Parakalein

As I spoke to a congregation at the Pascal Eve Service I invited everyone to close their eyes and enter into the darkness of their own inner world.  I invited them to imagine Jesus in the darkness of the grave on that longest day of darkness, despair and aloneness.  Their is no place of aloneness as dark and dismal as the place of total abandonment, detachment, and despair like the grave.  Jesus spent a few hours in the grace on Friday night and if tradition holds a minute in the grave on Sunday morning but an entire 24 hours of the whole of Saturday in the dark deep hole of aloneness and tomb of numbness.  He spent only a minute of Sunday in the grave to fulfill hat he had to be in the grave for three days but he refused to let the grave hold him for anymore than one minute on that third day so a s tradition holds at 12:01 am, up from the grave he arose.

I invited the congregation to return to the place of darkness and to recall a time that they felt all alone and to receive what might be what Jesus would speak to us in the darkness form the darkness:


"I sit alone in the darkness, I need no light as their is a light inside of me.  That light is the essence of peace and love that is with me as clarity and confidence in the darkness.  While I fee alone I am not alone.  When I spoke from the cross 'Father forgiven them they do not know what they are doing' I was speaking as many of you know to those who had put the nails in my hands and feet, hung me on the cross, and mocked the very love and peace I offered them.  It was the light inside that had me speak.  I expected their anger and wrath as they had set that intention against me form before my birth in the manger.  They had mangled and murdered many children out of that hatred.  It was one thing to spill blood in hatred and another to spill blood in a loving living sacrifice.  They did not get the difference.  I also said, 'Father forgive them they do not know what they are doing' to those who abandoned me because of their fears, who I had healed by my touch, who I had loved with my heart, who I had taught from my mind, all those who I had given to they all of them were in denial, betrayal, or cowards filled with avoission (combination of avoidance and aversion of pain and suffering).  The sword that pierce my side was "them".  I did not expect the desertion and the denial of pain and suffering.  To them I also spoke 'Father forgive them as they do not know what they are doing'.  Protection or preservation of life was their intention.  My intention was to lead by example into the darkest arena of loss and grief of total aloneness and to there in the cavern of the tomb know the presence of light that preserves and protects life into eternity." 

I invited the congregation to see the light in their darkness to consider all the wounds of grief that have pierced their side by people closest to them and then to offer them light and love.  Then I invited them to open their eyes.


Corrie Ten Boom said in her book The Hiding Place: "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still".  Let grace meet your grief in the light of God's love in the darkness of your hole no matter how dark that hole is.  In the Darkness see light.


"Nothing shall separate you form the Love of God, neither height nor depth, principalities or powers, things present or things to come nor anything shall separate you from the love of God which is in you form Jesus Christ" Romans 8:31