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Paying attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Mark, the 15th chapter, I begin the reading at the verse number 21. "And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place

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called Golgotha, which means the place of a skull. And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' And with him

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they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, 'Aha, you who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross.' So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, 'He saved others, he cannot save himself. Let the Christ,

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the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.' Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,' which means, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' And some of the

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bystanders hearing it said, 'Behold, he is calling Elijah.' And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I beg you to think with me this morning about hiding in the deep, deep darkness with God. Now most of us, when we think of God, do not think of darkness,

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but rather of light. The words, for example, of John come to mind, 'God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.' But I would respectfully point out to you that the scriptures also describe God as being present in the darkness. Think of that vivid scene on Mount Sinai, recorded in the book of Exodus, when Moses, representing the people, goes into confrontation with God. It

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is said there that he went into the darkness where God was. And in the 139th Psalm, we are taught that with God, the light and the darkness are the same. God then can dwell in deep darkness, and that is the way in which he manifested himself on Calvary. He came to Calvary in the dark. Now the crucifixion experience was at its peak. Jesus was in the deepest agonies of his dying. You know,

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sometimes when we see people suffer, we say to them, 'Oh, if I only could, I would bear your suffering for you.' And it's relatively easy for us to say this, because we know that in fact we cannot do it. But when Jesus said that he would take upon himself the suffering of the whole world, he could do what he said he wanted to do. And in fact, that's precisely what he did do on Golgotha,

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the place of the skull. He took upon himself the weight of a whole world's gone wrongness. He could do it, and he did do it. And God, in an act of great kindness and mercy, covered the deepest pain of that sin-bearing with a veil of darkness, with the wings, if you will, of his own shadow. God didn't want anyone to see his boy cry. It's really a rather tender picture, though it must

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have been somewhat frightening to those who were there and saw the scene, to suddenly see the day bleeding to death. Some cloud's edge ripped the blue, and the veins that were blue become flooded with darkness. But God was determined that no one would be able to go home from Calvary and be able to say that he or she had seen it all. And so in an act of gentle kindness, he covered the scene,

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the most profound moments of the scene, with a deep, deep darkness. It's a beautiful thing to think about being with God in the darkness of suffering. You know, there are those theologians of long ago who argue that God could not have been present at Calvary. These thinkers, strongly influenced by Greek philosophy, men like Plato and Aristotle, believed that the perfection of

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God was such that he could not come near anything that was anything less than perfect. And because Calvary was a place where the sin of the world had gathered, and because Christ was bearing the burden of the weight of that sin, God must have absented himself from the scene. The only trouble with that idea is that it's a Greek idea and not a Hebrew idea. It has philosophical roots,

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but not biblical roots. For the Old Testament speaks again and again of how God suffers with and for his people. God involves himself and invests himself. Love does not stand apart in some arrogant act perfecting its own perfection. Love enters in at whatever the cost, and this is the biblical picture of God. Now there are times in all of our experience when, for a little while

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at least, we lose God's address, when life tumbles in and we cannot bear the burden of it. At such times it is good to know that God is present in the darkness. I had a minister friend who was calling on a man suffering a long and painful death, and the man said to my clergy brother, "You know, I just cannot bear the burden of faith any longer." And the minister said, "That's fine.

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You have carried the burden of believing throughout all of your life. All right, stop carrying the faith now. Let the faith carry you." Now that wasn't some cute aphorism or clever response. What the minister was saying to the suffering man was this, "Yes, there are times when the disciplines of devotion, there are times when the responsibilities of dedication and

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believing are paramount and at the center of our lives, but there are times also when we're so broken that we cannot do these things, and at such times we must not rely upon the power of our believing in God, but rather upon the power of God's believing in us. Then it is that we just lean back, vulnerable, open, defenseless, with no great prayers or professions perhaps upon our

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lips, but relying on the God whose promised he'll be there even at the moment when our believing is most weak and crippled." Throughout the course of my ministry, I have learned a lot more from my people than I have ever been able to teach them, and one of the women who taught me a great deal was a woman named Kathy Cook. She was part of the first church that I ever was privileged to serve.

