Darkness And Death

“Post Tenebras Lux,” — “After Darkness, Light.”

This was the catch-cry of the great Reformers during the 1500-1600’s as they laboured to bring the purity of the gospel back into focus within the Church in Europe. For a thousand years Christianity had grown increasingly clerical and lost sight of the foundational realities that formed us.

Yes, doctrine is important, truths are important, but the Christian faith isn’t built on doctrinal statements—it’s built on actual events with actual people. Easter is when those events come into their full focus. But like many true and worthy stories, the Easter story begins in darkness. Yet even though we know the end of the story, that darkness does not overcome, that light breaks through the gathering gloom and dispels all fear and failure, we must first start where this story starts—in the darkness.

We will never fully appreciate the light until we’ve first sat in the dark. We will never truly embrace the light of God’s grace, until we first open our eyes to the darkness of our sin.

Luke 22:7–62 (CSB)

7 Then the Day of Unleavened Bread came when the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. 8 Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.” 9 “Where do you want us to prepare it?” they asked him. 10 “Listen,” he said to them, “when you’ve entered the city, a man carrying a water jug will meet you. Follow him into the house he enters. 11 Tell the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks you, “Where is the guest room where I can eat the Passover with my disciples?” ’ 12 Then he will show you a large, furnished room upstairs. Make the preparations there.” 13 So they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. 

14 When the hour came, he reclined at the table, and the apostles with him. 15 Then he said to them, “I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”

…

21 But look, the hand of the one betraying me is at the table with me. 22 For the Son of Man will go away as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!” 23 So they began to argue among themselves which of them it could be who was going to do it. 

…

31 “Simon, Simon, look out. Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And you, when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” 33 “Lord,” he told him, “I’m ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” 34 “I tell you, Peter,” he said, “the rooster will not crow today until you deny three times that you know me.” 

…

39 He went out and made his way as usual to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. 40 When he reached the place, he told them, “Pray that you may not fall into temptation.” 41 Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and began to pray, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me—nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” 43 Then an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. 44 Being in anguish, he prayed more fervently, and his sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground. 45 When he got up from prayer and came to the disciples, he found them sleeping, exhausted from their grief. 46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray, so that you won’t fall into temptation.” 

47 While he was still speaking, suddenly a mob came, and one of the Twelve named Judas was leading them. He came near Jesus to kiss him, 48 but Jesus said to him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” 49 When those around him saw what was going to happen, they asked, “Lord, should we strike with the sword?” 50 Then one of them struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. 51 But Jesus responded, “No more of this!” And touching his ear, he healed him. 52 Then Jesus said to the chief priests, temple police, and the elders who had come for him, “Have you come out with swords and clubs as if I were a criminal? 53 Every day while I was with you in the temple, you never laid a hand on me. But this is your hour—and the dominion of darkness.” 

54 They seized him, led him away, and brought him into the high priest’s house. Meanwhile Peter was following at a distance. 55 They lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, and Peter sat among them. 56 When a servant saw him sitting in the light, and looked closely at him, she said, “This man was with him too.” 57 But he denied it: “Woman, I don’t know him.” 58 After a little while, someone else saw him and said, “You’re one of them too.” “Man, I am not!” Peter said. 59 About an hour later, another kept insisting, “This man was certainly with him, since he’s also a Galilean.” 60 But Peter said, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Immediately, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed. 61 Then the Lord turned and looked at Peter. So Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” 62 And he went outside and wept bitterly.

Darkness

As the afternoon shadows grow long across the city, in every household, the grizzly business of slaughtering a lamb was taking place. It wasn’t as easy as taking the prepared cut of meat we might have, unwrapping it and popping it in the oven, this was hands on and messy.

In a particular place, a borrowed room that foreshadowed a borrowed tomb, Peter and John were putting the finishing touches on a feast that they had celebrated every year since they had been born. Their fathers had celebrated it before them, just as their father’s fathers had also. Every generation since Egypt had slaughtered a lamb, on the anniversary of their exodus they ate it in the dark of night, a permanent memorial of the Lord’s mighty arm to rescue them from slavery and bring them into the land he had promised them.

