On Malchus.

Just a few minutes after the beginning, the light that was illuminating the green grass was dampened.  It was weakened, like a candle that was about to reach the very last strand of the wick. From that moment on, we were no longer able to see the world in the perspective that it was meant to.  We did not have the bright bulb blazing that was a relationship with our God, our Father, our Abba.  It was strained, if not all together broken. In short, this whole life took a turn for the worse, and a system took root in the world that relied on hurting each other.  It meant that I had to win and if I were going to win, then somebody had to lose, but it did not matter too much in the end, because we were going to die one day, and all of that which we fought and scraped for would be forgotten.  

And then one day, according to someone by the name of John, a new light entered the world.  An old man sitting on an island had been chewing on these old memories like a cow savoring a chunk of sod for something like 70 years.  70 times did John spin around the sun and for whatever reason he decides that now is the time to say a few words about what he witnessed. 

Setting out to tell the story, to trace the narrative, John starts off by talking about this darkness that came into the world so much longer ago, this night that came over the earth like a lion.  He talks about this Word, or this man, this person we called Jesus.  He compares him to light.  No, that is not right.  It was not that Jesus was like Light.  It was that he was The Light.  

And somehow, based on the experience that John had, the story that he lived through, the life that he had lived creeping around the sun so many times, he became convinced that somehow this person that was light was actually able to shine in the darkness.  Such a great darkness though it was, but a light pierced it, a break between drawn curtains, a sun rising up on the distant horizon of a protracted time of night.  

John said that the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.  The darkness cannot overcome the light.  Night will not conquer the day. This is the situation that John writes in, at the age of 90, just a few strokes of the pen left and a few more breathes and then he'll be tossed into the clay. 

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This life can get pretty dark.  Just here, in this little world that I live in.  Here in this sphere, this fishbowl of a life that I carry around with me.  The nights sometime can be heavier.  The brightness of the day will be dulled and the colors will seem washed out.  Sometimes it seems that this darkness that John is postulating will not give up.  The darkness has not understood that light but it does not keep him from trying.  The darkness hell bent on death, on loss.  We see it on the news, we feel it in the economy, but it is deeper than that.  Darkness is working his way in on the grassroots level.  He starts creeping in with shadows in the foggy corners of my heart and advances slowly and one day here I am, and I feel like this darkness has backed me into a corner and my flashlight is low on batteries.  

That's the way I feel sometimes, and the truth be told, that's a little of what I have been thinking lately.  Now the deeper truth is that it is not just me.  We all are there, from time to time.  We all enter long nights, we all go into dark rooms.  We all wonder when we will ever emerge on the other side.  Don't lie to yourselves.  You know what I am talking about.  Not one us gets away from it.  No one ever has.  What you might want to do is run away from it, to ignore it.  That's the easy thing to do and that is what we usually choose, but it does not us nor the world an ounce of good.  The darkness keeps on coming whether we try to smile our way through it or not.  

And that is just in our world.  Just in my fishbowl.  The darkness works his way up, from the bottom soles of my shoes and out of my life and into the bigger oceans of this world.  We like to say that our problems are not that big when we compare them to others.  When we look at the homeless man or the situation in Darfur.  When we think about rape and war and the pain that the world out there is fighting.  But you have to understand that the darkness is everywhere, and that it is all connected, and that your pain is as deep and real as the pain on the distant shores of Somalia.  We are nothing if not in this deal together.  Our fishbowls are not contained unto themselves, but rather, they spill and mix with one another through every day, through every life, through every generation.  

That is where we are. 

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But then there is this Light that we keep hearing about.  We hear about this Light named Jesus.  They tell us that he is the Son of God.  They tell us that he was a baby that grew into a man.  The fullness of Man.  The fullness of God- all in one fishbowl.  

And here he is in this moment.  Here is this light shining, or maybe flickering.  Because this Son knows that he is going to die and lose his Father.  He knows about the resurrection, but he is not thinking about that right now.  He is not thinking about that when he is sweating drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane.  Do you remember the hope when the darkness is knocking on your door to come and take you for the last time?  When you are faced with those hard nights, are you rational?  Do you remember all that you have been taught?  Do you even know what you believe anymore?  

The humanity of Jesus is there with us in that moment.  The humanity of him- to not know, to dread what it means to die and lose the father. It is all there in the sweat.  It is all there in the prayer and shaking and crying.  It is not just for him, either.  It means a great deal to us, too.  And if we were there, then we would not know about the resurrection.  We would not know what the ending was going to look like.  Jesus knows that it's not just his connection.  It is that he has said it himself: He is the way.  He is the truth.  He is the light.  If his light fails, then we loose our one hope.  We loose our light and the darkness will have overtaken it.  

So he summons up enough faith to say, "Not my will but yours."  

And that is all he has when he walks out and finds the guards coming for him.  That's all he has when Peter cuts off that guy's ear.  All he has is the burden of being the light- the breath and flesh of God, and being the man that bridges humanity to the father.  

At this moment- when he can turn the whole plan on it's head and fight back- at this moment when the swords are drawn, he has the power to call down the angels, the darkness is rapping his loudest on the doors of God.  The darkness has come for the final call.  

Enough of this.  

Enough of this fight.  Enough of this system.  Enough of this way.  It's no use.  The light was brought here to shine and the darkness can not overcome it.  It will not.  Hang him on the cross, let the middle of the day turn into the dark of night- let that happen and even still- the light will shine out of the cave.  The light will burst through on Sunday.  The darkness does not understand the light.  The night has no clue who it is that it is getting involved with. 

Darkness knows nothing of relentless love.  Darkness can pursue us until the very death but the Light goes further still.  

When we are at the threshold of the darkest nights of our lives, the only hope that you can rest yourself in is that in this moment- when the swords were drawn and the chips were down- the light decided to shine on, defying the encroaching night and all the pain that we carry around in our stomachs, in our hearts, in our fishbowls. The light decided to do the impossible.  To let the darkness kill it-- and what the darkness can never understand is how that light rose up again.  

I'll never understand it either.  I'll never know how he did it or how such love could persist through such darkness.  But I'll say this- when the night is darkest around me- my hope is in this one thing- that the light shines in the darkness- and the darkness has not understood.  The night has not overcome.  He won't.  He can't.  He just doesn't understand.