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She died of phlebitis, and when she was in the hospital drifting away from us, I was sitting with her husband Wilfred, and it was like some sea was carrying her from us, and we tried to communicate, but the distance between Kathy and us became wider and wider until it almost seemed after a while that we could no longer shout across that separating chasm, leaving this world and

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going on to the next. And then suddenly Kathy spoke. Her voice was very soft, and yet it was so clear that I can hear every syllable of it right now exactly as I heard it then. She said three things. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," and then "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord," and then, and these were her last words,

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"the darkest road with God is better than the brightest road without Him." Now the point of what Kathy Cook was saying is this. There are some people who maintain that life only has meaning if it has no suffering, and if you really believe that, that life only has meaning when there is no suffering in it, then you must accept the fact that life has no meaning because there is

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suffering in every human experience, and if you have not known it yet, you surely will. The question is, you see, not whether life has meaning because of the presence of suffering or not. The question is far more profound than that. The question is this. Is there meaning in suffering? For if there is meaning in suffering, then all of life takes on the purpose and the magnificent

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plan of God. And you see, the testimony of Kathy Cook and the testimony of others who in times of suffering have experienced the reality of God in the midst of the suffering is this. Because God is in suffering, something good is there, and we may not be able to understand it, and we may not be able to define it, and we may not be able to write it or draw it so that others may see. But

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in His providence, out of the most pain, will still come that which is magnificently good. God is with us in the darkness. Now of course some people will say, "Well, I've known people who haven't experienced God in the dark," and that's true. There are some people who do not seem to be able to find God in the darkness, and the reason they do not recognize His voice and

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the reason they do not discern His face is because, I believe, they have failed to meet with Him earlier in the darkness of devotion. That may seem to you an odd concatenation of words, "darkness" and "devotion," but I mean it most seriously. There is a darkness and a mystery about great devotion. Now this is a beautiful sanctuary. One man said, "This is a Stradivarius

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of sanctuaries, and these chandeliers are glorious, and these bright television lights give a certain sparkling quality to the front of the room." But this is not the time I love the most in this room. The time that I find this room to be the most moving is when it is dark, when it is so dim that one can barely see. Then it is that you become sensitive to all the prayers and all the

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hopes and all the dreams and all the tears that have been experienced in this place. And so it is in devotion. When we sink ourselves in prayer, when we immerse ourselves in the testimony of Scripture, in those silent times, those times when all the bright light and flashing attraction of the world is cut off and we are left in the dimness of that which is intensely pious, and I mean that

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in the most meaningful sense of the word, it's in that kind of devotion that we come to recognize God. Let me share with you an amazing story. I was preaching in Zaire, we used to call it Belgian Congo, at a place called Munkamba, and I met there a physician by the name of Dr. John Miller. Now Dr. Miller lived for a brief time each summer in a small house by the side of Lake Munkamba.

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There was no indoor plumbing. And one night in the dark he went out to what we would call the outhouse or the privy. And he was seated there in the darkness, thinking whatever thoughts were his, when he heard a rather soft scratching noise. He sat very still and he felt a snake crawl up into his lap. He did not know what to do, and so he focused himself on God in prayer. Now John

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Miller was and is a man of intense devotion, and he focused himself utterly upon God. He thought of God's nearness, he thought of God's love, he thought of God's faithfulness, he thought of God's promises, he thought of these things and sat in perfect stillness, focused upon his Father. And slowly he felt that serpent crawl from his lap. And he waited a few more minutes, and then he

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leaped through the door and went and got help. And they came with lights and killed a six-foot black mamba, one of the most deadly and vicious of all African snakes. I have seen a mamba go out of its way to cross a field 35 yards to attempt to attack people who had gathered there. Now, how was it that this man, in such a circumstance, in the dark, with a serpent in his lap, could

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remain so still, so calm, so focused? He wasn't afraid in the dark because he had spent much time with God in the dark. There was a devotional residue in him, a devotional capacity, an experience of God which steadied him. In order to be ready to meet God in the darkness of suffering, you must first have become familiar with Him in the darkness of devotion. Searching the Scriptures.

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You know, a lot of people read the Scriptures in order to have some kind of weapon that they can use, if you will, in witnessing to other people. It's interesting to notice that Jesus only quoted the Scriptures to the devil and the Pharisees. The fact of the matter is that the principal purpose of Scripture is to reveal God to the reader, and the secondary purpose of Scripture

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is to be hidden in the heart so that in the time of challenge and testing, the believer has something on which to rely. The reason that we search the Scriptures, the reason that we pray, is so that when the darkness comes, we are prepared. When the darkness came there on Calvary and Christ reaches the moments of His deepest dereliction, at that time,

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what does He do? He quotes the 22nd Psalm. His mind goes back to that which has been hidden in His heart. My friends, what I'm saying is, if you want to be able to find God in the dark, if you want to recognize His voice, to understand the whisper of the Holy Spirit, if you want to be able to feel the contours of His faiths in those kinds of moments,

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you must have met Him before in the time of prayer and study and meditation. Then you will experience Him, even in the deepest darkness of all, which is the darkness of dying. There was a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary a few years ago by the name of Mel White, and Mel White made a film of a dying man. He visited this man across many, many weeks and

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interviewed him each week and the members of his family, and he took motion pictures of all of these interviews, recording all of this on film. No actors, no performers in this. This was a picture of the process of death in the most literal sense of the word, and this film reduced to 45 minutes at the end, concluded with the man's funeral. Now, studies were taken on the