One by one the disciples arrived and sat around the low table—they didn’t know it yet, but they were sharing the Passover lamb with the spotless lamb of God who was taking away the sins of the world.

With just a sputtering candle to light the room, these unlikely friends shared a meal. It would have been a meal almost indistinguishable from the countless meals like it shared down through the generations, yet this very meal would become what the world now knows as the ‘Last Supper’. But to them, it was just a meal shared in darkness.

Every story of redemption begins in darkness. Even ours.

As the darkness of the night grew heavier, even so did the darkness of humanity’s rebellion. Everything was about to change.

Betrayal

The true darkness of this story, the truth that sets the sombre tone of Easter Friday, is the betrayal of God’s son. Some might see the surface and call them circumstantial events that caused a chain reaction that led to tragedy. But this was God’s plan from the beginning. Jesus had set his face toward this moment, had taken deliberate steps, had counted the passing days.

Now the darkness fell on him in fury.

Judas

Sure, we all know about a Judas’ kiss—that mocking sign of affection that paints a target on Jesus’ back—but he wasn’t the only traitor in that room. They all ran. They all abandoned him. They all turned their back.

Judas breaks bread with the Son of God even while making a deal with the devil—30 pieces of silver, the going price for a slave, was all it took to reveal who his heart was truly enslaved to.

Peter

Or what about Peter?

“I’ll never leave you Jesus. Even if all others fall away, I will stay.”

It’s amazing what the comfort of a fire will do—flickering shadows to hide the fear of what it might mean to be associated with Jesus. Peter who stared down countless Galilean storms could only avert his eyes from the probing questions of a servant girl, “Surely you are with him?”

Even the curses and bluster of his fisherman’s life were just a poor disguise for his fear and shame—a rooster crowing would be all it takes to break the dam of his emotions.
Peter too betrays Jesus. But at what cost? 30 pieces of silver? Or was it something more, something priceless, something not so easily repaid?

Death

Then comes that unnatural enemy of humanity, that unspeakable horror we spend our entire life hiding from—death. Just hours earlier, thousands of families all over Israel had taken a spotless, unblemished lamb, and had killed it. Now, the spotless, unblemished lamb of God would find the same fate.

Mocked, tortured, hung up in shame, the one who knew no sin became sin and absorbed the just punishment we deserved.
All this years earlier, John, the cousin of Jesus was right—as he baptised in the waters of the Jordan he looked up and saw Jesus.
“Behold! The Lamb of God who takes the sin of the world!”

Now, again, in the darkness of the darkest night in human history, the night Creation rallied together to kill their Creator, well might we again say, “Behold. The Lamb of God who takes the sin of the world.”

Hope

But there is hope in this darkness. If you have eyes to see it, it can be seen.

The thorns woven in mockery are placed on Jesus’ head as a crown.

The charges laid against him and nailed above his head, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews,” were meant to condemn, but instead became the first billboard of glorious gospel grace.

As the hoards of darkness closed in with triumphant cry and the crescendo of sin reached its peak, three words pierced the darkness and quelled the impotent rage of Satan.

“It is finished.”

The night was drawing to a close. Dawn was about to break. New stories were about to be written, stories about stone tables and deeper magic. Traitors would be redeemed, sinners pardoned, and the lamb would soon be seen again, but this time as a lion.

Night, just like winter, was coming to an end. Darkness and death won’t have the final word.

This is Easter Friday, a time of darkness, betrayal, and death. Maybe that’s been your story so far. 

But remember, Easter Sunday is just around the corner, a time of light, reconciliation, and life. Maybe you feel darkness reigns right now, but your story can change.

“Behold. The Lamb of God who takes the sin of the world.”

Behold him in the emblems of bread and wine, a weekly reenactment of a the true passover, the true lamb, the one who overcame the darkness.

17 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you, from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 In the same way he also took the cup after supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

It’s Easter Friday, let’s remember him.