The Lord is my shepherd, I have all I need…

Even though I walk through a dark and dreary land,

There is nothing that can shake me, She won’t forsake me.

I’m in her hand.

I love Bobby McFerrin’s version of the 23rd Psalm, especially in this week when we celebrated International Women’s Day.

I know, McFerrin is very male…but he is speaking of the divine feminine…

The original language of the psalm is much more stark:

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil…for thou art with me.

I will fear no evil…for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff,

They comfort me.

The language of the King James somehow always points toward power.

God of Grace and God of Glory, on thy people pour thy power. …

Lo, the clouds of evil ‘round us, hide they brightness from our gaze…

The clouds of evil round us…

Good vs Evil.

This is our second Sunday focusing on the theme of Evil. When the team that plans worship gathered earlier this week, reviewing the readings and musical selections, we were laughing that there is no lack of “big” music about the theme of Evil. The theme of evil makes it a good month for the choirs.

Big Music. I’m not sure whether it is our wrestling with our own internal demons, or the presence of so much that always seems to be evil out in the world, but the battle between good and evil is one of the most common themes in religious metaphor and theological discourse.

The Big Music reflects the high stakes as God and Good battle Evil and its minions.

I closed my sermon last week by returning to the concept of choice, our ability to choose and our agency, the effectiveness of our choosing. In a world where no deity is in control…at least few of us understand some God or higher power to be determining our destiny…in a world where no deity is in control…the choices are ours.

“But what if we were able” I asked, “to live the urgency for life-affirming justice…not as an obligation or a duty or a sacrifice…but as a choice and a blessing and a gift. …

The meaning of good and evil is not abstract. It is in the choices that we make each day.”

Today I want to say a few more things about those choices and go a bit deeper into the practice of our agency…our power.

There are serious implications that stem from understanding our world as a battle between the forces of good and evil. Implications both for how we imagine our personal choices and how we view the world in which those choices need to be made.

Most religious traditions hold judgments about what is good and what is not, or what is evil. If we were in the Muslim world, I would be preaching about Shaytan, (Satan) and how Allah is presented as allowing that evil presence to tempt or test humans.

But since so much of how we view the moral universe, here in the west, is drawn from the Christian story, I want to invite you to engage with that story and how it has shaped our understanding of good and our understanding of evil.

The Christian tradition, from its early incarnation in the Gospel stories of Jesus, has claimed to be a revelation of God’s intervention in history. The Christian story is a story of cosmic conflict. Although Satan rarely appears onstage, evil plays a central role.

The earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark, begins with the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, when the Spirit of God descended upon him and “immediately drove him into the wilderness and he was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan. (Mark 1:12-13). That is how the story begins. And throughout that Gospel, Satan and the demonic forces oppose God and work to destroy Jesus.

Elaine Pagels, in her book The Origin of Satan, argues that the story [the gospel writers] had to tell made little sense without Satan. Here is her statement: “How, after all, could anyone claim that a man betrayed by one of his own followers, and brutally executed on charges of treason against Rome, not only was but still is God’s appointed Messiah…unless his death was, as the gospels insist, not a final defeat but only a preliminary skirmish in a vast cosmic conflict…?”

The Gospel story only makes sense if the battle between good and evil is on-going, if the evil opponent (Satan) is worthy, powerful and if the battle is to some final end. And so, Jesus, “the son of Man,” must return, “on the clouds of heaven” (these are images from the Book of Daniel) and become ruler of God’s Kingdom on earth.

On earth as it is in heaven. Remember that language from the Lord’s Prayer.

That is the cosmic battle. But the Gospel writers had to demonize human actors, as characters in this cosmic drama. The cosmic forces of evil operate “through certain people” to effect their destructive ends.

Much has been written about the early Jesus community’s decision to locate evil in “the Jews” rather than the Romans… There is a trajectory that began in the first century that culminated in the holocaust.

That is a separate sermon, for another day.

Today I want to direct our attention to the broader dynamic of making people embody, making some people carry, the weight of cosmic evil. Or as Pagels describes it:“The figure of Satan becomes, among other things, a way of characterizing one’s actual human enemies as the embodiment of transcendent forces of evil.”

Our human enemies come to be seen as demons. Not really human…with no inherent worth and dignity…worthy only of  destruction.

The examples of how this operates are too many to mention. Whether it is the Crusades or the War on Terror, the dynamic is much the same. Torture and even genocide can be justified.

That is dangerous enough. But demonizing the other also encourages us to see ourselves as wholly good, innocent, pure. And that delusion is a significant part of the danger as well.

But we do have choices. Choices we have to make.

A case in point:

Thanks to the articulateness and passion and social media savvy of the high school students in Parkland, Florida, we are being given another chance to change the trajectory of gun violence and gun safety in this nation.

Just this week, the governor of Florida, advocate for “stand your ground,”  “concealed carry,” and “flash your gun” was willing to sign legislation that would begin to limit the unchecked availability and use of lethal weapons of mass destruction.

These are baby steps, to be sure. Increasing minimum age for gun purchase from 18-21. No bump-stocks. A three day waiting period for purchase. The bill is a mixed blessing, also containing permission for schools to arm some employees, even teachers, though not the requirement that they do so.

The NRA is already suing, claiming an abridgement of the fundamental freedom of those 18-21 year olds to further enrich the gun manufacturers, who are the real members of the NRA. I make no pretense of avoiding what is true in this matter.

This could be the first crack in the gun lobby armor, the first crack that may allow sensible gun safety legislation to halt or at least slow the increasing violence and fear we have had to accept.

