(Delivered at Berowra Uniting Church on 18 July 2004)
Intro
Today, I want to pick up some themes from the Old Testament readings and lead us in prayer about evil. That’s a different theme than what I usually choose, and from what we normally hear preached in this church. But it is a theme God has been speaking to my heart about and I hope I can avoid too much intellectualising here in order to convey a heart-felt and hopefully God-inspired anguish.
I think we too often trivialise the nature and extent of evil and, especially here in comfortable suburban Australia, we insulate ourselves from the reality of evil.
My sermon has three points, like every good sermon should, and I’ll let you in on them straight away so there’ll be no surprises later:
1. There is real evil in the world
2. We are complicit in that evil
3. Our only hope is the grace and mercy of God
And for each of those points I will lead us in a time of prayer.
There is real evil in the world
We have prayed this morning, as we do each week, for the people close to us who are suffering in one form or another. For those who are suffering from accidents or illness, and for those coping with grief, anxiety and loss. There is a very real sense in which these things are the results of evil in the world. In a perfect world, and in heaven, these things would not befall us. We pray for rain, and for peace, and for guidance – as we should.
But these intercessions touch only the tip of a massive iceberg of anguish and horror that make many people’s lives unbearably painful.
There is someone – right now – being raped. And tens of thousands of others trying to deal with the consequences of being raped. Unwanted pregnancies and the awful choice of whether to abort the baby. Sexually transmitted diseases contracted from the rapist. The shame and false guilt felt by many rape victims. The long term fear and hatred of men that can result from a single act of evil.
There is a woman – right now – being beaten by her husband. There are families living in fear of their alcoholic father. There are children being molested and bullied. There is a gang beating up someone because they are a different race, or because they are homosexual, or simply because the gang leader needs to assert his power.
Something that God often calls me to pray for are the people trapped as sex slaves. There are children – right now – abducted and trapped in basements and treated as mere disposable play things. There are young women sold into prostitution.
I don’t want to speak for long about sexually related evil, though it does seem to be one of the major areas of our human nature that can become most twisted and destructive. But I don’t think that any of us know – I dearly hope that none of us will ever know – the depths of depravity that are possible. What we see in Berowra and on our televisions – unfaithfulness and pornography – these are petty and trivial when compared to the under-culture of depravity in which drugs and violence and sexual debasement are mixed together like a nightmare.
I once lived with a friend trying to escape from a heroin addiction. He became a Christian and was drug free for several months until one day he needed to return to his old home in Cabramatta. Next day he was found dead, from an overdose of heroin. No-one knows how, but one can easily imagine Don meeting his old dealer and being convinced, or maybe forced, to try the stuff one more time.
We have heard recently of the abuse of prisoners by US troops in Iraq. It surprises me that anyone would find that surprising! War is the ultimate brutaliser. To be effective, soldiers must be trained to hate, to feel superior, to know that the ends justifies the means, to consider the enemy as evil. Such training inevitably causes people to treat the enemy as brutes, and in the process makes them brutes themselves.
In many parts of the world there are people who have lost loved ones to war, and to famine and to flood and to government incompetence and corruption, and to inter-faction rivalry and gangsterism. There are millions of dispossessed, powerless, lonely, fearful people who suffer through no fault of their own and who live with no hope of improvement.
There are many for whom the hopelessness is too great and who take their own lives. Can you imagine how desperate someone must feel at that point? Perhaps some of us can, because suicide is just as prevalent in the opulent West as it is in poorer countries.
Of course there is good in the world, but there is also evil beyond our imagining. It is not just a handful of scattered cases, a few anomalies, an unfortunate accident or two. It is a systematic horror that is part of the human condition. There are people who profit from others suffering and those who do evil precisely because it is evil. Thank God that goodness and love are more powerful forces than evil.
Our Psalm today says of evil-doers: “God will destroy you forever! He will grab you and drag you from your homes. You will be uprooted and left to die. When good people see this fearsome sight, they will laugh and say, ‘Just look at them now! Instead of trusting God, they trusted their wealth and their cruelty.’” But how often do we see that?
Let us pray.
Almighty God, creator of all, you see the suffering of this world more than any of us, for nothing is hidden from you …
Give us eyes to see the suffering too.
Lord Jesus, brother of us all, you wept over Jerusalem and for the death of Lazarus …
Give us a heart like yours that grieves for this world.
Holy God, Father of all, you loved the world so much that you were willing to share our human condition even to the point of experiencing betrayal and death …
Give us the courage to keep on loving and not to despair.
Lord of all, we pray for all those who have been raped
… and we pray for those who have raped.
