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This evening marks the beginning of the Great Three Days of the Christian calendar which lead from the Last Supper that Jesus had with his disciples, to the Empty Tomb on Easter Sunday. It’s interesting that in the Bible each new day begins with the evening before. Light is extinguished before it comes again. In the first chapter of Genesis where the creation of the world is described in seven days, ‘there was evening and there was morning’, the first day and the second, and so on.

I find that strangely reassuring. It is tempting in these days of so much conflict and dysfunction to lose hope, especially when we recognise the concealments that go into our politics, and the rumours and speculations spread by social media. At a time when as a nation we are unsure who our friends and allies really are it is easy to conclude that our world is dark and getting darker. Yet we still yearn for truth and believe that evidence and conscience, and for many of us, faith, can guide us to live with integrity. But to do that we have to recognise the darkness. Evening comes before morning. Honesty calls us to acknowledge darkness while seeking to live in the light.

There’s a traditional service sung this week known as Tenebrae with a candlestand bearing fifteen candles. As psalms of desolation are sung, pointing to Christ’s sufferings on the cross, fourteen candles are extinguished leaving just one alight which is then either hidden or covered over. In the same spirit I shall go to a service tonight which ends in darkness with candles and altar hangings stripped away leaving the church bare and silent.

The separation of light from darkness in the Bible is the basis, not only of its cosmology, but its morality. God separates light from darkness, yet only the light is called good. While it is always in the interests of the violent and dishonest to conceal their intentions, the darkness of the human heart is not dark to God, the light is as clear as the day. We have a truth-finding, truth-telling instinct which we lose at our peril and is always under threat. ‘Truth will out’, we say. Yet we all know how the drive for truth sometimes fights with our material interests, our comfort and security. Very often it seems there is very little light around and what there is – is difficult to see.

‘Yet there is nothing hidden that shall not be made known’, says Jesus. As night falls, darkness has its triumph, but the light still comes in the morning.

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