For I am desolate and in misery
“You were sometimes darkness,” Paul tells us in this morning’s Epistle. That might be the only good news since it leads to the idea that perhaps “now you are light in the Lord.” The Gospel reading, on the other hand, is the very picture of desolation and darkness. “Beware the Ides of March,”indeed. Beware of human evil. Yet the good news of this Gospel, it seems, is actually our evil for unless we face that we cannot begin to grasp the radical nature of God’s goodness.
We live in rather apocalyptic times not religiously so much as in a secular way. There is a great fearfulness in the global world especially now with the Covid-19 outbreak and spread. About that it is quite reasonable to take prudent measures and precautions about hand-washing, it seems, and about large gatherings that involve considerable travel from one place to another. All sensible and good. But such reasonable carefulness seems almost eclipsed by a deep fearfulness. That warrants some reflection because there are some real dangers in this fearfulness. The greatest danger, it seems, to me is the fear of the other.
There is even a word for it: allophobia, the fear of others. How do we care for one another if we are afraid of one another? This runs counter to the concept of friendship that belongs to our literary and spiritual traditions ranging from the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu to the friendship of Jonathan and David, to the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus, and so on, and extending to the divine friendship. “I have called you friends,” Jesus says, in a passage that is all about sacrifice as a form of deep care. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Beyond that, there is the even more radical command by Jesus to “love your enemies.” These things counter our fear of the other which can only lead to desolation and misery.
In our fear of the other we forget two things: first, that we are all made in the image of God; and second, the absolute goodness of God himself. Today’s gospel reading from Luke is very dark and bleak, a gospel of desolation that complements the Matthaean apocalypse in Advent about the signs of desolation and fear. In Advent, the focus is on the meaning of God’s coming which is always a kind of judgement and a wake-up call, not altogether unlike today’s epistle reading. What is the desolation in today’s Gospel? It is the reality of human sin which calls what is good evil and then having shut oneself off from God in splendid isolation, the soul finds itself possessed of “seven other spirits more wicked than himself.” “The last state of that man,” we are told, “is worse than the first.” Such is the picture of ultimate desolation and despair, a despair of the good.
We confront the spectacle of human evil that is the cause of desolation and despair. Yet that is the good news paradoxically because evil as the negation of the good is revealed to us. We are reminded that the goodness of God is far greater than our folly. Jesus “casts out a devil,” we are told. Perhaps we are sceptical of such ideas and yet we know only too well about addictions and dependencies that wreak havoc in people’s lives; in short, about the forms of evil within each of us that have a power over us.
Jesus is accused of “casting out devils through Beelzebul, the prince of devils,” an ancient name that refers to the idea of possession. The name, Beelzebul, means lord of the dwelling. Evil is said to cast out evil, a contradiction. What is good is called evil, another contradiction. Jesus, “knowing their thoughts” and ours points out these contradictions and counters the argument emphatically. “If I cast out devils by the finger of God, no doubt the kingdom of God hath come upon you.” It is a strong testament to the power of the good which alone overcomes evil. The finger-grace of God is greater than all and every evil. The radical message is that God and God alone can bring good out of evil.
We neglect that at our peril. We ignore the divine friendship which alone is the counter to our desolation and despair. In our self-isolation we are in a worse state than at the first. What is needed? Simply the grace of God. Lent contracts the journey of the soul to God into the span of forty days and concentrates the radical nature of that journey. We go through the vales of misery and desolation, even through “the valley of the shadow of death” that are caused by sin and evil, not by any power of our own but by the grace of God.
This Gospel used to be even longer with the addition of the encounter between Jesus and a woman in the crowd who calls out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that you sucked.” It would seem to be a testament to his incarnation and to honour Mary. Jesus’ response calls attention instead to the deeper purpose of his being with us. “Blessed rather are they who hear the word of God and keep it.” That is the true and only antidote to despair, to our desolation and misery.
This is the insight of the psalmist. “Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and in misery.” The awareness of our desolation and misery means our recognition of sin and evil but that is about our turning to the God who turns to us. “Turn thee unto me.” God’s turning to us is mercy and grace. It is about our fellowship with Christ and with one another. We forget that at the peril of our souls.
There are, no doubt, lessons already to be learned with respect to our current fears and worries, lessons perhaps about the extent of global travel and its effects on our world, lessons about our technocratic dependencies upon social media and big data. But the deeper lessons are not about the practical and the technological; they are about the things of the spirit, about the goodness of God and our fellowship together in Christ. To confront the evil of our darkness and desolation is to be awakened to the light and the truth of Christ. Evil can only be known in the light of the good. We are called to “walk as children of light”; in short, to “hear the word of God and keep it.” It is the real and only antidote to our fearfulness and its desolation.
Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and in misery.
Fr. David Curry
Lent 3, 2020