Light and Dark

For over 40 years, I have been at the bedside, providing patient care. And a majority of those years were working the night shift. The reason I chose to work nights is another story; the reason I've stayed on nights is simple — because I can. Sleep has never been an issue for me, so sleeping during the day is possible.

Working nights, my life has been full of opposites. You want breakfast foods at 6am, all I want is a burger and a beer. You want to greet a sunny day with opening shades and windows; I am of course closing all those things. You start turning off lights and the process of going to bed. I am showering and putting on the uniform.

Although I work in the dark — I see the light all the time:

• When we are able to tell an expected mother that the baby looks OK
• When we can get a patient's pain under control
• When we can let the family know their loved one is going to be OK
• When we find a peaceful area for the couple to hold hands and say goodbye
• When we can let the homeless person warm up and maybe get a bite to eat
• When we can provide calm and comfort for the person who is alone taking their last breath

It doesn't matter where the sun is, what the moon phase is, or if we can see in the darkness — the light is always there.

In the first chapter of the Book of Jonah, God commands Jonah to go to Nineveh to tell the evil, warring Ninevites to repent and turn to the way of the Lord or their kingdom will fall. Jonah does not obey this command. Rather, he flees God's command, gets on a boat, and sets sail from his home city of Gat Hefer for Tarshish, of contemporary Spain. God, dissatisfied with Jonah's disobedience, casts a mighty storm upon Jonah's ship. In their fear and thrashing, Jonah confesses to the crew that he believes that God is angry with him and is sinking their ship on purpose. Reasonably, the crew then casts him into the stormy waters at Jonah's suggestion, to save themselves from certain drowning — and it works. The storm subsides.

While in the dark depths of the sea, Jonah is swallowed by a large fish, often referred to as a whale. Jonah is then carted around inside the fish where he laments his refusal of God's command to preach repentance to Ninevites, and is regurgitated back onto the shores of the Holy Land, potentially smellier but otherwise intact. Jonah then goes to Nineveh and delivers God's message. The Ninevites, including the king, heed Jonah's call and repent of their death-bringing ways. God accepts their actions and ceases God's plan to destroy them.

However, our story does not end there. In Jonah chapter 4, Jonah gets mad at God for having mercy on the evil, bloodlustful Ninevites and goes to pout in the wild outskirts of the city. While lying in the dirt, God sprouts a shrub to shade Jonah from the sun. Jonah is pleased by this — and then God immediately destroys the shrub with a worm. The story continues:

The sun came up and God sent a hot, blistering wind from the east. The sun beat down on Jonah's head and he started to faint. He prayed to die: "I'm better off dead!" Then God said to Jonah, "What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?"

Jonah said, "Plenty of right. It's made me angry enough to die!"

God said, "What's this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can't I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than 120,000 childlike people who don't yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals?"

— Jonah 4:8–11 (MSG)

We do not know what happens to Jonah after this Godly tongue thrashing, but I assume he returns to Gat Hefer, embarrassed by God's scorn, but otherwise unharmed.

The references to light and dark, day and night, sun and shade, are present throughout the Book of Jonah. However, they are not used in a way to comfort those of us on the "light-side." Jonah, our hero, is the one swallowed by the great fish and descends to Sheol, the dark underworld. In this darkness, where Jonah assumes he's hidden from the Light of God and the Temple, Jonah finds renewal, repentance, and the will to follow the Lord's command — a little begrudgingly. When Jonah goes to sulk in the wilderness, it is the darkness of night and the shade that grants him reprieve. The shrub that Jonah rests under grows in the night and dies in the night. It is the light of the sun, and the warm wind, that harms Jonah, not the darkness and the deep.

A faith mentor of mine, the Reverend Rebecca Tankersley, once taught me when reading Scripture to ask myself where I see myself in any given story or passage. As a progressive Methodist living in the Twin Cities, I find it really easy to see myself as the righteous Jonah, casting scorn on our contemporary Ninevites. I easily toss aside many of their Christian beliefs and cast judgment upon them for the violence and harm that they perpetuate in the lives of my neighbors and those around the globe.

However, like Jonah, I think my own self-righteousness often prevents me from fulfilling God's command to love my enemies and to pray for those who persecute me. I, too, frequently bask in the light of my own sanctimoniousness for so long that it begins to burn me instead of warm me. When I read the story of Jonah, I find myself asking if I've so dehumanized those with whom I passionately disagree that I've lost a piece of my own humanity. For, if I am part of the Body of Christ, and I cut off another member of the Body of Christ, then I am cutting off part of my own body.

Deep below the sea, in the dark depths of Sheol and in the dark depths of despair, Jonah is best able to hear God's merciful call. Just like Jonah's big fish, Lent invites us to dwell in the belly of Christ's death, to contemplate Christ's human frailty, and thus our own. However, Lent is but a season. Just like Jonah, we too are eventually vomited onto the shores of Easter, smelly, wet, and angry at God's audacity to make us love those whom we most dislike. In this way, Lent's darkness is a lighthouse beacon that points towards the shores of the palms, the table, the cross, the tomb, and the resurrection. Our Savior, Jesus Christ, pulls the whole world from the dark depths of Sin and Death in his rising on Easter, including the Ninevites in our midst.

