Joy Comes with the Morning
Joy Comes with the Morning
Luke 6:17-23
If you search carefully enough, you can find almost anything on the internet. Every now and then, what you find is amazing. I searched for Robert Frost’s poem, “Acquainted with the Night.” I got to listen to Robert Frost actually reading the poem. One click and you hear his hypnotic voice:
“I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have out walked the furthest city light.”
The mournful message of this poem doesn’t really “land” until you hear Frost’s tone. This is a man who lost his son to suicide, who has walked in grief ever since. You can hear the darkness in his voice.
If you search the Bible carefully enough, you’ll find more than a few stories of people who struggled in the dark. Do you remember Jacob? On the eve of his reunion with the brother whom he had swindled, Jacob sends his wife and children away and settles in for a long, dark night by himself. Almost immediately, a man shows up and begins wrestling with Jacob. They wrestle wildly though the night. Finally, the stranger hits Jacob on the hip and dislocates the joint. Jacob, bad hip and all, refuses to let go of the man, unless the man blesses him: broken, stubborn and holding on for dear life. The man finally says to Jacob, “What is your name?” “Jacob," he says. “Not any more. As of this night, your name is ‘Israel,’ which means, ‘He who wrestles with God.” Jacob names the place, “Peniel,” which means, “The face of God.” Then, Jacob, limps into the dawn to face his brother, who, against all odds, meets him with open arms.
Sooner or later, we all spend time wrestling with something in the night. Grief and loss catch up to you. Like Frost, you walk through town at night. You wrestle with your demons or regrets or, like Jacob, you wrestle with God. You stubbornly hold on for dear life. You wonder if you will ever see the light again. When all is said and done, you probably limp like Jacob or you have some other battle scars. Remember, though, people would speak Jacob’s name for centuries, “Israel.” For as much as we might dread our long, dark nights, as much as we might like to avoid them at all costs, the truth is that some of the most important moments of our lives—the moments when God feels “right here,”—happen in the dark.
In the darkest time of our most ancient ancestors’ lives, words of comfort arose about light and darkness. People were so ready to hear the truth because they had lost their land and their faith was faltering. They were strangers in a strange land. They had been so sure that they were God’s chosen people. Now, they were simply exiles. Everything felt like chaos. Here’s the truth they heard…
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. All the while a wind from God, the breath of God, swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light, “Day: and the darkness God called, “Night.” And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
The darkness does not win. The light will shine. Dawn will come again.
Since we live in a world where darkness comes only when we turn out the lights, perhaps we have to “stretch” a bit to understand the power of this imagery. We have to consider the rare moments in our lives when the power goes out. We have no choice but to cower around a candle and say bad things about the power company. We have mostly mastered electricity, which takes us one step closer to thinking we might just be the masters of the universe.
Still, we should explore the experience of exile and search the times in our lives when it felt that the darkness was winning, when the unimaginable happened, when things were not as we expected them to be. “How could God be so far away? Where is God in the middle of this chaos that my life has become?” Maybe, we might even be ready to consider the message from several thousand years ago…that God has been quietly working on the side of restoring order the whole time.
Still, there are long, dark nights for us to face. There is wrestling to be done. If we can just face the discomfort, there are hard lessons to learn… All of which brings us to Jesus and our text.
As our text unfolds, a whole crowd of people who are caught in darkness come to Jesus, hoping to find some light. A huge number of people in the crowd are sick or broken physically or psychologically. Jesus wades straight into their pain. He meets them in their despair and brings hope to life. He finds the broken places deep inside them and makes them whole. He restores them and redeems them from some of the worst pain that life can bring. The darkness does not win, not today.
Even now, so many of our long dark nights are brought on by health calamities. Though we may not be able to explain the “how” of Jesus’ healing work, we need to remember the “why,” namely, that nothing can separate us from God’s love, or more simply, Jesus cares. It may not happen overnight. It may not look like a complete cure. It may involve doctors and nurses and real pain and suffering, but God will be present in that suffering and will help us to be whole and live with meaning, even when we feel we might break in two.
