This Lent we follow Jesus as he faces evil in the hours before his death. What is evil? Who is doing evil against Jesus during Passion Week? What are ways in which we are complicit in evil? Do we take evil seriously? As we experience evil in our own lives, discover how Jesus stands in the face of evil.
Invocation
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, who delivers us from all evil.
Invitation Prayer
Lord, evil often comes from those closest to us. Peter denied you and Judas betrayed you. You know the pain of evil that comes from your friends. Comfort us when we are hurt by those we love. Lord Jesus, without you we fall. With you, we stand. Stay with us, Amen.
Word
Luke 22:3
“Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve.”
Meditation: The Darkness of God by Megan Roegner
During Lent, I frequently turn to the works of T.S. Eliot. No one else captures the pain and confusion of modern life like Eliot, whose career spanned two World Wars. Eliot’s poetry reveals a world of so-called “hollow men” desperately in need of salvation. Early in his career, this need was unmet: Humanity, as Eliot portrayed it, was paralyzed in its passivity and despair. Yet, after his conversion to Christianity, Eliot’s poems offered glimmers of hope. Amid the world’s frustrations and human failures, there is an understanding that wrong will be set right, that chaos will be reordered, that dark will become light.
Reading the beginning of Luke 22 this week made me think of Eliot’s poem “East Coker.” The story of Christ’s Passion feels like a pattern unfolding, people taking up roles that have been planned for them since the beginning of time, particularly when verse 3 says that “Satan entered into Judas,” and he commits the terrible and necessary betrayal. The stage has been set for Jesus’s final, terrible hours. As the darkness looms, though, it is clear that it is a part of God’s plan. In “East Coker,” Eliot writes
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
What I so appreciate about Eliot’s work is what I appreciate about the season of Lent itself. We are invited to dwell in the darkness of God, to peer into our dread and despair for a while with the understanding that God is still in control, that the lights will be turned back on, and that we will be transformed into who we were meant to be. Just a bit later, Eliot writes
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
One of the major themes of “East Coker” is the need for humility. We must empty ourselves of self in order to discover who we truly are. When I think about the poem within the context of Luke 22, I think about how part of our Lenten journey, our Christian journey, is to accept the role of darkness in what Eliot calls “the pattern.” It is through acknowledging this darkness, this emptiness, that we find the light and through the stillness of acceptance that we find our part in the dance.
Lord, let us find you in the darkness as well as the light. Help us remember that you always have a plan and that you are always in control. Amen.
Sending
Lord, in the face of evil, you call us from death to life, from silence to speech, from idleness to action. Go with us now. Send us with your gifts. Sustain us by your promise. Amen.