Do We Believe God Can Set Us Free?

by Eric Elkin

“to say to the captives, ‘Come out,’
and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’
“They will feed beside the roads 
and find pasture on every barren hill.”

— Isaiah 49:9

Our Lenten study group sat in a circle. The arrangement of chairs meant we would look each other in the eyes. I decided to set things up this way without thinking about the topic. We gathered to discuss this week’s Lenten question, who sinned? This topic always opens up a lot of wounds. The placement of chairs meant we would be looking into the eyes of the wounded as they spoke.

The session opened with a poem written by the Rev. Sarah Speed. The title of the poem was “Jesus In A Psych Ward.” I invited the group to settle their hearts, take a deep cleansing breath, rest, and listen. As I read the poem, I looked up briefly to see people’s reactions. Their eyes were closed, but I quickly dropped my head to avoid eye contact. I don’t know why.

A line hit me in the poem. “And when one of them asks, is this our fault? Are we here because we sinned?” My mind immediately jumps to all the wounded people I have ever served. But I became fixated with one particular group from my past. The poem drew me back to a time when I sat at a table with people in recovery from addiction. The group was talking about their higher power.

I listened to each person declare how Jesus does not work for them. Their higher power was someone willing to sit with them during the darkest points of their recovery. The higher power they desired would quietly listen to their pain, hold them in their despair, and speak words of love into their ears. As I listened, all I could think about was how this is who Jesus was supposed to be. How did we pastors go so wrong in preaching the Good News?

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

— C.S. Lewis

The study group discussion was engaging. But a part of my mind was in my own world. “Jesus In The Psych Ward” successfully got its point across to all of us. Jesus is the one who is willing to enter into the darkest moments of our lives and speak words of love. As the conversation progressed, I found myself caught up in an internal conversation separate from the one taking place around me. There was a question I was struggling with in my head. I know God enters their darkness; do I believe God enters my own?

This is a question all of us should consider. Do we believe God can be with us in the darkness? The problem with spiritual darkness is that it is so dark. When grief or despair consumes us our inner thoughts, it overwhelms any sense of hope. The absence of light can make us feel as though we are blind. This kind of blindness cannot be cured by repairing an optic nerve. Perhaps healing can only come when the heart is so wounded it realizes it has nowhere else to turn. It has to listen to the words it thought were for other people to be healed.

All these thoughts were turning in my head as I prepared a sermon about Lazarus being raised from the dead. Then, waking up this morning and reading these words from Isaiah, my eyes were opened. The words opened my eyes to the truth of our relationship with God. In a world obsessed with talking about who sinned, God is the one who enters our darkness and says, “Come out and be free!” Can you hear these words? Do you need to hear these words? And how can I speak them to you so you can?

Click to read Isaiah 49: 8-15