In closing, I ask myself: where is my Tarshish, and where is my Nineveh? If I am in my own whale currently, what is God's call, and where will God spit me up?

The Aurora Borealis has been particularly active in the last couple of years, including this last November when northern lights could be seen by all of us just in our yards and on our sidewalks, even with the city lights.

The amazing thing about the northern lights is that it has to be dark in order to see them. The darker it is, the more clearly you can see the array of colors. People travel to places like Alaska and Iceland in the winter, specifically choosing a time of year where the days are short and the nights are long in order to increase their chances of seeing this particular kind of night. As I stood in my back yard, watching this particular light show, my primary emotion was one of awe. Followed quickly by the urge to yell at Martha to come out and see. I called a few people, and I wanted to go door to door to my neighbors, but I did resist that urge. When we experience light like this, I think we cannot help but want to share it with others. It has become a strong metaphor for me in the time since then. When we experience God's wonder, God's love, God's presence, sharing it with others seems like the next thing we must do.

"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven."

— Matthew 5:14–16

"When it comes to faith, what a living, creative, active, powerful thing it is! It cannot do other than good at all times. It never waits to ask whether there is some good which is to be done; rather, before the question is raised, it has done the deed, and keeps on doing it. [One] who is not active in this way is a [person] without faith."

— John Wesley, Preface, Explanatory Notes on Romans

"The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness."

— John Wesley, Preface, Hymns and Sacred Poems

The Lenten journey is often framed as a solitary retreat into the interior of the soul, a private accounting of personal failings conducted in the quiet dark. However, the Methodist tradition offers a more demanding vision of this season. John Wesley's theology was never one of individual withdrawal from the world's darkness. The light we seek in Lent is not a flickering candle kept safe behind closed doors, but a transformative fire meant to illuminate the shadows of our world.

When I first moved from Texas to Minnesota, I was shocked to see how people continue to hang out outside on the lakes even in the middle of the dark of winter, even when it is -10 degrees and the sun goes down before 5pm. In this context of Minneapolis, John Wesley's "social holiness" demands that we look directly at the darkness of state-sponsored fear: the aggressive tactics of ICE agents who descend upon our neighborhoods to kidnap and disappear our friends and neighbors. To claim a private holiness that is not alive, active, and powerful, while our community is being torn apart is, in Wesley's view, to be a person without faith.

In Luke 4:18, Jesus reads the words of Isaiah in the synagogue: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed." Jesus calls out those who don't support the weakest in society, and he is subsequently driven out of the synagogue. When we witness the works of darkness manifesting as raids that shatter families, our Lenten journey must become like the fast described by Isaiah and Jesus. If God is light, then any system that relies on the shadows of disappearing people is fundamentally at odds with our faith.

In Ephesians 6:12, Paul tells us that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Our response to these kidnappings in our own backyard cannot be silence; it must be a holy resistance that mirrors the light of Christ, which refuses to be extinguished by the powers and principalities of the age. Holiness cannot exist merely as a personal relationship with God; it is only lived out in the way we protect, serve, and love the "least of these." If we are to be the light of the world, this light is never more visible than when a community stands as a bulwark against cruelty. John Wesley's concept of faith reframes darkness not as something to be escaped, but as the very place where our faith must become visible, active, and powerful. If our religion does not move us to stand in the gap for the vulnerable, it is not the religion of Jesus, who began his own wilderness journey by announcing good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed. If we are to follow him to the cross, we must be willing to stand in the dark places of Minneapolis bearing witness to a light that the darkness cannot overcome.

Wesley's insistence on a social holiness reminds us that we are inextricably bound to one another; the darkness affecting an immigrant family in Minneapolis is a darkness that obscures the soul of our entire city. We cannot be the light in the world if we are willing to let our neighbors be dragged into the shadows of detention centers. Our resistance to these acts is a sacramental act of social holiness that affirms the inherent light of God in every human being.

Three years after moving to Minnesota, I have come to understand who Minnesotans are, and I am not shocked to see how we have become active with loud whistles, and found creative ways to make sure the people who live near Minnehaha continue to be fed no matter how cold it is or how early the sun goes down. As we move through these forty days, let us embrace a social holiness that acts as a light in the world, one which offers sanctuary, demands justice, and refuses to rest until the light of the Gospel is felt in our pews, in every home, and on every street corner of our city. In this season of reflection, let our repentance be more than just a private sorrow. Let it be a public turning toward the light of justice, ensuring that the warmth we feel in our hearts translates into a fire for the protection of every neighbor. May we remember that the darkest of winter is ending as daylight lasts just a little longer each day — and even if we want to despair at the foot of the cross, the darkness of Good Friday brings the sunrise of Easter Sunday.