Stronger than the deepest darkness...

It was April 9 1945.  The war was drawing to a close.  Everyone knew it in Flossenburg.  You could hear the guns of battle not very far away - everyone knew who was winning and who was losing.  But in the concentration camp at Flossenburg it was still the Nazis who held sway - still their prisoners were under their command.

One of their prisoners was a man called Dietrich Bonhöffer.  He was one of the heroes of the German Church during the Nazi years.  Unlike many other Christians - unlike many of the leaders of the German Church - he had refused to go along with their murderous ideology.  He spoke up for Jews, for Trade Unionists, for the handicapped - and for others who were the victims of Nazi oppression.  It could have been very different for him.  As the outbreak of war threatened he had been in America.  It would have been very easy for him to stay there and see out the war in safety.  But he knew that he could not live with himself if he did that.  He knew that God was calling him to speak a word of hope and light to a nation which threatened to fall into despair and darkness.  And so he returned.  He continued to write and continued to speak and became on the main focus points for the Confessing Church - that part of the Church which refused to go along with the many wrongs which were being exercised in Germany.  Eventually he came to be arrested and so it was that in April 1945, just a month before the war ended, he found himself condemned to death at Flossenburg.

An eyewitness has left an account of his last moments at Flossenburg.  This is what he wrote. 

‘Through the half-open door in one of the huts, I saw Pastor Bonhöffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor, praying fervently to his God.  I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man was praying, so devoutly and so sure that God heard him.  At the place of execution, he said again a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed.  His death ensued after a few seconds.  In the almost fifty years I worked as a doctor, I hardly ever saw a man die so submissive to the will of God’

Now 60 years later in Germany there lives a pastor called Martin.  Martin remains a pastor in t he German Church - he has been one for some years.  He is a pastor in the Eastern Part of Germany - the part of Germany, which before 1990 was a Communist ruled state - East Germany - the so-called German Democratic Republic.  Those were difficult days for the Church.  They were difficult days for Martin.  As a young man he dared to encourage people to vote ‘no’ in an allegedly free referendum on a change to the state’s constitution - and for doing that was thrown into prison for his pains.  He was threatened with prison again when he held confirmation classes in his Vicarage - because to teach young people about the Christian religion was against the law.  His own children when they grew up were unable to get into university because their father was such a nuisance to the state.  The Stasi - the Secret Police - built a headquarters opposite to his church so that they could keep an eye on Martin and his activities - and also intimidate people into not coming to church because they knew that their attendance would be recorded and they in turn might find themselves in difficulties with the State.

Things are now of course very different for Martin and for his flock. With the fall of the Wall and the reunification of Germany, the Church in the East of Germany found itself living in a freer much less hazardous environment.  And yet still Martin -and others like him - speak with some feeling of that experience of being followers of Jesus Christ in a closed society where to admit to being a follower of Jesus Christ at best brought civil disadvantages and at worst the threat of persecution and imprisonment.  He speaks of a society in which the Church was glad to find God amongst it even at the point at which others were ready to declare him absent - to declare him dead. He speaks of a Church which again and again at moments of deep despair knew itself to be upheld and sustained by the Living God - knew the presence of the crucified and risen Christ in its midst.

Passion Sunday is the point in our keeping of Lent at which our perspective decisively shifts. We begin seriously to contemplate the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.  In these next weeks the Cross of Christ will be at the centre of all that we are about, until on Easter Day - two weeks from now - we celebrate Christ’s triumph on the cross and in the tomb.

And what is that we shall be saying about Christ’s sacrifice on t he cross.  Well, many sermons have been written about that - and we ought to be wary of those who try to claim that they have the complete answer to what it was that Christ was doing for us on t he Cross     As we read the Scriptures we discover  the writers of the gospels and the Epistles wrestling grasping hold  of what it was that Christ did for us on t he Cross.  There is no one meaning to Christ’s death at Calvary- Christ on the cross challenges us to engage with him day by day in establishing what it is that his sacrifice means for us,

But today's gospel reading gives a clue to what for most o f us is one important aspect of what the Cross is about.  Jesus learns that his friend Lazarus has died. And his response is remarkable.  He must be there with Mary and Martha,  Lazarus’ sisters.  And the reason why he must be there is clear from he account which John gives us.  He feels their pain.  He feels it deeply. When given the chance to go to Lazarus tomb, he weeps - so much so that the people say ‘See how he loved him’  Jesus stands before the tomb.  And John is clear about his reaction - he is deeply distressed - deeply affected.

