(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on August 21, 2016, Proper 16)
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When the Good News Becomes Bad News
Evangelism, which means the proclamation of good news, has a checkered legacy in the church. For centuries, it has not been uncommon for Christians to proclaim the good news in the shape of bad news. Far too often, the church has resorted to scare tactics to proclaim God’s love. The result is twisted and absurd. “God loves you, but if you don’t accept God’s love and submit to God’s desire, then you’ll be spending eternity in flames.” In any other story of love, this kind of strong-arm tactic would be called spousal abuse: “Meet me at the altar…or else!”
In just a couple of months, Liberty University will host its annual Scaremare. Participants will walk through a haunted house with all the requisite props: clowns, chainsaws, creepy noises. But in this case, the frightening fun of Halloween is actually an evangelism tool. Scaremare proclaims the “good news” that without God, you will spend eternity in a house like this, but infinitely worse.
The imagery in today’s scripture naturally lends itself to just this sort of scare tactic. You’ve got fire and darkness, a stormy gloom and a voice coming from nowhere. You’ve even got the threat of death.
It’s no surprise, then, how the church has commonly interpreted this passage. The preceding verses have encouraged a persecuted community to remain strong in their faith, to trust in the way of the cross despite the trouble it was bringing them. Following these words of encouragement, the present passage appears to resort to a more negative tactic. It’s as if the writer decided on a bit of insurance. Just in case the previous words of encouragement didn’t really stick, he’d tack on an extra caution, a reminder of what would happen if they didn’t persevere in their faith.
Just What Is the Writer Thinking About?
This kind of interpretation is not baseless. The ingredients of today’s scripture include scary imagery and words of caution, “See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking” (12:25). Mix these two together, and you have a holy threat. Do this, or else.
But there are other ways of combining these scriptural ingredients.
It helps to know, for instance, that today’s scripture does not come from the imagination of the writer. He’s not dreaming up hellfire for his listeners. In fact, he’s making a careful reference to a climactic moment in Israelite history: when Moses and the people of Israel, who had just fled Egypt, encountered God at Mount Sinai. In the original story, as it is found in the book of Exodus, Moses and the people encounter God in all the ways that our writer mentions today. God descends upon the mountain “in fire” (Ex 19:18); there is a tempest of “thunder and lightning” (19:16), and a gloom of “cloud” and “smoke” around the mountain (19:16, 18). There is a trumpet blaring (19:16, 19), and the voice of God is heard in a terrifying “thunder” (19:19). All the people are afraid, and only Moses approaches the space where God is, which is a space of “thick darkness” (19:18-21).
Reading Mount Sinai: Indiana Jones versus Gregory of Nyssa
Now one way of understanding this scene is to rewatch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. When the Nazis open the ark that comes from Mount Sinai, they unleash an uncontrollable power that is manifest in all the elements we’ve heard: darkness and fire, disembodied noise and flashes of light. It’s terrifying.
But it’s not the only way to understand what happened at Mount Sinai. There is, in fact, an interpretation that predates Hollywood by centuries and presents a very different picture. Gregory of Nyssa, a gentle and compassionate bishop of the fourth century, who would later be called the “Father of [Church] Fathers,” saw Mount Sinai in a very different light. Or rather, in a peculiar sort of darkness.
“Moses Entered into the Darkness and There He Saw God”
Gregory points out that according to scripture, when Moses climbs Mount Sinai to meet God, he encounters God in “thick darkness” (Ex 20:21). And for Gregory, this is no small detail, especially not when scripture describes God on numerous occasions as being surrounded by darkness and cloud,[1] and especially not when the gospel of John confirms, “No one has ever seen God” (1:18). For Gregory, darkness describes our experience of God. It indicates that we are encountering something “beyond all knowledge and comprehension.”[2]
The darkness of God, then, is another way of talking about the mystery of God. But for Gregory, this is not the kind of mystery that you solve. It’s not the kind of mystery that means you have a lack of knowledge, and all you need the missing piece. In fact, Gregory says, it’s the opposite. He calls it a “luminous darkness”[3]; it is a dazzling darkness that is actually the effect of a superabundance of light, like the darkness you would see if you looked at the sun for too long. The mystery of God is the mystery of excess, the mystery of something more, the kind of mystery that is endlessly known—which is to say, it is known but never completely. This darkness is the darkness of intimacy. It is the mystery of love, the love of a relationship where you know the other person intimately, but you never know them completely, because if you did, there would be no space for love and wonder; your interactions would be like the functions of a math equation.
And this, Gregory says, is the meaning of the divine darkness. “God would not have shown [Godself] to [Moses],” he says, “if the vision would have been such as to terminate Moses’ desire.” The meaning of the divine darkness, he says, is “never to have this desire [for God] satisfied.”[4]
Reinterpreting Darkness: From Threat to Intimacy, Fear to Wonder
When we approach today’s scripture with Gregory, what once sounded like a threat now sounds a little more like an intimate whisper. What once led to fear now leads to wonder. The darkness of God, the mystery of a voice whose speaker we cannot see, a swirling tempest through which we cannot make out what’s what—these images now suggest the intimacy of relationship, the wonder of love.
If you think about it, our experience of darkness draws on a similar progression from threat to intimacy, from fear to wonder.
We can all probably remember a time when we were afraid of the dark. And it’s no coincidence that most horror stories play on this fear and take place in a dark setting. This is the darkness of fear and foul-play.
And yet, we also experience another kind of darkness.
It is under the cover of darkness that we enter into the intimacies and wonders of life’s many mysteries. Who has not lain under the covers of bed and wondered at the vast unknown spread across the star-speckled night sky? Who has not stayed up into the wee hours of the night, contemplating “what ifs?” and “whys?” and “why nots?” with a close friend? Or who has not sat by the window on a snowy evening, listening to the flakes fall and feeling the tangible enchantment of creation that most of the time the world is too busy to feel? Who has not listened from within the pitch black of a bedroom or a tent to the symphony of a world unseen: the chorus of cicadas, the hoot of an owl, the steady melody of a creek?
Is not all of this an echo of the dazzling darkness of God? Isn’t this darkness an intimate darkness, the darkness of love and wonder, the kind of darkness that kindles our desire to know and experience something more, to step further into its dark folds?
Scary Stuff, or Good News
And it is only by stepping into the darkness, into the mystery of that which can never be touched, that we will receive the kingdom. The writer concludes today’s scripture by reminding his audience of the promise of God, a promise which he has already mentioned several times. He has talked about it as the promise of a city whose architect and builder is God. He has talked about it as the promise of “something better.” But today, he talks about it in rather different terms. In today’s scripture, God promises to shake the heavens and the earth, so that all created things are removed. This isn’t just shaking a snowglobe and watching the snow swirl. It’s shaking a snowglobe and watching all the scenery dislodge and spin irrevocably in a holy earthquake.
Such a promise is scary stuff. Or at least it’s scary if we’re afraid of losing what we’ve got. But if our faith is in the darkness of God, which is to say, in that which we do not know, then this promise is good news. It is the gospel of “something better” (cf. 11:40), even if that something looks completely different than anything we could imagine.
“Therefore,” our writer says, “let us give thanks” and worship God “with reverence and awe” (12:28). These words are common church words that sometimes become a bit stale for us: “give thanks,” “reverence,” “awe.” What is our writer really saying? His audience, remember, is enduring persecution. Times were dark indeed. But within the darkness of the times, lay also the luminous darkness of God, the blinding mystery of a Creator who was still creating. And that’s why the right worship of this God is not fear, but as our writer says, “reverence and awe”—which is really to say, the kind of fascination and wonder that might seize us underneath the stars, that nighttime awareness that there is much more to God than we know, much more to this world than what we can see. There is a kingdom coming out in the unseen hoots of owls and howls of wolves, out in the impenetrable darkness of the snowstorm, out beneath the dizzying spread of night sky. There is a kingdom coming, which is scary stuff for those who would hold onto what they have, but good news for those who would let it go and walk with faith into the darkness of God.
Prayer
You are always beyond our reach,
And we are always within yours.
May our hearts tremble at your touch,
Not in fear but in wonder and love
For the kingdom that you promise.
Help us to let go of all that we claim,
And to be consumed with a fiery passion
For all that is coming. Amen.
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[1] E.g., Deut 5:22; 1 Kgs 8:12; Ps 97:2.
[2] Life of Moses, §164. See “Gregory of Nyssa: Luminous Darkness,” http://www.monachos.net/library/index.php/patristics/specific-fathers/60-gregory-of-nyssa-luminous-darkness, accessed August 19, 2016.
[3] Life of Moses, 2.162-166. See “Gregory of Nyssa: Moses Entered into the Darkness and There He Saw God,” https://enlargingtheheart.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/gregory-of-nyssa-moses-entered-into-the-darkness-and-there-he-saw-god/, accessed August 19, 2016.
[4] Life of Moses, PG 44.404 (A-D). See “Gregory of Nyssa: Luminous Darkness.”
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