Hearing in the Dark

Amid the more jarring references to swords and crosses and family strife in today’s Gospel from Matthew, there is a quieter, subtler phrase that may not get the attention it deserves. “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light,” Jesus instructs his closest followers, “and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” Evidently, discipleship involves a willingness to speak up on Jesus’ behalf, even at the risk of our security and relationships. But before we rush to proclaim anything, it’s worth asking what exactly we are hearing “in the dark.”[1]

Jesus’ message is certainly not a rubber stamp for everything we already believe. Various ideologies readily claim Christ, but of course he is more than a mascot for popular opinion. The gospel implies a countercultural wisdom as soon as Jesus mentions the cost of discipleship: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” In other words, to relinquish one way of being is to discover another. But what does that really mean? It seems there is something just beyond our normal reach here. Beneath all the chatter of everyday speech, Jesus is whispering a deeper truth.

In her new book, Kate Bowler amplifies that whisper as she unpacks the myth of relentless positivity and acknowledges a deep and persistent longing at the heart of human life, what she calls “the ache”:

[Excerpts from Joyful, Anyway, pp. 56-7, 74-5]

“Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Friends, the “better and better aims” to which Father Ron Rolheiser refers are not just another formula for personal fulfillment. No, he is clear that “we are going to die with a lot of hopes unfulfilled.” Nonetheless, the act of loosening our grip on life is an act of faith. To confess our disappointment, our uncertainty, our yearning is to practice truth-telling and grace-giving– to ourselves and to others– even when they don’t want to hear it. And therein also lies the promise of a fuller existence, the kind that is conscious of its limitations and so leans all the more heavily on the love that transcends even death itself.

[1] streetpsalms.org/proper-7-12-year-a/.