The Via Negativa

Sermon for March 22, 2009

Today marks the mid-point in the season of Lent, a time of quiet preparation for both the sacrifice and the jubilance of Easter. The term Lent comes from an Old English word akin to length since this is the time of the year when days begin to lengthen. We all welcome the added hours of daylight and the greening of spring.

Some of you may, like me, be trying to observe the traditional Lenten practice of self-denial and self-discipline, and finding it to be a difficult challenge. If Lent is really supposed to be a time when we delve into our hearts and try to know ourselves better, then I have been successful at that in one aspect. I know I have a very difficult time giving up things I am attached to--like chocolate. I also realize that our Lenten practice could have a more serious objective than providing a test for our sweet tooth.

During these days of reflection, I have been reading about Lent, and I now think we are called to give up--to surrender--anything we are attached to that harms us. On that kind of scale, our attitudes are also weighed in the balance. If we are in the habit of beating ourselves up emotionally for every little mistake we make, we can give up that need to be mean to ourselves. If we indulge ourselves too often in impatience, anger, self-righteousness, or self-pity, we can give up those self-destructive behaviors for Lent. Now, that would be a real challenge, wouldn't it? The truth is, we would have a very hard time giving up anger, say, or self-pity if we have never even acknowledged to ourselves that such an attitude creates difficulties for us. Knowing ourselves that well takes a lot of self-examination. Thomas Merton once said that the task of knowing ourselves requires us to "become conscious that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger. We must constantly question his motives and penetrate his disguises."

Most human beings would prefer to examine someone else's shortcomings than turn around and point an accusing finger toward ourselves. When we refuse to take a good look at our own faults or believe we are blame-free, that is denial. Denying the truth about ourselves will get us nowhere. Remember, Jesus had something to say about finding the speck in someone else's eye while ignoring the log in our own. In addition to saying we should not find fault with others, I think he meant to imply that the log blinds us to the truth we need to discover about ourselves.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul offers us the consolation we need when we think about the our numerous sins and prefer to avert our eyes from them. "All of us once lived ... in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ...For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--not the result of works, so that no one may boast." Accepting ourselves as we are, warts and all, takes a great deal of humility, and that much humility can be hard to come by. Rather than accept responsibility for who we are or what we have done, we generally find it easier to justify our own less-than-perfect choices by blaming someone else. Isn't that often the way of human nature? Lucky for us, we can turn to the Divine Nature of God when we finally get ready to let go of the sins we hold so dear.

Turning our shortcomings as well as our fears over to God is a process of surrender. Surrender is not a word or an action Americans generally wish to consider. Surrendering sounds really weak and cowardly. Only losers surrender, right? In so many ways from basketball bracketology to American Idol to the space race to waging war, we think we are supposed to fight to be number one. Losing is an appalling option for Americans. That sort of attitude only adds to the sense of tragedy so many of us feel as people around us right now are losing their jobs and their homes.
But spiritual surrender isn't about giving up or losing. It isn't about weakness or resigning ourselves to an unhappy fate. Spiritual surrender is about accepting that I lack the power to overcome my problems by myself and choosing to turn my weakness over to the One is who infinitely more powerful than I. When I consider all of the ways I have tried to force changes in myself or in others and failed every time, I understand that my will alone is not enough. When I, with humility, overcome my denial and accept the reality of my situation and my powerlessness, then I can let go and let God take care of it. In a state of denial, like an ostrich with her head in the sand, I cannot improve my life and move forward. Once I see myself honestly, and seek the Lord's healing help through surrender, I discover a new power--the power to change the things I can. I can certainly work to change my bad attitudes and self-defeating behaviors after I have finally acknowledged their existence!

In our Old Testament lesson today, the chosen people of Israel, under the leadership of Moses, were having a hard time identifying their bad attitudes. They were whining about the food. God sent poisonous serpents to get their attention, and it seems to have worked pretty quickly! (Snakes have that effect on most people.) God orders Moses to make a serpent of bronze and set it up on a pole so that the people can look at it and be healed of their snake bites. The serpent was lifted up above them to stand as a symbol of God's healing and forgiving grace.
In our gospel lesson, Jesus makes reference to that old history when he says, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." Think about what He means here. He is looking ahead to the time when he will be lifted up to die a painful and humiliating death on the cross. As he moves toward Jerusalem and that bitter end, Jesus attempts to prepare his followers for what is to come. Knowing that such suffering is required of him, knowing where his path leads him, the Lord still moves forward. He is able to face his future with courage because he accepts it. He knows what is going to happen to him, but he also knows what will be on the other side of the suffering. And he surrenders to all of it. The way up--the way of the cross and salvation--is also the way down, into suffering.

The priest, teacher, and writer Henri Nouwen is one of my favorite spiritual writers, and I have been reading his book with daily lessons for Lent, Show Me the Way. Of this passage in John's gospel, Nouwen says, "Jesus presents to us the great mystery of the descending way. It is the way of suffering, but also the way to healing. It is the way of humiliation, but also the way to resurrection. It is the way of hiddenness, but also the way that leads to the light that will shine for all people. It is the way of persecution, oppression, martyrdom, and death, but also the way to the full disclosure of God's love...The 'lifting up' that Jesus speaks of refers both to his being raised up on the cross in total humiliation and to his being raised up from the dead in total glorification...You are probably wondering how, in imitation of Jesus, you are to find the descending way...Each one of us has to seek out his or her own descending way of love. That calls for much prayer, much patience, and much guidance."

There is an official Latin name for that descending way, and it dates back many years in church history. The via negativa was explored by the early church mystics, and St. John of the Cross wrote a famous treatise about it in the 16th century called The Dark Night of the Soul. This past Wednesday I gave a presentation on 20th century poet T.S. Eliot, who explored the via negativa in his long poem "East Coker." To Eliot, the descending way is a process of complete surrender to the darkness and the unknown--a way to get through the "cloud of unknowing" by immersing oneself in it. I like the words Eliot uses to express that kind of surrender:

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."

In these terms, surrender sounds very peaceful, doesn't it? So much of life in these troubling times seems like a struggle, but it doesn't have to be that way. Surrender is about letting go of the struggle. The descending way allows us to fall into the waiting, wide-stretched arms of the Lord. There, as the mystic Dame Julian of Norwich said, "All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well."

Susan Hull