It has been the leadership and witness of those young people, and young people across the country and across the internet, that is opening this possibility. They are saying “Shame on you!” to politicians who defer to the gun lobby. And they are asking the real question: “What kind of a world do we want to live in?”

And those of us who are older, those of us who have not been able to create such an opening, for all of our advocacy…we need to say halleluiah and find every way we can to be in support. #Never Again.

This Wednesday, the student activists from Parkland have called for a 17 minute school walk-out to honor the 17 people killed in that mass murder. Portland Public Schools has issued an “affirmative message,” encouraging students to express their views. I and we endorse this action.

And on March 24th, we will participate in the march and rally at Pioneer Courthouse Square as part of the National March for our Lives. Look for information about where we will gather as we get closer to the date. Our own Peace Action Group and Pride groups will be named as co-organizers of this event.

The Peace Action Group has one of the longest and proudest histories of work and witness for justice in this church. How many of you have taken part in the Soul Box project to combat gun violence? Each small origami box represents a life lost to gun violence. Each box also represents the personal statement: “No more.” I encourage you to make a box today, after worship, in Daisy Bingham.

And the Pride Group…also organizing for the event and saying #NeverAgain. Some of you have asked what Intersectionality looks like. This is a good example. We need to confront not just the evil that impacts our own particular identity…but stand together for movement toward a Beloved Community in which we can all be safe and free.

Let us not just ask to be delivered from evil. Let us be willing to confront evil as well.

In July of 2008, at the Tennessee Valley UU Church in Knoxville, a man entered the sanctuary, took a shotgun from his guitar case, and began shooting. A children’s choir was ready to sing. They were herded out a back door to safety. An usher and Board member, named Greg McEndry, approached the man and took him down. Other congregants immobilized him and held him until police arrived. McEndry and one other congregant were shot and did not survive.

Evil arrived at the Tennessee Valley Church. But evil was not the only visitor. As UUA President, I caught the first flight to Knoxville. By the time I arrived, members of the UU Trauma Response Ministry were already there. And while I helped out dealing with reporters that crowded the church grounds, keeping them away from the grieving families, the Trauma Response team provided pastoral support for the adults of the church the children.

Annette Marquis was part of that Trauma Response team. She served and serves on the UUA Congregational Life staff.

Annette writes:

“As a child, I learned to pray the Our Father, the Roman Catholic form of The Lord’s Prayer, which ends not by praising God with ‘For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,…’ but rather with the line petitioning God to ‘deliver us from evil.’ I stayed awake many nights in my childhood bed imagining the evil God might deliver me from. My image of God was of a force field that, if I were good enough, would surround me and keep me protected from evil in the world. I prayed I would be good enough.”

Deliver us from evil. Keep us protected, insulated from the evil in the world. It is a personal petition that many of us have made.

Annette goes on:

“As I grew older, I realized I could no longer ask God to deliver me from evil. I couldn’t hide from it, safe behind a protective shield, and expect evil to dissipate on its own—I had to play an active role in dispelling evil in whatever ways I could. I came to understand that it is in the absence of love that evil propagates, and, in the presence of love that evil dissipates.

So instead of praying to God to deliver me from evil, I began praying for the Spirit of Life to deliver me to evil, to give me the courage to go where evil exists and supplant it with love.”

We are called to confront evil, just as Jesus was called to confront Satan in the wilderness.

Good vs Evil. There is real danger in dualism, of course. Seeing the world through that lens of good vs evil…well, it encourages us to view those with whom we disagree as other, not of our tribe. It encourages us to view them as evil with all the weight that that term brings…all the assumptions that those who do evil deeds are inherently evil, unredeemable…fit only to be fought and to be vanquished.

Inherently evil…it closes off any hope of redemption, any hope of reconciliation, any hope of moving toward right relationship.

And it encourages us to imagine that we are inherently good.

In fact, that is the greater danger…believing that we are innocent and pure

Because we are only human… not innocent.

Our inherent worth and dignity does not mean that we are innocent, or always good…or always right.

In fact, thinking in dualism is seen as one symptom of the culture of white supremacy. That culture which divides the human family by race and class and ability also weights those differences morally. And those divisions obscure a wholeness that must be characteristic of any community that hopes to be called Beloved.

Annette Marquis again: “It is only when we [turn] toward evil and overpower it with love that we interrupt the forces that have allowed evil to prosper, and in so doing, move the world a step closer to heaven.”

Thy will be done…on earth…as it is in heaven.

Could it be the kingdom has already come, is already here…or might be here?

It is not possible to have a real conversation about either evil or love, without including a conversation about power.

What we know is that our choices matter. What we know is that our power can be used to bless or to curse the world.

What we know is that our best hope lies in working for a justice that, in Dr. King’s words, “corrects everything that stands against love.”

It is not possible and it may not even be wise to try to define what the Beloved Community should look like.

The Beloved Community is a vision that will always remain just beyond our reach.

But “to correct everything that stands against love”… those marching orders will keep us headed toward hope.

Amen

Prayer: Annette Marquis now offers this prayer: will you join me in prayer and hear her words:

Spirit of Life, which exists wherever there is love,

Blessed be all Your Names.

Strengthen our will

To create heaven on earth,

And help us embody a peace filled world.

Give us all our daily bread.

Teach us to forgive ourselves for our failings,

And to forgive those who have failed us.

Deliver us to evil

And give us the courage to transform it with Love.

For Love is the power, and the glory,

For ever and ever.

Amen

Topics: Evil