The Third Sunday in Lent: Halfway through a Dark Wood

I didn't post a Christian year reflection last week, principally because I spent the Second Sunday in Lent and the Monday following in airplanes and airports making my way back from Nashville to Manila. Along the way I lost about 12 hours in an instant as my plane to Tokyo crossed the International Date Line. I suppose this was fair since I had been given the opportunity to live February 28 twice. But I digress.

Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

The Sundays in Lent "don't count." That is, the 40 days of Lent are meant as a kind of sorrowful preparation for the deep anguish of Holy Week and the amazing triumph of Easter. But Sunday is the weekly celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. This weekly remembrance, weekly reliving (what the earliest Christians called anamnesis) of God's ultimate victory over sin's ultimate weapon, trumps everything else that might go on on a particular day. So when the day of a Saint or some other feast happens to fall on a Sunday, it is usually transferred to the following Monday in order to compensate. In a sense, then, all of Lent's somberness is transferred to the weekdays, in order to compensate for the fact that we cannot fast while the bridegroom is with us (Mk 2:19); and when is the bridegroom with us if not when the community of faith gathers together to celebrate the Resurrection?

All of that was said to say this: we are almost halfway through the dark wood of Lent. Yesterday, Saturday, was the 16th day of Lent. We will actually pass the halfway point next Thursday, the 20th day. But as we look forward throughout this entire season to the ultimate victory over the ultimate problem humans and the world face, we can also look forward to the halfway mark, because it will have been in our grasp and gone back out of it by the time we get to the next day that doesn't count for Lent because it counts for so much more. The following is the text of a sermon I once had prepared to preach at a Lenten service. As I recall, something got in the way and i was unable to deliver it, but the sentiment is still powerful. NOTE: The sermon makes reference to Isaiah 49:8-15, which is the Old Testament lesson for the Wednesday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent in Year C.

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, the party going off to confront the Dragon has eventually to go through a dark forest called Mirkwood. A guide tells them that

“Your way through Mirkwood is dark, dangerous, and difficult.” By and by, they come to the edge of the forest, only then to discover that the wizard Gandalf is not to accompany them through the dark wood.

They despair at this news, but Gandalf says, “We may meet again before it is all over, and then of course we may not. That depends on your luck and on your courage and sense.” After a few minutes more of conversation, Gandalf rides away, and the party hears his voice from afar: “Good-bye! Be good, take care of yourselves—and DON’T LEAVE THE PATH!”

The unlikely hero, Bilbo Baggins, wanted to know if there was some other way to get where they were going without having to go through the dark wood. He is told, no, this is not possible, because they would have to go many, many miles out of the way, and even then they would not have a journey free from peril. And so they proceed together into the dark wood, on to the adventures and the dangers that await them.

We’ve been going through a dark wood, after a fashion, for just under three weeks now. It is a dark, dangerous and difficult time. Yesterday was the sixteenth day in Lent, not counting Sundays, so we’re short of halfway through the dark wood. Things are about to turn in our favor, but they haven't quite yet. Sometimes I feel like Bilbo Baggins, wondering if there is any way to get to the goal of our journey without having to go through the dark wood of Lent. But there really isn’t another way, and in any case it’s not a very safe road. The world we live in is not a very safe one, not a very happy one, and in the end we all will face the same fate. And we all must stay on the path. For if we get off the path, then we will be lost.

This Old Testament Lesson is the Word of the Lord for people who are halfway through a dark wood. The Second Isaiah, as it is called, is written to a group of people who are seeing things about to turn in their favor, but they haven’t quite yet. The Babylonian Empire was in decline, and the people from whom the Empire had taken their land could not have been happier. The prophet, seeing the events unfolding on the stage of world politics, testified that the God of Judah was in control of all world history, so that great nations and kingdoms would rise and fall at God’s command. Even if the nations and kingdoms thought that it was by their own might that they had the success they enjoyed, the prophet has a much different view. In this way, the people of God could rejoice in God’s faithfulness and could resist the power of the colonizers. At the beginning of the Exile, they were understandably sad, they were despairing, because their sinfulness had brought them to the edge of a dark wood, and they felt that God had abandoned them. It was a dark, dangerous and difficult time. Really, God hadn’t abandoned them, but instead forced them to go through this experience because he wanted to reestablish a relationship with them. This relationship could not be reestablished until they had gone through the dark wood of having their lives uprooted and their inheritance taken away. When they no longer could depend on the promises of old, when they had to rely on their luck and their courage, they had gotten to the point where they could journey back toward wholeness. While they might have wished that things could have been restored, and they could have gotten on in their journey as the people of God without having to go through the dark wood of Exile, really there was no other way. They had to stay on the path.

The Persian Empire, maneuvering to take control of the ancient near East at the time Second Isaiah was written, you see, had a much different way of dealing with captive and subjugated peoples than did their predecessors. The Babylonians moved their subjects away from their homelands in order to sever the ties between people and land, so as to keep rebellion down to a minimum—because, they thought, people will always fight harder to defend their own turf. The Persians, on the other hand, sought to create loyalty by moving subjugated peoples back to their homelands, and Judah (now called Yehud, but that’s another matter) was no exception. The prophet and the people to whom he preached expected this to happen not too far into the future, but it hadn’t happened yet. They were halfway through the dark wood, but only halfway. It was a dark, dangerous and difficult time. If they only stayed on the path, they would come through the Exile, be allowed to return to their land, and once again enjoy the benefits of a relationship with God.

And so we, too, are called to go through the dark wood, the dark wood of Lent. We know the end of the story. We know that Bilbo Baggins is ultimately successful in defeating the Dragon, we know that the people of Yehud did come back to their land, we know that Easter is just a few short weeks away. But we are still only halfway through the dark wood.

We might wish there were another way to get through to the goal of our journey, triumphant Easter Sunday and the death of death. But there is no other way. Even in the dark, dangerous and difficult time of Lent, things will begin to turn. In a couple of weeks we will again hear Jesus’ prayer in the Garden, wondering if it were possible to get to the end of his journey without going through the dark wood, which in his case was the dark wood of the Cross. Things are about to turn in our favor, and we are about to see the goodness of God once again in our lives. That is, we may meet with God again, depending not so much on our luck as on our courage and sense and faithfulness.

We will meet with God again. If only we stay on the path. Amen.