“For ye were sometimes darkness”
At first glance, it seems so stark and dark and not a little foreboding and threatening. Yet the readings for the Third Sunday in Lent mark a crucial and critical moment in the journey of the soul to God. If Lent is the pilgrimage of love, of love setting our loves in order, then it must consider in a serious manner the nature of sin and evil as it appears in the negation of the goodness of our created being and thus the denial of the end or purpose of our humanity as ordered to God. Such is the darkness in the Epistle from Ephesians, on the one hand, and the compelling image of “the unclean spirit” in the Gospel reading from Luke, on the other hand, the one who takes to himself “seven other spirits more wicked than himself” and whose state “is worse than the first.” What is the devil except the explicit image of self-contradiction? Lucifer created to be the bearer of light contradicts his own being by claiming to be God. But God is God, not Lucifer. This kind of fixation upon ourselves as absolute is mere fantasy; it means willing a lie. Self-contradiction is self-deceit.
In other words, these readings require us to take seriously the destructive nature of sin and evil as belonging to self-contradiction and the spiritual emptiness that results. This is powerfully shown in the Gospel without which we cannot really understand Paul’s exhortation for us to “walk in love as dear children of light,” rejecting “the unfruitful works of darkness,” since light makes manifest or known the things of darkness. The light is greater than the darkness of human sin and evil. The psalmist’s words that “the right hand of the Lord bringeth mighty things to pass,” alluded to in the Collect, is further intensified by Jesus’s words that “if I cast out devils by the finger of God, no doubt the kingdom of God hath come upon you.” The light is the light of the Gospel, the light of Christ, the good news of the Word of God which alone overcomes the darkness of sin and evil.
What is this all about except a strong argument for the absolute goodness of God which sin and evil negate and deny? Like last Sunday, we have a healing of the soul. Jesus casts out a devil and the one who was dumb or mute, meaning unable to speak, is now able to speak. “The people wondered,” we are told. But in what way? There is a division among the people but even more there is a division in our hearts and minds that goes to the very nature of sin and evil. It is about calling what is good evil. That is to will a lie. Every lie is nothing in itself. It depends utterly and completely upon the truth which it negates but renders us paralyzed and obsessed with what is only partial and incomplete. This is what is meant by demonic possession however differently we might want to speak about it in the language of mental health.
“Some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebul, the prince of the devils; and others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven.” Such is a kind of confusion or darkness in us, but Jesus, “knowing their thoughts,” – a very revealing phrase about his essential divinity and the purpose of his coming – addresses them and makes manifest the nature of our darkness. He reveals to us the contradiction of sin in its negation of the absolute goodness of God as well as giving us an image of the emptiness of the soul when it despairs of God’s absolute truth attaching ourselves instead to some image of our own making.
As he points out, sin cannot cast out sin. “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation,” to a kind of lifeless and barren nothingness. The key point is about being divided within ourselves and thus against ourselves. This equally means that we cannot overcome or transcend our sinfulness by our own power. We cannot heal ourselves. This argues for Christ as Saviour, like us in all respects except sin. Along with the meaning of Beelzebul as ‘Lord of the Flies’ in Golding’s novel by that name, hinting at the idea of death and decay, it also means ‘Lord of the Dwelling,’ signifying a form of possession by another power.
If we trust in ourselves and not in God then we are easily overcome by devils, by the various forms of self-delusion. The unclean spirit going out of us “walketh through dry places,” the desert, “seeking rest” but “finding none returns to his house,” the soul, which he finds “swept and garnished” (KJV) meaning “put in order” (RSV). As Matthew emphasizes, “he finds it empty, swept and put in order.” The point is rather profound.
It is not enough to be made clean from sin if we do not desire the absolute goodness of God. Otherwise we will easily be taken captive to the false absolutes which we put in the place of God, willing this or that agenda as if it were absolute when at best it is only a partial truth and a contradiction of ourselves. Lent is not simply about giving up this and that thing or activity but more importantly about a renewed focus on the things of God. It means “self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial,” to be sure, but also it means “reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word” (BCP, p. 612). Without that we deceive ourselves about ourselves and neglect the Word of God.
And in seeking “of him a sign from heaven,” what is that except to make a similar mistake in insisting that God be answerable to us? In other words, putting ourselves in the place of God, making Christ prove himself to us, putting God to the test, as it were. This too is a lie about the truth of our being. Thus this passage intensifies the teaching of the First and Second Sunday in Lent about sin and evil in terms of temptation and possession.
Such is darkness to be sure, but it is the darkness that we need to see in the greater light of God’s goodness revealed in his Word and Son, the light of Christ. What we see in these three Sundays is the truth and power of God’s Word as the counter to the passive nihilism that cynically despairs of truth and the active nihilism which destroys everything in its pursuit of false absolutes in the place of truth.
For centuries right up until the 1962 Canadian BCP, the Gospel for this Sunday included the two additional verses that immediately follow. They make clear what Jesus means by “casting out devils by the finger of God” by which “the kingdom of God comes upon us.” For “as he said this, a woman in the crowd” cries out to Jesus and says “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked.” Jesus responds in a way that does not simply contradict her insight but confirms what Mary says about herself and us. “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” he says. It complements Mary’s fiat mihi, “be it unto me according to thy word.”
Beyond the forms of human reason in the philosophical sciences, our reason in its truth, though partial and limited, and beyond the vanities and deceits, follies and fantasies of human reason in its error and fallenness, its sin and evil, there is the revelation of the divine word which seeks our good in its absolute truth. It perfects and purifies our thinking by calling us to truth of our humanity in the knowledge of the power and goodness of God; in short, to our blessedness as found not in ourselves but in God. In this sense, today’s readings are but another illustration of those “two vast, spacious things,” as Herbert puts it, “sinne and love,” that belong to theology, to sacra doctrina, namely, to what is revealed through the witness of the Scriptures and our reasoning upon them.
“Ye were sometimes darkness,” Paul says, but not always darkness. For we are not meant to remain in the everlasting darkness of our deceitful and disordered wills but to be “light in the Lord.” We are called to the kingdom of God through the finger grace of God’s Word and Son and to find our blessedness in Christ. His Word made audible in the Scriptures proclaimed and made visible in the Sacraments celebrated is the counter to the despairing nihilism and hopelessness that beset our age of confusion and uncertainty in its darkness and emptiness. We are not to be left empty and dark but full of the goodness and light of Christ but only if we hear the Word of God and keep it.
“For ye were sometimes darkness”
Fr. David Curry
Lent 3, 2025