To Vanish in Darkness

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 4: 12-16 and Job 23: 1-9 and 16-17 Sermon Title: To Vanish in Darkness Preached on October 14, 2018 I once spent a summer in a maximum-security women’s prison. I wasn’t incarcerated there, I was learning about being a chaplain by shadowing the one who served that prison, though I probably learned the most that summer from the women who were incarcerated there than the chaplain I was shadowing. There was one woman in particular. From her I learned a most profound lesson about resilience when I went to hear her sing on the second floor of the building where those inmates who, like her, suffered from mental illness lived. I was sent up there because all the women there liked to sing hymns, and somehow or another I was invited to hear them. They gathered in one room with me, they were all in their brown prison jumpsuits, and one of the women, she must have been seven feet tall. I heard later she was locked up because she had attacked a man with a rake. She sat down next to me. I introduced myself. We exchanged pleasantries, and then it was time to sing. One by one they got up to sing. I don’t remember who was first but there’s this one in particular that I remember. She wore thick glasses. She was probably 20, and she stood before us all and sang a song that defied the hopelessness and sadness of that whole prison. She sang: “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” It’s a simple song, but it was a picture of defiance – because the hope that she embodied when she sang and those words that she brought to life challenged everything about those gray prison walls. I tell you this story because that woman showed me something that I’m still learning about. I’m still learning about what it means to be faithful regardless of where life takes me, and I want to learn how to be as faithful as that young woman, because for me, life is full of ups and downs and sometimes the way I feel about my place in the world goes up and down right with it. Take this last Monday. Last Monday started off great. I’m back in school working for my doctorate, and when I got to class on Monday our professor returned our first two papers and I got an A on them both. But the other thing that happened last Monday was I sat down on Cece’s bed to read her a bedtime story and heard a loud crack as her footboard broke and I ended up in the floor. Cece laughed at me. Sara and Lily came down the stairs to laugh at me too, and so a day of alchemic accomplishments ended in humiliation, but that’s how life is. And because that’s life – we can’t put too much emphasis on accomplishments – because accomplishments can be followed with failures. We can’t put too much emphasis on wealth or property – because what we have might be here one day and gone the next. That’s what happened with Job. The book of Job with this man who loses everything illustrates this important truth of life – that we can’t put too much emphasis on fame or fortune, youth or beauty, wealth or property – because we might be getting straight A’s one minute only to break the bed the next – but we can’t let a broken bed break us. The alternative is embodied by this woman who sang in the prison. Every day she woke up, saw the sunshine through bars on her window. Put on the brown jumpsuit of an incarcerated criminal. If you need help feeling like a looser, those two things alone will do it nearly every time. Put on top of that the stigma attached to mental illness and for most people – they’re scraping themselves up off the floor – but not her. No – despite everything that had gone wrong and every accomplishment that came to nothing, still she knew something that sometimes I forget, “That his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” That’s a powerful declaration of faith in a place like a prison. And it’s a declaration like that – a faithful conviction like that which will get you through a prison sentence or any of the other ups and downs of life – because while Christ watches over us always, we can’t always count on anybody else. Another thing about prisons is how easy it is for some people on the outside to forget about the people inside. It’s the same with hospitals and nursing homes. These are places where too many people are suffering all alone. No one by their side and no one really understanding. It’s just the opposite of when you have a new baby. Some major events we are surrounded – others we’re not. It’s a strange thing that when you have a new baby in the house everybody wants to come visit. Even when parents are weird about who touches the baby, still everyone wants to come over. It’s not always that way when people are suffering. You know, when Lily was a baby we bought these shoe cover things. These blue disposable things that we asked everyone to slip on over their shoes, so they wouldn’t track into the house any contaminates from the outside world. Getting in to our house when we had a new baby – it was like we expected everyone to suit up as though they were entering a sterile laboratory. We made everyone sanitize their hands, put those things over their shoes. We’d put you out if you sneezed. Visitors who had a runny nose could just leave their gifts and casseroles at the door. We made it hard, but people wanted to come see the baby any way. It’s not always like that when someone’s suffering. It’s hard to go visit people in the prison, in the hospital, or the funeral parlor but some people do it, and Job’s friends went to visit him too in the midst of his suffering. Scripture tells us that “when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air above their heads. [Then] they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.” I remember a professor in seminary telling us that this is one of the great examples of real friendship. They go and just sit with their friend in his time of need – this is just what we all long for when we’re suffering ourselves – “but then,” my professor said, “then, they opened their mouths.” Job dares to speak to his friends from the depth of his despair, but you know what his friends did? By their replies they made him feel even more alone. Job curses the day he was born, and Eliphaz tells him he suffers because he has sinned. Job says, “my suffering is without end,” and Bildad tells him he should repent. Job declares, “I loathe my life,” and Zophar tells him he deserves his punishment. It goes along like this from chapter 3 all the way to chapter 31 – for 28 chapters Job’s suffering is compounded because in his suffering he finds that he’s all alone. That’s why he says what he did in our 2nd Scripture Lesson for today: “If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face.” He says that because there is a place lower than the ash heap – that place where you suffer in silence – in looking for understanding from your friends, they instead try to explain your suffering away – that’s not just a place of sadness, that’s a place of disappearing into nothingness. Plus, he’s looking for God in the midst of all of this – and his friends tell him to straighten up. Get it together. You know what it is that’s just happened to him? He became the one everyone was praying for – but no one wanted to be seen with. And in chapter 32 they leave him all alone. You know what that’s like? Sure, you do. In class this week I heard from a friend who’s an associate pastor for this great big youth group. He watched as 30 middle school girls walked out of their cabin one Saturday morning at their youth retreat. 29 of them had on the same black yoga pants and a long sleeve t-shirt. One poor girl didn’t get the memo. You know what that’s like? We parents say that it’s what’s on the inside that counts, and we mean it. But how we contradict ourselves when we pay $400 on a homecoming dress that emphasizes more than our daughter’s personality. Why do we do that? Because no one wants their kid to be left out of the group. No one wants their kid to be the one that everyone turns their back on because she doesn’t have the right clothes or the right hair or the right car. We live in this world where we are always working to fit in. Always working to be accepted. But acceptance is just like so much else in this life – it can be here one day and gone the next. Consider Job. He’s not in the ash heap this morning. No – he’s actually some place worse. “God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me; If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness cover me face!” because in addition to losing all that he had he also lost his friends. Now here’s a place where many people go, but not all of them return. It’s the place where we’re stripped of everything. Everything that made us feel secure. Everything and everyone who gave us identity and worth. There, all alone we begin to vanish into the thick darkness. That’s what happens when the bed breaks and we break with it. We step on the scale, and that number determines how we’ll feel about ourselves for the rest of that day. We try to understand our place in this world and we use numbers – how many people liked my photo. How many friends do I have. What’s my score? And it gets worse. I remember once, when my grandparents wanted to take Sara and me out to dinner. We met at their house and right before we left he said, “Let me run upstairs and check my stocks so I can see how nice of a restaurant I can take us out to.” As he said that my grandmother was rolling her eyes, because she knew that some things go up and then they come down and should we be so foolish to place too much importance on such numbers than our worth will always be held captive by forces outside our control. But that’s what we do. Economic depressions inspire emotional depressions. Hard days make for hard looks in the mirror where we question ourselves. Suicide rates rise because this thick darkness covers too many faces and not enough of us know how to sing: “His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.” But it’s not just that he watches – it’s that he’s right beside us. From Hebrews we read: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are.” We “approach” his throne of grace with boldness, because he’s walked a mile in our shoes and understands what others fail to comprehend. And his presence must be the solid rock that we build on our lives upon, because he gives us freely what this world tells us we must work hard to gain. The world tells us that to be somebody we have to make a great name for ourselves – but he’s already made us somebody. The world tells us that to be accepted we have to dress right and do what’s expected of us whether we want to or not – but he’s already accepted us. That’s what this woman in the prison knew so well – that even when she lost her freedom and was confined to a cell. Even after she was stripped of her clothes and given a brown jump suit. Even after her friends and family turned their back and left her alone – she knew something that too few of us remember – that his eye is one the sparrow, and I know he watches me. That’s what baptism means you see – all that we work for he gives so freely. Remember that – and be at peace.