Pentecost 17 - Year B

I sat and looked at these readings a long time this week, just not being able to put my finger on the heart of it - or perhaps avoiding as long as I could the essence of them all. And then I came upon a Tom Wright statement that summed it up, and expressed succinctly my disquiet:
"We cannot deny evil is real and that God hates it". There it is.

So, on this our community weekend, a time of great joy in the birth of a new parishioner, Joshua Jacob; in two days of community events that have reinforced what a great work-together, and be invitational community this is, in this our blessing weekend of Bags to Buttala and the celebration of the tremendous generosity of you all, it looks as though your parish priest is going to give you a serve of evil.

Perhaps specifically the question: once named, what are we do with evil?

My personal struggle with it all is similar to many of you, and is two-fold; my character (and Christian tendency) is to always works with peace and reconciliation; I am not a confrontationist, nor do I seek conflict to resolve situations. Secondly, we are part of a time in theological history, it seems to me, when we stress the naming of God as good and creator above all else, and that our relationship with God and the Trinity is all about love. God is love is our message in this day and age, and we emphasise that far and above highlighting sin and judgement and exploring God and evil.

Now all of that suits me fine, let's go with the ‘good sell' image, I say. It's a bit like choosing midwifery in nursing; when we had our first child our midwife was a male and I can remember asking why he had chosen this aspect of nursing. He replied... "this is the happy area of nursing". Well, we all know it is not necessarily so, but his point was that it was predominantly so. Such is a good image for God as well; predominantly good and fair and all about love.

Ok. Let's move out of some denial here and state that evil has been with us, the human condition, from the beginning. In Genesis it is named always with good; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is created, and eating of the fruit did not mean death, it meant (quoting the serpent) "God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Well, we possibly all want to be like God (surely that can't be a bad thing, in a good way!) so from the beginning humanity knows both, good and evil.
Thus we are both - that's why the story was told the way it was in Genesis. It's not just a matter of knowing, of viewing from afar, the actions of good and evil. We know it in the way consenting adults know each other; the act has been done. The knowing is part of who we are; and I wonder if we are actually in denial about it. That is, our knowing of evil.

The question perhaps then is the elephant in the corner question..........
"Do I - you - have evil in me?" And where is God in all of this?

Like me, you fear the word because it is so in your face the extreme opposite of anything good. There is nowhere to go with it. And we don't often name aspects of life in that way because we know it is the extreme. However, the onset of modern terrorism has brought it back into our language as we name "acts of evil". This describes something that we fear, that goes beyond our understanding of what it means to be human; how could a human being do that? And that's what we have done with evil actually; identified it in actions by humans that are almost incomprehensible in how could it happen. Child abuse, torture, sadistic acts, the extremes of human behaviour. That is probably why we don't consider it being part of us; normal, sometimes sinful but not evil, people. We separate it out from the wholeness of life, as indeed we separate it out from God. Surely that's why we have the devil, to personify something that could not be part of God.

At this point I did some research on the topic; I asked two people's opinion of evil (2 people whose intellectual approach I respect), and I looked up Shakespeare's take on it.
Opinion one: "oh evil, it's everywhere".
Opinion two: "I don't believe in evil. There are evil tendencies, but how could God let anyone be born evil."
And from Shakespeare, who actually had a lot to say about evil, the classic quote from
ANTONY (from Julius Caesar)
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;

Mmmm. A good thing now to look at scripture......

In a broad sweep of the Bible, evil is certainly there - named 437 times actually, don't you just love the Google machine! Which doesn't include when it is personified as the devil, evil with a ‘d'.

And it would seem to me, in a very general statement, that scripture and Shakespeare deal with it as we do; separate it from condition into the action. The evil deed. Now then, where does the evil deed come from?

Jesus said, "The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure". (Matthew 12:35). And, later in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus talks about the evil treasure.... "For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander." (Matthew 15:19).

We know evil, but we are not evil. Our knowing can give us intention, though, evil intention from the heart and that intention, if the temptation is given into, can bind us into lives of evil cycle. And we become part of those of whom Jesus said...."and this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil."

Eureka! I am not going to end up feeling guilty by dumping evil on us at all. Because our liberating, free-from-evil, life is found in those words of Jesus I just quoted from John's Gospel - we are to love the light, the light of the world, and in our following of that light, our loving of that light, even in our sinfulness and straying from the good path, it is enough to overcome and banish evil.

"Whoever is not against us is for us" we heard Jesus say in today's reading. The good intention, the mustard seed of faith, is enough for God to work with. The great gift of all time is the gift of this redemptive life we have been given; that is, being shown the way to overcome evil intention and follow the light. The greatest irony is that it was given by the man who was purely without evil intention, Jesus Christ himself. Even Pilate recognised it..... "Pilate asked them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him!". Those of the darkness kept been drawn to the darkness; ‘the dark side' as the Star Wars stories named it.

So, back to the readings that gave rise to the questions..... and we know, we KNOW, we are not to deny evil. It exists; Queen Esther, revealing her Jewish heritage, named the evil of Haman in his anti-Semitic drive. Jesus names God's deep hate of evil action in those deeply disturbing words .."if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off"! And James stresses that need to move away from the human faltering inclination to the dark side... "let your ‘yes' be yes and your ‘no' be no." We are to turn to Christ, we are to keep focussed on the light of Christ, we are to be led by Christ.

And we are to name evil in the world; we are not to be apathetic or in denial about it. And then what are we to do with it? Paul sums it up for us in this most powerful entreaty of combating evil:

"Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12: 17-21)

There it is - overcome evil with good. Bags for Buttala, being proactive in looking after this earth, acts of kindness, sharing community..... we are not part of these actions to "feel good". We are called to do good, because we are bringing our actions out of good treasure - Christ's treasure. We can overcome evil in the world by doing good, day by day, small action by small action, in His way.

Jesus did it completely, in a magnificent action on the cross, and showed us the way. And he gave us his prayer, the "Our Father" prayer, to remind us always never to underestimate the human inclination to evil. Each time we pray "and deliver us from evil" we remember it is real. But rejoice that it is not part of you, nor me, nor us, when Christ is our mainstay. There is no room for evil and no shadow of evil in the light of Christ.

The Lord be with you.