Thy
hand shall lead me and thy right hand shall hold me.” David in the 23rd Psalm proclaims the same truth
in these words: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for
thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”
The Gospel of St. John proclaims: “ In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the
Word was God. . . . In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shined into the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.”
In Christ, the darkness has been conquered. For us and for our sake and for our forsakenness, he went
to the cross and endured the darkness of despair proclaiming, "My God, my God why have you forsaken
me?" On the cross he endured the darkness of death, breathing his last and saying, “It is finished." He
then descended into hell – the deep and outer darkness – and there proclaimed his victory. And then on
the third day God, the Father, raised him as the first fruits of the resurrection. Jesus is the Life and the
Resurrection and he is our Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for us. So he leaves the 99 to go into
the darkness to seek the one that is lost.
Martin Luther, in his explanation of the sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer, “Lead us not into
temptation,” boldly proclaims that the darkness does not banish God nor does it separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Luther writes:
“We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world and our
flesh may not deceive us nor seduce us into misbelief, despair and other great shame and vice, and
though we be assailed by them, that we still may finally overcome and obtain the victory.”
My vicarage congregation always closed each Lenten evening service with the hymn, “Abide with me
fast falls the eventide.” They slowly dimmed the lights so that by the last verse we were in complete
darkness unable to see the printed words of the hymn. And just when the frustration of not being able
to see began to overtake the congregation, a spotlight mounted outside the church was turned on and
the beam of light focused inside through an oval stained-glass window far above the altar. By this means
the image of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, pierced the darkness and Illuminated the sanctuary, and we
experienced anew the promise of the Gospel as recorded by the psalmist:
Even the darkness is not dark to thee.
The night is bright as the day.
The darkness is as light with thee.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen