The people who sat in darkness… Matthew 4:16 (bonus blog on Saturday)

                               

We are two days away from a total eclipse of the sun for some.
We are in the middle of one of the darkest periods of our political, economic and spiritual history.
The 2 minute, 38 second eclipse of our source of light will (hopefully) end in restored light.
The thirty-six year slide (yes, 1981) into this moral and spiritual darkness may render us permanently blinded by our darkness.

Jesus addressed the people who were under the yoke of Rome and those in collusion with Rome for generations as “the people who sat in darkness”, purposefully misquoting Isaiah 9:2 and “the people who walked in darkness”.  They had been sitting in the deep darkness that Empire’s Greed, lust for power and insatiable desire for personal position and status had created for those under its political, economic and military might.  There was no walking for a long time.  They were stuck in it.

We have been sitting in it for thirty-six years: the normalization of greed and the exploitation and lack of compassion that comes with it, even a prosperity theology by those in collusion with Empire to justify it; the outright embrace of corrupt power over others in order to gain more wealth and prestige or position that Wall Street  Washington and the ruthless religious “right” made normal in our culture– even to the dehumanizing and vilifying scapegoating of others because they are different; and the desire for status and personal position that our culture has promoted through sycophantic fervor in the media, social media and even the church growth movement.

This partial eclipse of light by darkness has been thirty-six years in the making, but it is fittingly culminating now with a total eclipse.

Will we exit this period of political, economic and spiritual darkness with restored light, or remain in the darkness?

Will we find our compassion, empathy and generosity as a nation, or continue along the path of self- acquisition at the expense and to the destruction of others around us, with no concern for anyone else as long as we get what we want, and hatred from fear for those we have scapegoated because they are different?

Will we find the value for power over self (desires, urges) in self-control, and find the value of shared power and thus enhanced power in order to do good things in the world around us, or go on defining power in terms of our ability to exploit, dominate, marginalize and destroy others around us?
Will we learn the value of humility and lifting others up in order to lift us all up, or will we continue to promote our own self-interests above some or all others around us, thus threatening all of us?
Will we see the light… again?  Ever?

On Monday, we will enter a unique darkness while living in an all-to common one.
On Monday, we will emerge from that darkness (hopefully), while most probably staying in the political, economic and spiritual darkness we have created for ourselves and others in the world around us for thirty-six years.

Or will we?  Will we perhaps walk out of it?                                                                       Pastor Jamie