In the wilderness, outside of Jericho, there is a sheer wall of rock. It is called by Christians “The Mountain of Temptation,” the place where Jesus had his run-in with the devil. But the Jews have another name for it. As, you work your way along the top of the mountain, you come to a place where the terrain is cleft in two forming a gorge. It is a treacherous place, but even here life goes on. Even here, a narrow footpath works its way from the top down to the valley, where centuries of shepherds and sheep have wandered up and down it, moving from the barren mountain top to its secrets below. And the chasm is situated in such a way that you can only see clearly down to the bottom right when the sun is directly overhead. Only then can you see a shimmering down there of a stream as it trickles from somewhere underground to a tiny wadi or oasis. But the rest of the day, it lays hidden in darkness.
It is known as the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Shadows. I've been thinking about shadows recently and for a weird, spooky reason. Because recently, Becca went to Costco in Syracuse. She came home with quite the prize. You see, she bought some nightlights. But these are super fancy nightlights. As the shadows take over the upstairs, they come on at a low glow. But they have these sensors so that if you get up at night and wander out in the hall, they spot you, and kick the light up a bit so you don't bump into a wall or go careening down the stairs. And this is all very well and good.
Yet, occasionally, I'll wake up to what seems to be an increase in the light when nobody but me is ever there...and I'm all tucked in alone in bed. It seems that something passes the beam and causes the light to turn on. And, y'all, there is nothing there. At least there is nothing living, there. And I have started wondering if maybe there's a haint or two.
I'm from the South, and we've had more than our share of violence and tragic death. Everywhere you go you will find battlefields where hundreds and thousands have poured out their life's blood, fighting for a good cause...or bad, depending on the side. And trees with extra strong limbs always carry the specter of a lynching, and dark homes too often held hearts of men who knew the fear of a cross burning right outside their doors or who knew the wicked thrill of lighting one.
And because of that there's a haunting there that I don't always feel away from the South. But lately, I have to say, I'm feeling it a little more. Lately, it seems that we have woken up the shadows in our land, stirred up something that usually hides in the dark, but now it's coming out in the light. Or maybe our eyes have become more adjusted to living in darkness. I don't know.
I listened to reports of the Derek Chauvin trial and probably rejoiced more than I should, experience joy in the presence of grief because justice always has an element of grief, and I wonder what shadow has passed over my heart to make me feel this way. And I read lately that there have been more mass shootings than days in the month last month, and I wonder what shadow has passed over out nation to make it become this way. And I watch our national leaders pull away from each other, justifying winning rather than compromising because they have been able to transform their opponents into creatures of the shadows, and I wonder what shadow has passed over our halls of government to make rational adults act this way.
And I wonder what we are doing to each other lately that such darkness falls over us and we cannot see human beings standing there in front of us. All we see are wolves. And we either hide or strike, and either way, the results can be tragic. And as Christians, this is not the place where we should be. Hate and fear and jealousy and revenge and rage. These cannot be the shadows of our lives. They are death. And Christ defeated death. We cannot, as his followers, cling to death.
Last Saturday, I did the funeral of Jean McDowell, and we read the King James Version of the 23rd Psalm, and we said together, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” And and I began to see something in that familiar old poem.
That's the point of shadows, isn't it? We see them. And we can't see them unless there is light. And we can't see them unless there is darkness, too. Light and darkness coexist almost all the time. We can't live with just the one. With too much of the one, we'll go blind, and with too much of the other, we already are.
The light of the world goes with us in the darkness, like a shepherd going down the path with his sheep into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Jesus goes ahead and is there in the darkness offering light, just like the stars peeping out in the darkness of the sky.
The light of the world shines in the darkness, leading us there to confront injustice, fear, alienation. Poverty of the soul and poverty of the body. Loving the unloved and, yes, taking risks in doing it. Because that is where the shepherd leads us.
There is an old Jewish story that tells of a rabbi who asked his disciples, "How do you know when the night is giving way and the morning is coming?" One of the followers stood and said, "Teacher, won't you know that night is fading when, through the dim light, you can see an animal and recognize whether it is a sheep or a dog?"
The rabbi answered, "No."
"Rabbi," asked another, "won't you know that the dawn is coming when you can see clearly enough to distinguish whether a tree is a fig or an olive?"
"No," responded the rabbi. "You'll know that the night has passed when you can look at any man and any woman and discern that you are looking at a brother or a sister. Until you can see with that clarity, the night will always be with us."
Turns out I don't have a haint in the house. I got a chair out and sat vigil in the dark for a bit one night. Turns out what was happening is this: early in the morning, when the trucks start back up going up and down Highway 8, their lights would hit the corner of one of the doors, and that would throw a shadow across the wall, like something moving, and the nightlight was tricked into coming on. But for a few nights, I was afraid.
There are scary things in the shadows, in the darkness. And what lurks in the darkness can not just attack us, but can transform us into things we'd rather not be. It is, after all, “Where the Wild Things Are.”
But there is beauty, too. There is quiet, and there is rest. There in the darkness is the sound of a million prayers laying themselves down to sleep. There in the darkness are the lights of creation and the appearance of angels. The is the soft light of the moon with its own face-like shadows, there is the haunting sound of an owl, there are sounds that happen all around us that we miss during the day because we lean on our eyes and not our ears. There in the darkness is the awesomeness of God, speaking in our ears with covenants and dreams. There in the darkness is the shepherd, standing guard.
Amen.