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Swallowing Darkness

Maundy Thursday : 17 April 2014

The hairdresser I used to go to in Christchurch offered an extra service, a strop shave with a cutthroat razor. That sort of thing was on offer back in the old days of brylcreem and short back and sides, except then it was men shaving men. Now it is an attractive young woman who runs sharpened steel over your stubble.

And that is where the trouble started for Belinda my former hairdresser, because the bloke she lived with considered this to be an intimate act, and wasn’t happy for her to be doing it to just anybody who walked in off the street. It is a definition of intimacy that hadn’t occurred to me, but I suppose it does require a certain amount of trust to let someone run what amounts to a very sharp knife over your jugular.

Turning our attention from throats to feet, the dusty roads of Palestine made foot washing a routine item of hospitality. If you had servants you got them to do it to the guests. But think about it – handling someone else’s lateral extremities in this kind of a way is also an intimate act. It is a skin on skin business being in close contact with a part of a person’s body that is essential to their mobility and well-being.

What we often lose sight of in tonight’s remarkable scene is that God is washing human being’s feet, an intimate act of handling that brings home the extraordinary lengths that God is prepared to go to be of service to us. The way in which Peter shies away from this being done to him indicates at the very least that he is aware of an unusual and unsettling role reversal that is going on here. God having entered the human condition, with all the distortions and hindrances of this other medium of existence, is now acting out of character to any human preconceptions of what Divine omnipotence amounts to. The God who persuades and invites, and who never compels, is behaving like a servant in an act of intimate handling and cleansing.

The washing and cleansing motif is worth thinking about here. While the dirt and dust of the road is what is being removed, there is another level of cleanliness that is being pointed to. The God man Jesus Christ is interested in taking away the indwelling evil that brings so much misery to the human race. Perhaps that is why this incident is counter pointed with the diabolically inspired decision of Judas to betray him?

Later that evening, in the last moments of his freedom, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus will do something about that inner human darkness that if we truly comprehend it should be enough to make our hair stand up on end. Consider its parallels with the film "The Green Mile."

"The Green Mile" is the film version of a Stephen King novel concerning John Coffey, a large black man falsely imprisoned in death row for murders he did not commit. While there he comes to the attention of the prison officer in charge, the Tom Hanks character, for a remarkable innate gift he has. He can quite literally suck people’s pain, suffering, illness in, and having held it within for a time with all the attendant distress that comes with that, can then expel it so that the black cloud disperses on the wind.

The dialogue in the garden of Gethsemane about the cup passing from him if that is at all possible is about more than just the possibility of Jesus escaping a violent painful death. There is a far worse prospect under discussion, about a cup, which if drained to the dregs, will bring with it an immense burden of suffering that relates not just to his individual fate.

At this point in this place Jesus has become a representative person – someone who sums up the identity, the persona and the destiny of many others. He has become the collective identity of the people. As such he will take their place on their behalf in a very difficult matter.

I have called this sermon swallowing darkness, because the cup that he drains to the dregs is a lethal cocktail that represents the accumulated weight of human evil, sinfulness and self-inflicted suffering. We could add to that list of ingredients human rebellion against God, a delight in cruelty and the sufferings of others, and the calculating attitude that seeks to exploit God’s generosity and patience for its own self-protecting and acquisitive gain. All of this weight of darkness Jesus drinks deeply of to take it within him, to quite literally wrap himself around it.

We say of his sufferings on the cross that he experienced God forsakenness. By that is generally meant the loss of that continual intimate contact and converse with his loving heavenly Father that had been the mainstay of his life so far. But something had happened before he got to Golgotha that had already knocked the stuffing out of him. He had, as it were, become radio active with all of the human race’s dark materials. The accumulated weight of human nastiness and shameful deeds was crawling around inside him, and had taken up residence within him. He was quite literally carrying our burdens and our sorrows, and for that matter our hates and regrets.

This appalling burden was laid down and let go of in the infernal regions when, after his death on the cross, Jesus descended in to hell to accomplish the last part of his ministry. By hell I mean the place of utter God forsakenness, the place and space of misery that follows on when humans reject God in Jesus Christ. In a sense it only came in to existence with the arrival of Jesus in our world, since the possibility of rejecting him only became a possibility with his arrival on the scene of human life.

As he descended lifeless in to hell Jesus could then let go of that sea of darkness he had drunk deeply of. He left it there in the place where it deserved to be. A friend of mine who was in to house work and spring cleaning with a vengeance once said to me that all cleaning is largely a matter of transferring dirt from one place to another. Well, that is exactly what Jesus did when he followed on from his foot-washing act of personal hygiene for the disciples with this stupendous sucking up of human darkness and depositing it in the infernal regions. In the process of doing that he did something very radical to hell itself, but that is another theme for another time.

Tonight, as I watch and wait in front of the Blessed Sacrament I will take heart from the knowledge that Jesus is ready, willing and able to Hoover up my personal darkness, my inner uncleanness, and in his costly ministry post Golgotha ministry can take it down in to the place where it deserves to be. The sin can be separated from the sinner that I might live eternally.