Dwelling in Darkness, August 23, 2009

I Kings 8
Ephesians 6:10-20
Is the world basically Evil, or is the world basically Good? What is the Starting Point?
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Rousseau, Heggel all struggled with the starting point, because the original orientation of the world, determines who we are in response to the world, the purpose of Human society, of culture, of religion, art and music, of life itself is against what backdrop?

According to the Bible, specifically the Book of Genesis, concerning the origin of all things,
In the Beginning, the world was a shapeless, formless chaos, a void in time and space, intangible, darkness, the Antithesis of anything that would promote life. Knowledge of dwelling in that darkness, all origin being in a place and time without life, is critical to all that will come after.

Dwelling in Darkness, this shapeless formless chaos, living in the Void, Almighty God began to create. Against the backdrop of nothingness, God created something, light in the dark, order in the chaos, dry in the midst of mists, land in the waters, life/hope/faith/peace in the midst of nothingness. And God called this balance Good. That tension is elemental to who we are. We must understand that everything is in a continuing struggle against entropy, balancing life against death, against reverting to chaos and disorder, and nothingness. Perceiving that difference, that endless fight to make a mark on life, the desire for our lives to have had purpose and meaning and be remembered afterward is basic to humanity's struggle against entropy. As we live with depression. As we cope with Chemo therapies that attack and kill parts of our body in order that our bodies may again have balance and order, somehow this makes sense.

Life, humanity, all was created To Be Good, and according to the Catholic Theologian Matthew Fox was originally created as blessed. Therein is the basic human tension, we are Blessed and Good in a world that without life, without order and time and space, would be chaos. We perpetually fight for survival against the cosmologists, against the principalities and powers, which are the antithesis of life, we dwell in darkness.
Yet, our goal is slightly askew.
Trying to make a mark on life, trying to be remembered, we seek great accomplishments, to build fortunes and magnificent Temples, which are more a witness to our abilities as architects and engineers and builders than as a House for God, a House for Worship.

One thing is immediately recognized in reading the 8th Chapter of the Book of Kings, Dedication Ceremonies have not improved in 6000 years! Still there are the invitation of dignitaries, princes and priests, there are speeches describing the merits of those in attendance, there are prayers, then everyone returns to their daily lives. Solomon had labored for years to build this great Temple.
Imagine the Temple to be rectangular in shape, like this Sanctuary, with the Chancel representing the short side, but the Temple of Solomon, the short side would the equivalent of from here on the Eastside of the Village stretching all the way to the Food Pantry and Bus Garage behind the Hilltop Restaurant. Solomon's Temple to God was to have been like the Sphynx in Egypt and the Great Wall in China, one of the great wonders of the world. But as they came to make speeches, and to recognize their own accomplishment, the whole Temple was filled with God's Glory, a thick dark cloud that drove out everyone including the priests.

There is with God this tension, of “imminence” that God is always right here, available and caring, and God is “transcendent” unable to be put in a box like an idol, unable to be quantified. The very description of God dwells in deep darkness is a way of describing that God is unknowable, beyond our abilities of language, the limitation of words. God is holy, mysterious, all powerful, caring.

For a Temple is a place for God's Holiness, and not a testimony to human accomplishment. Instead the testimony to human life, the witness to our existence are Prayers of Supplication by the faithful. Prayers of Supplication are not Speeches of our accomplishments. Not Prayers of Petition, demanding our needs and desires. Prayers of Supplication are prayers said by others, when the Community of faith lifts us up before Almighty God as Witnessed and Remembered, as we did this morning for June, for Bard and Ruth, for Nankiir and Deng traveling to begin life anew with Andrew in the United States.

In 2005, when I first went to Sudan, it was a very tough place. There was no electricity, no clean water, for waste you dug a hole in the ground. In the time of that first visit, we re-united families that had been lost by 25 years of Civil War, we worshipped God together, we listened and provided pastoral care even to the pastors, we chose a location for the promise of the clinic, we offered gifts to change the way the people cultivated the earth, we gave gifts to redeem sons and daughters locked away in prisons. The morning we were to leave, our military guard asked if we had left anything. I said Yes, that I had left some cookies and juice for those who had provided care, those who had swept out the hut where I had stayed. He became quite infuriated, and went into the hut and brought out the cookies and juice and dropped them in my lap, saying in War you leave nothing behind, no evidence you were ever here, except we will know and remember. That is supplication. When the first American Medical Mission Group visited the Doctor in charge observed everything in awe, describing “Kings and Emperors built Palaces and Temples adorned with fountains, but a community of faith in a village in America, nearly all of whom will never set foot here or see this place, have built for posterity a place of healing and care.” That ability to do for others, is an act of grace, is also a prayer of supplication.

The Letter to the Ephesians does an amazing thing. For Paul describes himself as being a Prisoner for the Lord, he is literally stripped and chained and imprisoned in a hole in the ground for his faith in God. Outside, the cell, which was more like a sink hole, a cleft in between rocks, stood a Roman soldier. The Soldier wore the Uniform of the Empire, a Helmet, a belt, a sword, a shield, shoes, all distinctive to representing the Empire. And Paul describes that in the balance between chaos and order, good and evil, darkness and light, we have to continually question who we are and what we represent.

By being a member of the Roman Legion, this man gave up all identity, all ability to think and reason and act on his own. Everything about his life was a representation of the Roman Empire, it's principalities and powers.
By being a Prisoner of the Roman Empire for his Faith in God, Paul understood that actually he was like an Ambassador for God to the World. As an ambassador for God, he would be clothed in righteousness and peace, armed with justice, his feet would not be bare but would be shoed with the ability to go anywhere so as to preach.

It all makes us wonder, what is the true reality.
By turning on an electric light have we actually brought illumination, or have we simply shifted the shadows?
As we act as husband and wife to one another, do we put on love? Do we put on compassion, understanding.
As we care for our parents and our children, we float over and over between who is the parent and who the child, who is teaching whom, providing for whom?
Is what we do in all of life, done as Prisoners, or as Ambassadors?
Have we acquiesced to the powers and principalities, to the culture and cosmologists, or do we dwell with God in holiness, in faith, in compassion, attempting to provide light in the world?