For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said:
“Wake up, sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
Ephesians 5:8-14
Ephesians 5, There’s a lot of darkness and light going on there. Reading this, I started thinking immediately about … It’s sort of common today to attribute the problems of the world – the evil of the world – to someone else. – you know, to the rich, to the capitalists, to the immigrants, to men, or some people might even think that, you know, the evil of the world all comes from women, the Jews, or the crazy Christians – you know, but Christianity, and this I like, puts the blame, not on someone else, but on every one of us – that we’re all part of it. The crack that goes through the world is so deep, and it goes straight through the human heart as well. The battle between light and darkness takes place in here – in the heart.
And we are now in Lent, and that’s my favourite time of the year, and in Lent we fast, and fasting is to prepare yourself for the Good Fight – the struggle against evil, the evil that takes place inside of us. The Muslims. I think, call it the Greater Jihad – the greater fight, the big fight – and the big fight is the fight against the evil that takes place in the human heart.
In this letter, in Ephesians, Paul seems to say that people – the people he’s writing to – have left the darkness but, at the same time, they are in the darkness, and there might be a bit of a paradox at first, but I think that’s how we experience it – most of us. You know, we might have met God in a certain way, experienced God, and that did change our life. We can look back upon that situation and feel that a little switch was flicked inside here somewhere. There was a before and there is an after. Something did change. In one way I left the darkness, but I’m still struggling with the darkness. I think that’s just how it is. This double nature that we have – both an immense potential for good and bad, and we can feel it, but we also know that we need to take responsibility for that potential that we have inside of us – not to let the darker parts take over – and that’s what we’re doing in in Lent.
We practice to abstain and to resist, and traditionally we we’ve been practicing on food – to skip a meal or several meals for days over weeks. The goal is obviously not to be good at abstaining meals even though that might have its benefits, but the purpose is to become strong in our minds and in our in our spirits so that we can resist the more serious temptations – you know, the will for power, the desire for money, the desire to be liked by everyone, fame, likes on social media – all of those things that in themselves are not necessarily bad but they certainly will darken your life if you let them influence your life without any limitations.
Often, we make a distinction between needs and desires. Needs are necessary for our survival – for our thriving. Desires are not. Desires might appear to be good but they will not be in the end, and the traditional rule of thumb here is that it’s from the fruit we will know the tree. It might not be obvious at first, but you certainly will know in the end.
As Christians. I do believe that we have left the darkness behind in one way, maybe in a spiritual way. I don’t really know how to frame it, but I do think we have, and I think that’s very important, but I think it’s just as important to keep struggling against the dark – against the darkness – and in the Christian tradition, often people have been using the metaphor of a gardener or the soul being a garden, and I think you could maybe frame it like this. Your soul is a garden, and your desires are the weeds, and you are the gardener, and that is the human condition,
Light and darkness – the darkness and the light – and the struggle between them takes place in the human heart.
First broadcast on www.thesundayeucharist.com on March 10, 2023.
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