Jesus doesn't stand aside from he great pain and grief which Lazarus family and friends were experiencing.  He is not somehow distant from it.  Their pain becomes his pain - he shares in it, enters into it, opens himself to it, without reserve.

And so it is entirely appropriate that we hear this story of Jesus and Lazarus on this Passion Sunday. Because in itself it points to one important aspect of what Jesus does for us on the Cross.  Something which sustained Dietrich and Martin - and has sustained many others throughout the Christian centuries who have known themselves caught up in darkness and despair.  On the Cross Jesus enters into our darkness and our despair.  He enters into our pain, enters into our humiliation, enters into our degradation. He shares with us those moments when we feel most acutely that the darkness is descending on us - and that there is no-one to stand with us in it.  To Dietrich - and to Martin -and to us when we feel ourselves caught up in t he powers of evil and it seems as if there is no-one to hold us in those moments and bring us through them - Jesus says from the Cross ‘I too have stood there. I too have felt most keenly that God has turned his back on me and allowed evil purposes to triumph.  I stand with you now in those moments of greatest despair. To your darkness, I will bring light - the light of God’s presence.’

A wise man said once that our despair is the birthplace of hope.  ‘My God my God why have you forsaken me?’ Jesus cries from the cross - but God is able to triumph, to be at work even when his presence is denied. Stronger than our despair.  Stronger than our helplessness.

There was hope for Dietrich and Martin who believed in the face of death and persecution - who believed in situations where to believe seemed to be foolhardy, mere whistling in t he wind - believed in the shadow of the gallows and the prison cell where to speak of God’s love just seemed a mockery.  And so it can be too for us.  All to which Jesus submits on the cross brings us hope - hope that even in those moments of mourning - of loneliness of isolation of depression - whatever the cause for us of our feeling far from God may be - at those moment of greatest despair and desolation - God is still at work .  At those moments God can act - God can bring strengthening and hope and reassurance.

But it can’t end there.  Because that experience - that experience of knowing God at work even on our moments of greatest desolation - should challenge us too to reach out to others. Sheila Cassidy was a doctor working in Chile in the 1970s - when oppression w as rife and  those who opposed the Government were liable to find themselves in prison and almost certainly tortured.  So it was too for Sheila Cassidy - she too found herself in General Pinochet's torture chambers.  And she found - like Dietrich and like Martin - that somehow in the midst of pain and squalor she found that her own sense of despair at God’s absence was answered by a reassurance o f his love for  him - his presence with him. 

But for her it could not end there - here is what she wrote subsequently

I believe
That we have much to learn about Jesus’ passion
From the suffering of those more accessible to us,
And that it is profoundly unhealthy
To concentrate upon Jesus suffering
While ignoring the cruelty and torture
Which are endemic in our world…..

If dwelling upon the passion of Jesus
Has any purpose at all,
It must only be that we enter briefly
Into the anguish of our world
And emerge changed,
With a greater understanding
And a greater depth of compassion
For those who suffer……
We need to take the tears we shed for Jesus
And use them to wash the blood-stained faces
Of the Good Friday people of our own day.

Sheila Cassidy knew that as a follower of Jesus Christ she needed to bring that sense of God’s love to other sin our world who too felt themselves lost in despair p- the poor, the homeless and the hopeless  - taking the tears which we shed for Jesus in her own memorable words - and using them to wash the bloodstained faces of the Good Friday people of our own day. Here in Epping - we won’t have far too look for Good Friday people - people who in our own town say day by day - ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’.  We too have asked that question. We have found the answer in God’s steadfast love for us even in our darkest moments. How can we do anything other than take that word of hope and reassurance to the lost, the lonely, the depressed and the anxious who live in the streets around us - so that they too with us can say ‘I will praise God yet who is my hope and my salvation.’

Christ’s triumph on the Cross shows that his love is stronger even than the deepest darkness which can fall on us - that however deeply we feel the absence of god at work in our lives - he is here still - confounding our lack of faith - confounding our despair.  And if that is so for us - so must it be for others - those living in our parish whom God has committed to our care.  Many in our parish this day are crying out too to God - crying out in despair and loneliness an d pain and isolation with the sense that God has turned his back on them.  It is not so – and, for the sake of him who suffered and died for us that we might not stand alone when the darkness descends, it is for us to show that it is not so.