4th Sunday in Easter

I’m still gleaning from this mornings sermon. You can click here to listen. 

There are some beautiful gems that surfaced after the prayer that may not be in my notes or on the recording. These came as our congregation shared today.

Here are just a few:

• Good things happen in the dark.
• Healing happens in the dark
• Deliverance happens in the dark.
• We are never alone in the dark. God is always with us.
• Freedom takes place in the dark.
• God tends to our wounds in the dark.
• We are held by God, even in the dark
• Peace comes in the dark.
• And I’m sure there are more.

Here are my notes below.

It is the fourth Sunday in Easter – a great reminder that “Jesus is risen.  Jesus is risen indeed!  Alleluia, Amen.”

Our Scripture today:

Psalm 23:1-4a KJV
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me”

Psalm 23: 4a MSG
“Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side.”

Some of us have been through “the valley of the shadow of death” – not just feeling like we’ve been through the valley of the shadow of death, but have physically gone through the valley of the shadow of death.

Does God’s way lead us through Death Valley, or does God go with us through Death Valley?… I don’t know, but if God leads us there, I’m not sure I want to sign up with God.

Thankfully, we need not worry if God’s way takes us through Death Valley. I have found that ANY way can lead us through Death Valley. So when you find that you have been or are currently in “Death Valley,” it’s important to know that God is with us.

For some, this makes them angry – if God is/was with me, why did God let this happen? If this is your view, I invite you to welcome the anger.  Welcome the questions. Welcome the confusion of not understanding.

For others, they know that without God by their side, they would have never survived. Even when they wanted to die, God allowed them to live.

If you are here today and have been through “Death Valley,” you are a survivor, not a victim. Survivors live to tell how God delivered them from Death Valley. Victims can’t seem to grasp God’s deliverance and get paralyzed by the experience.  I don’t say this lightly. I say this humbly, compassionate, and respectfully.  Victims can’t process the experience.  They get stuck in the experience and avoid talking about it at all costs. It is by the grace of God that victims become survivors.

Many times, it is in the company of trusted companions, therapists, pastors, spiritual directors, or friends that God gives us grace to process our experience. It is rare that we are able to process alone – until we learn how to reflect and invite God into our darkness.

It is by God’s grace that the darkness we thought was the “shadow of death” was the “shadow of the Almighty,” covering us with his wings.

In the spiritual life, we DIE, RISE, and DISCOVER again and again.  This is LIFE!

Rashid Hughes wrote this,
“There seasons we feel deeply resourced, held, and maybe unshakable by any wind that blows our way. There are other seasons where we find ourselves tumbling, disconnected, and feeling as though we are being thrown around again and again through the fiery pits of the human experience.”

He goes on to say,
“What I am beginning to learn on my journey is that we are made to see and exist in the dark.  We are from and of the dark.”
“When I use the word dark here, I speak of our direct encounter with the tenderness of the human experience and life itself, unfolding and contorting us so that we might become new.  Sometimes, it expresses itself as liminality, unexpected diagnosis, chaos, deaths, the unknown, tragedy, and silence.”
“When I say navigate dark times, I am not referring to this notion of facing to quickly come out of the dark. No!  I mean facing as a way of practicing within the dark, living in the dark, and feeling in the dark without the pressure of arriving in the light.  We have to disrupt the idea that there is only life in the light.”
“What I am attempting to say is that so much pain and suffering comes through our inability to welcome the possibility that the dark is not always our enemy.”
“This means we must develop infrastructures to lay down the tricks and tactics we often use to escape the dark.  When this surrender occurs, the dark opens us beyond our limited mental constructs of who and what we are individually and collectively.  We become stretched and torn but also transformed by the life of the dark.”

What if what we thought was “the valley of the shadow of death” was really “the shadow of the almighty”? We die – we rise – we discover

Does this sound like a stretch?

How about this.  What if, when we were in “the valley of the shadow of death,” “the shadow of the almighty” was sustaining our very life?

Can we linger in the darkness without having the pressure of arriving in the light?
– This may save our lives
– This may save our marriages
– This may save the others when we give them the freedom to linger in the dark without having the pressure to arrive in the light.

Is this a message that reflects the Easter season you ask?  It seems dark, Pastor.

My answer is that until you linger in the darkness, practice in the dark, live in the dark, and feel in the dark, you will never appreciate the light.  Darkness can heal.