Still, most of us are probably aligned with the second group that day. They aren’t sick but they are suffering as a result of their limited understanding of what matters and what doesn’t matter, of what’s a blessing and what’s a curse. The truth is that it is entirely possible to have 20/20 vision but have no insight at all. Jesus invites those people, and us, to transform our vision of the world. That transformation is just as radical as any other healing that took place that day…
“You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all. God’s kingdom is there for the finding.” Everyone assumes that wealth and abundance and ease are God’s great blessings to the righteous, evidence for everyone to see that God loves me and that I am on the right path. What Jesus implies is that losing all that stuff might just be the best thing that could ever happen to us. Why? That mountain of stuff we surround ourselves with can totally block us from seeing what matters most. If we don’t spend our lives just taking care of our stuff, we might finally start caring for someone else.
Of course, it’s not that we have to lose everything. Jesus is just making a point that we all have likely lived before. On the day when we felt like we were losing everything or maybe the day when we we were losing something essential (our job, our sense of purpose, our marriage), something shocking happened. Somebody showed up. Care arrived. That care came in the form of a casserole or a card or a knock on the door. We learned that we were not alone, not even on our worst day. Maybe it took that bad of a day for us to finally see that when people show up and care, we are, in fact, standing in the kingdom of God.
Next, Jesus says, “You’re blessed when you’re ravenously hungry. Then you’re ready for the Messianic meal.” Do you hear Jesus’ truth? If you can have absolutely anything you want to eat, you’re going to get bored with food, right? “I want something but I just don’t know what it is…” “How about curry? How about a nice steak?” When that doesn’t work, you just start eating to fill the empty space inside. Nutritional value doesn’t matter. Double stuffed Oreos and and some Fritos will do just fine. (By the way, Fritos are almost impossible to find right now in stores. If you see ‘em, buy ‘em. Then, call me. I’m just saying…)
Of course, if you think all of this has to do only with food then you need to think again. It is possible to turn to any number of substances, relationships, or activities to try to fill the empty space inside us. How many have you tried? Honestly, how many? Some were sincere mistakes: “I really thought that might be the one!” Some were really no different than eating a one pound bag of Doritos. You don’t feel empty anymore but boy did you feel sick!
The real question isn’t what will taste good or feel good. The real question is what will feed your soul. It just takes us forever to realize this truth! If you want to know what it’s really like to be full—as in fulfilled, maybe you have to be starving or sick to your stomach first. Finally, realizing how hungry we are might be the best shot we get at finally understanding what we are hungry for…
Then, Jesus throws the crowd one more chance to hear the truth: “You’re blessed when the tears flow freely. Joy comes with the morning.” Crying is a blessing? Come on, Jesus! What’s up with that? Sure, bad things can happen to you or to someone you love. But crying? Crying means you’ve lost control, especially if it’s that ugly crying, right? Crying means you’ve been laid bare for all the world to see. How about a nice stiff upper lip instead?
Think about how much energy it takes just to maintain emotional control, just to keep it together—to keep up appearances. You turn on the news and all you see is sadness. As you make your way through your day, you can’t help but hear about your coworker’s spouse’s illness or your friend’s son’s struggles. You come to church and listen to “joys and concerns” and think, “Oh, my God…can’t I even get a little shelter, a little sanctuary here?”
So, you turn off the news. You burrow into work and close your office door. In worship, you try hard to tune out the “concerns” and latch onto the “joys.” Then, despite your best efforts, the flood gates open. Things feel so dark it’s like a total eclipse at noon. And boy, do those tears flow! Then, Jesus says, “Good for you! You’re blessed!” Why? If you can’t cry—really cry hard, how will you ever know joy? Do you really think the challenge in this life is to get to the end and say, “I win! I felt nothing?”
Joy comes with the morning, on the backside of those tears. It’s not that it always comes tomorrow morning. Sometimes, you have to wait three days before dawn comes at the empty tomb. Sometimes, you have to wait even longer and lose yourself in a bad night of fishing before dawn comes and you hear a familiar voice on the beach. Sometimes, you wait weeks with people who are just as confused as you until something happens in an upper room and you think, “Now, this…this changes everything!” (You’re with me, right?)
Every now and then, our biggest losses, our most gnawing hunger, and our most bitter tears turn out to simply be the darkness we need to face, usually for a long time. There are moments in this life when it finally dawns on us that God has been with us all along and loving people have been with us, too. Somehow, to see things in this new light, we need to realize that we’re not in charge after all. As we wrestle with that thought, as we hold our hands out before us and search for a way through the dark, our mourning for what was gives way to the light of a brand new morning. Finally, having grown acquainted with the night, we quietly walk or dance or skip our way into the joy of a brand new day.