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basis of that film. People were brought together, believers and unbelievers, and they were attached up to various meters that could register their emotional responses. And what they were trying to discover was whether believing Christians would be able to have an emotional strength in confrontation with the face of death undisguised, whether they would have a strength

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and a resolution that the non-believer would not have. And they discovered, in fact, that that was true. What astonished them was that the Christian had so much more strength and power than the unbeliever. They expected him to have more, but not that much more. Why? It's not because the Christian looks upon death as a friend. The Christian understands death to be an assault

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upon the dignity of man. Death is the friend of sin. It's because the Christian understands that even in death, in that ultimate darkness, God is there. We've just passed that time when we celebrate the birthdays of our two most famous presidents, and I always enjoy reading about those men at that time. And I came across an example from the life of Abraham Lincoln which I had never heard before,

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and which illustrates my point. He was visiting a field hospital, and he stopped beside the bed of a young wounded soldier boy, and he said, "Son, is there anything I can do for you?" And the boy said, "Yes, sir. I would like it if you would write a letter to my mother for me." Now the boy did not recognize that this was the president. He was in a semi-delirious state and could not see well. The

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staff moved in to free the president from this responsibility, but Lincoln waved him aside, and he called for paper and pencil, and he sat down beside the lad's cot, and as the lad dictated, he wrote the words. That hand which had held the woodsman's axe and now was upon the rudder of the ship of state held instead the nubbin of a pencil and scribbled out the words of a dying lad. The

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boy said, "Sir, would you please sign your name as the one who wrote this for me and then give it to me so that I can write my name too?" And so Abraham Lincoln wrote his name and then gave the letter to the boy, and when the boy looked at the letter, he saw the name and recognized who it was, and he was overcome with embarrassment. And Lincoln said, "You must not be embarrassed. I've

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come to help you. Is there anything else I can do?" And the boy said, "Would you sit with me until I cross over?" And Lincoln took his big brown hand. His skin was very dark, you know, and he took his big brown hand and into it he put the pale young hand of the soldier, and he held his hand until the boy crossed over. And then Lincoln rose, closed the boy's eyes,

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folded his hands, and quietly moved away. That to me is a picture of how God is near, even in the moment of our dying. But the picture is inaccurate at one point, for God does not move away. God waits with open arms to give us welcome home. Even in the darkness of the shadow of death, we can say that part of that darkness is the shadow of his wings, the shadow of his broad

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shoulders, the shadow of his extended everlasting arm. So my sisters and brothers in Christ Jesus, I would ask you whenever you read this story of Calvary to remember that God came there in a kindly darkness, and that that gift that he gave to his son, he stands ready to give to each of us. It all reminds me of Henry Francis Light, who was the pastor of the Lower Brixham Church in

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Devonshire in England for many years. It was a fisherman town, and he used to refer to the fisher folk there as "hardy, tough people," and he was himself a tough man. He had a 24-year pastorate there until the year 1844 when his health broke. From that time on, he could only minister nine months of the year and then would have to rest for three months. And once while he

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was away, dissension arose in the church. It's centered in the choir of the church. And when he came back, he realized that the only thing that would solve the problem would be for him to leave, which broke his heart. But he announced that he would be leaving the pulpit and retiring. And on the last Sunday, he had holy communion with his people, and then caught up in his sadness. He

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went down to where he could sit and look at the sun setting over Dartmoor. The sea had become almost as if it were molten metal reflecting the rays of the orb of the day, and the fishing vessel stood almost perfectly still in the calm waters. And while he sat there, he composed in his mind the words of a hymn, and he went home and sat down at his desk, and before tea time,

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he had finished the hymn. It was a hymn which came forth out of his hurting heart, and because it came from such a place, it has touched the hurting hearts of many people since it was written. And the testimony of the hymn is that when you are hurting, and when you are suffering, and indeed when even the darkness of death descends about you, if you have come to know the Father in the

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shadowed places of devotion, you will experience the reality of his presence, and that reality will sustain you even when your faith itself is shaken and weak. What Henry Francis Light wrote in his hymn was that it is possible for each and every one of us to hide in the deep, deep darkness with God. You know the words. "Abide with me. Fast falls the even tide. The darkness deepens. Lord,

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with me abide. When other helpers flee and comforts fail, help of the helpless. Oh, abide with me. I need thy presence every passing hour. What but thy grace can foil the tempter's power? Who like thyself my guide and stay can be through cloud and sunshine? Oh, abide with me. Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes. Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies. Heaven's morning breaks,

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and earth's vain shadows flee. In life, in death, oh Lord, abide with me." Let us pray. In the darkness of our days, our Father, when we forget your address and when we are attacked and benumbed by the hard realities of life, give us the... [silence]