The Real Evil

Late last week I called a priest friend of mine in New York and, predictably, the conversation worked itself around to the war in Iraq. Tom said, "Well, I hope they were right when they said it would be short and it’s over by Saturday night. I don’t want to have to preach about it on Sunday." We shared the same feeling: that we didn’t want to have to preach on the war on Sunday, though down deep we knew we would have to.

I thought about this conversation for the rest of the week and into Saturday night (the war didn’t end then, in case you didn’t know). Why didn’t we want to preach on the war on Sunday? Things needed to be said, if nothing more than to pray for the soldiers who had been placed in harm’s way. I have two friends who are over there flying for the Army and the Navy. Why the hesitation? It came to me Sunday morning just before the 8 o’clock as I was checking CNN (ugh!) for the most up to date information. They were talking about a peace rally in Chicago which deteriorated into opposite sides yelling either "Killers!" or "Idiots!" It was clear to me at that moment what the real evil was in this war and gave me the hook for my sermons for the rest of the day.

There has been a lot of talk about evil in the months leading up to this war and during. Evil empires, axis of evil, evil people doing evil things. This war is a fight against evil, so we’re told. But as I thought about Tom’s and my hesitancy to preach on the war, I came to know what the real Evil is and what it’s trying to do.

The real Evil is the war itself and the division it’s causing. That’s how Evil survives and succeeds: in dividing us in our opinions and separating us from each other into fortresses of opinion so that we stop seeing each other and listening to each other. Communities of faith are set at odds at best, destroyed at worst. I didn’t want to preach on the war this past Sunday, because I have a congregation full of staunch conservatives who are in favor of the war and support the current administration. They know I am against this war and I didn’t want to open that can of worms and wind up dividing my congregation. But that’s how Evil succeeds - by instilling in us the fear of division and threatening something we don’t want to lose. Things which need to be said don’t get said.

I don’t normally come into services with fear and trembling, but Sunday morning I did. I was struggling with the fears that this Evil was stirring up inside of me. But I couldn’t avoid what needed to be done so when it came time to preach, I took a deep breath, said a short prayer and put it all in God’s hands. The readings for the Third Sunday in Lent were as if God had planned it just for speaking peace to a roomful of hawks. The Old Testament lesson was from Exodus: God relating the Ten Commandments to Moses. The Gospel was the story of Jesus driving out the money changers and animal sellers from the Temple. Paul spoke in Romans about how he always did the things he knew he shouldn’t do because evil lurked nearby whenever he chose to do good.

Jesus, unlike others in his time, and us today, was neither for or against Rome. He didn’t waste his time pointing up the shortcomings of the administration or its benefits. There was no point to it. Within the politics of the world he lived in and the world we live in there is a higher way, and that is the way he tried to show us - the reign of God, in which love and caring for one another is the prime objective. He ran the money changers out of the Temple because they were taking advantage of the hatred of Rome by exchanging the coin of the realm for the Temple currency in order to be right with God. The animal sellers were making a profit on people’s sinfulness by determining just what a person needed to pay to provide the proper animal for sacrifice to get right with God. Jesus recognized the baser human desires expressed in turning God’s house into a marketplace. We do the same thing when we stand against each other trying to prove to one another that God is on our side in this war or God stands for something and against something else. The truth is that God stands for US...all of us, because God loves all God created. Is there evil intent in the world? You bet. Can we do anything about it? Yes, and no. If we fight because of it we only serve to strengthen it. If we see it for what it is and stand together, listening lovingly to each other’s opinions, a better way can be found to stand against Evil. Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to do good to them so that we may heap burning coals upon them, and not trade evil for evil, violence for violence. These are hard things to swallow when we are angry and hurting and vengeful. Which is what Evil wants. When we come together in our differences and pay attention to each other in love, Evil cannot hide from us the ways with which to destroy it. But it takes courage to go a way different from the world.

The Ten Commandments are not about following rules so that we can be OK. They are about giving. The first half is about giving ourselves to God. God wants our complete attention. We are to create no other gods to occupy our time and take us away from our true loving nature. We are to observe the Sabbath, not as a rest day for us, but to spend time to offer ourselves anew to God. The entire second half of the Ten Commandments is about giving ourselves to others. We are not to do murder, steal, covet - all things which are about getting something for ourselves - to better our position or to eliminate competition. Following this half of the Ten Commandments means that we put others before us. We separate ourselves from the voices that call us to feed only ourselves, to take care of number one, and to turn a blind eye to the pain and injustice in this world. It is only in having the courage and faith to give ourselves first to God and then to each other and to stand by that conviction with everything we have, that evil can be defeated.

We must not allow ourselves to be divided by this war. That is the true goal of Evil. We must pray for the young men and women who are over there in the thick of it, getting shot at because they have been sent there for reasons many probably don’t understand. Pray for their safety, because we owe them that. Pray for our enemies and our leaders (yes, the President, too), that they all may make decisions which ultimately lead to peace. Hating each other, hating our enemies, hating the President and the military is not helpful. Giving ourselves to God and to each other will find the way to defeat the evil which only hopes to prolong its life by keeping us apart.

Showering love on Evil works.  Without exception, the members of my congregations all said that it was a difficult thing I had to do and I said it the only way it could have been said.  They agreed with me!  The meanest guy in my congregation told me I was a good man and hugged me, with tears in his eyes.  He said we still diagreed, but he was listening and he prayed I was, too. 

I pray, brothers and sisters, that we may begin to heal divisions, to listen, to love, and to find peace, today.