Through the Dark--November 6, 2019

"Through the Dark"--November 6, 2019

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil;

 for you are with me; your rod and your staff--they comfort me.

 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

 you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." [Psalm 23:4-5]

Don't confuse God for the light at the end of the tunnel.  No, to hear the psalmist tell it, God isn't waiting on the far side of the dark valley, but is going through it with you right now.

That change to the picture means everything.  The promise of the Bible is not that if we endure through the dark night of the soul, God will show up in the morning--but rather that God is there at midnight with us as well.  The promise is not that if we work hard enough to persevere and finish the race, that God will be there waiting by the checkered flag to congratulate us.  The promise is that God is there--here--now, while we are going through the slogging.

That means at least two very important things for the life of faith.  First off, it means that God's presence is not conditional on our proving how tough or persistent we are.  God doesn't wait to show up only for those who have come through the dark valley, as if God were simply handing out awards.  And God isn't afraid of going through the dark valley, either--it's not that God is too busy or too holy or too divine to bother with going through the dark valley with us.  The whole of the Christian faith centers on a God who is present with us now, not just in the afterlife, or when we get to heaven, or after the tough stuff of life.  So the psalmist doesn't find hope that one day he'll be out of the dark valley and then he'll see God, but rather that even when he can't see his hand in front of his face while he's feeling his way through the dark, God is there on the journey.  Rather than saying, "One day I won't have to deal with my enemies, because God will smite them for me!" the psalmist says, "Here I am, with my enemies at the table, and as you pour the wine, somehow I am ok, even in this uncomfortable situation."  It's not merely a hope for a future day when everything is rainbows and unicorns--it's an assurance that God can be present in the dark, or when you are surrounded by folks you don't like.

And that brings us to the second realization we can't avoid if we take these familiar verses seriously: namely, that God's way is not to prevent us from going into the dark valley, but rather to go through it with us.  God's way is not so much to prevent pain, so much as it is to bear pain with us as we endure it.  If we live our lives just trying to leap from happy time to happy time, like a kid stepping on the tops of stones poking up out of the water as he crosses the creek, we are going to miss the deeply good news that God is there in the water with us. And if we live our lives trying to avoid unpleasantness, or just trying to cling onto the distractions that make us happy for a moment, we will find ourselves stuck for a lot of the time.  God has not promised us that if we are faithful, we'll be rewarded with smooth sailing or warm fuzzy feelings or easy days.  We are not promised that we'll be beamed out of the troubles of life, a la Star Trek, and plopped down on the far side of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.  Instead, God steps into the dark with us, for as long as it goes, and promises not to let go of our hand until we are through to the light.  God promises to stay at the dinner party with our enemies and to keep at our side until they aren't our enemies any longer.  God makes it bearable for us to be in those unbearable places.

Realizing that will make a difference in big and little ways in our lives.  For one, it will likely change the way we pray, so that we ask less and less, "Don't make me have to face this difficult thing!" and more and more, "Get me through the difficult thing I don't know how to deal with."  It will do something to our courage, too, to know that we don't face any situation alone--but also then, it will mean we don't have the option of just running away from the things that seem scary to us.  We will face them, because God's way is to go through things rather than to avoid them.  And in maybe the biggest picture sense, we will be done with the bad theology that suggests that Jesus will secretly "rapture" away true believers so they don't have to endure a seven-year-long "tribulation" period before Jesus' triumphant return.  That kind of baptized-escapism is not only a recent idea (it's only been around for about 175 years) but it's bad Bible reading and terrible theology--it just doesn't fit with the God described here in the psalms, who goes through the valley of the shadow of death with us, rather than beaming us up to the skies in order to avoid it.

Today, it may sometimes seem like we are feeling our way through the dark, but we do it with God along the way.  Sometimes we'll get ourselves even more lost and even more work up--but God won't let go of us, not while we're in the dark, and not even when we make it to the light on the other side.  May that realization give us courage to go where the day takes us, wherever the road leads.

Go with us today, Jesus, through the valley and whatever else.