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Afraid
of the darkness? Dr. John Kinney The dean of the Samuel
DeWitt Proctor School of Religion
PHILADELPHIA, PA (March 14, 2005) -- By the time the Rev. Dr. John W. Kinney had stopped preaching about it, darkness never looked so good. Darkness never felt so good. Kinney, dean of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia union University in Richmond, was the lead preacher for this year's 23rd annual Preaching with Power series sponsored by The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (LTSP) and its Urban Theological Institute (UTI). Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia's Germantown was rocking with spiritual joy during the sermon, the congregation's pews filled to the brim with Grace parishioners, seminarians and guests. Kinney preached on Luke 23:44-46, the passages describing the hours of darkness leading to the death on the cross of Jesus. That was a tragically grim time, but not for long as Kinney powerfully explained. He began his message, "Good News from Darkness," by describing a conversation he once attended involving scholars and leaders. The discussion turned to "a litany of problems…We live in dark times," he reported. The "character and content" of the conversation contained no remedy but rather a sense of "dark lethargy and inertia." Lord, it is dark was the result of the gathering. Then he recalled words of a granddaughter uttered during a summer vacation. Gathered in a rural setting, Kinney described setting out a blanket on the ground to look at the stars in the night sky, what seemed like seven sextillion stars, as he put it. "Papa," he recalls the young granddaughter saying to him, "some things you just can't see 'til it gets dark." Kinney harped on his granddaughter's wisdom the rest of the message. He noted that the nation spends more on prisons than on schools and cited the grim statistics of the recent Philadelphia murder rate (22 killings within a recent nine-day period. In light of that reality, Kinney said, "I'm going to spend some time telling you what darkness can't do…" He told the story of a man dying of cancer and surrounded by his seven children. The young relatives were bemoaning what they felt was the absence of God in the face of such a grave illness. Hearing their concern, the father rallied a bit and wrote on a pad of paper, "Cancer can't stop me from loving you. Cancer can't take away the joy I had holding my grandchildren on my lap. And cancer can't stop me from going home to my God." "Darkness can't hide the truth!" Kinney said. "The darkness has to come to our lives, but God is never absent in the darkness. Though darkness had to come (in the passages of Luke) something else was already there, and the darkness only lasted from the sixth to the ninth hour - not for eternity! It only lasts until you get your revelation! The darkness can't hide the truth. It can't stop you from crying out in the darkness! The darkness cannot extinguish God! The God I serve is someone I can talk to beyond the darkness.The darkness cannot stop your prayers!" By now the sanctuary was alive with the gathering power of Kinney's message. "NOTHING can stop God from working in the darkness! The curtain of separation was torn from top to bottom! God gets busy in the darkness! NOTHING separates you from the love of God. The darkness can't stop you from putting whatever you are going through in God's hands." He compared God's love to the repair guarantee you get with a new car when he said that with God and the light of God's love "you are still under warranty no matter what you have been through! Darkness can't stop the sun from shining. In God there is no darkness. In the depth of the ocean God is there and God is in the depth of hell. There is no darkness in God, but God is in every darkness! "You can't see some things until it gets dark," he concluded. "The dark time is what gets me ready for the morning. In the morning my strength is renewed. There is Good News in the dark!"
In the packed reception hall of Grace Church after the service, Kinney gave generous time answering questions of seminarians and worshipers alike. He noted that he spends a great deal of time preparing his sermon messages, writing them out in long hand and working them over and over in the preparation. He also chatted about his faith formation in his younger years. For the sermon he preached at Grace Church, he said that each reference he made to "what the darkness can't do" could be the basis for its own sermon! At one point he told the gathering that "you can't preach commentaries. Commentaries are for study. You preach the Word that has been baked in the oven of your own soul." This year's Preaching with Power series took place in five community churches and featured a lecture and preaching service also on the seminary's campus. It is the 25th anniversary year of the UTI, a program that encourages African American students to improve their academic backgrounds by studying evenings and weekends. A special anniversary celebration is planned for October in the seminary's new $20 million Learning Center, now nearing completion. |
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