We pray for all those who have been beaten and abused by those who should have protected them
… and we pray for the abusers.
We pray for all who have lost loved ones through war and murder
… and we pray for those who have killed.
We pray for all the victims of the evil in this world
… and we pray for all the perpetrators of evil.
Let us listen for a moment to what God might reveal to us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
Amen.
We are complicit in that evil
My second point is more personal, for I find that evil is not just out there in the world, but it is within me. I cannot judge the evil in others when I still struggle with evil in myself. There are personal sins that are fairly obvious, but there are deeper and more fundamental ways that we contribute to the evil and suffering in the world.
The Lord showed Amos a basket or ripe fruit. I don’t imagine it was a basket of lovely, juicy, ready-to-eat fruit but squishy, mouldy, ready-to-throw-away fruit. And so when God says “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.” (v2) – he is saying that the fruit stinks and it’s time to chuck it out.
What made Israel so rotten? The fact that they “crush those in need and wipe out the poor.” (v4) The fact that they gave lip-service to religious observance yet cheated with dishonest scales (v5).
Could that be us too? Don’t we, as a nation, keep the down-and-outs down and out? How do we treat the outcast, the prisoner, the refugee. How many of us try to get away with as much as we can? There is enough to go around, but we scrabble to claim as much of the pie as we can.
What do we do to join Jesus’ mission “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight to the blind and to release the oppressed”? (Lk 4:18)
What I am trying to highlight is our own complicity in the evil around us. We live in affluence while millions suffer. We benefit from an economic system that takes advantage of the poor. We consume more than we need to and support production processes that destroy the environment that God put under our care.
We see the most horrendous things on the TV news and neither shed a tear, nor fall on our knees in prayer, nor raise a finger. We choose not to get involved with the injustices around us and by so doing we give our permission for the injustices to continue.
Our actions, and lack of action, perpetuate the evil around us. As 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke is reported to have said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Let us prayer again, as we confess our own evil to God.
Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we have been infected with the evil that we so deplore.
Transform us with the medicine of your holiness.
Jesus, Lord of life, we confess that we have closed our eyes to the evil around us and when we have seen it, we have chosen not to oppose it.
Transform our motivations so that our attitude is shaped by your compassion.
Jesus, seeker of the lost, we confess to becoming so moulded by the values of this age that it is difficult to listen to your voice.
Transform our priorities so that we make space in our lives to be quiet and listen to you.
Jesus, friend of the poor, we confess that we give too much attention to the rich and famous.
Transform our values so that they are shaped by your concern for the unloved and unlovely, for the weak and powerless in our society.
Jesus, source of our faith, we confess that we forget all too quickly the words we say, and pray, and sing, in our time of worship.
Transform our lives so that our worship of you is authentic.
Let us listen for a moment to what God might reveal to us.
Lord, hear our prayer.
Amen.
Our only hope is the grace and mercy of God
Lest this sermon be seen as too negative, it is important to frame a response to the evil we see around us and within us. What affect can we have? How can we confront such a wave of evil without being overwhelmed? We can’t equally love everyone in the world – it is hard enough to love our neighbours.
Without God, I cannot see any solution. Human nature being as it is, we are never going to see the demise of evil. There is no evidence that the world is becoming a better place, unless your head is well under the sand.
Our only hope is the grace and mercy of God.
Though we don’t see it now, there will be justice in the end. That justice will bring the end of all evil. But the clear indications of scripture are that when the demands of justice and compassion are in conflict, God always errs on the side of compassion.
God is supremely gracious – blessing us well beyond what we deserve, generously giving life and hope and shelter and safety and food and surrounding us with love.
And God is merciful – always willing to forgive those who earnestly call on his name.
We need to turn to God in humble prayer, sharing with him our anguish and drawing on his compassion to energise our response. Prayer is not all we can do, but it is the essential starting point.
Perhaps none of us will ever be involved in ministry to drug addicts, but we can support those who are. Perhaps we will never meet a refugee, but we can support the Christians who do work in that area. We can pray for and support Bernie’s work in prisons.
And there are certainly changes we can make to our attitudes so that in conversation at work and in our social life, we can challenge the stereotypes, misconceptions and ungodly attitudes that prevail.
Working with God, we can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. But that means we need to be in step with the Spirit of God
I’d like us to listen to a song by Colin Buchanan [I guess it was “Holy Father”]. Colin was at one time a presenter on Play School and is well known for his Christian music for children. But this one is certainly more mature musically and lyrically than his children’s songs and one that I find extremely moving.
I’ll put the words on the screen, but as you listen to the song, please also listen prayerfully to God. After the song we will continue to meditate silently.
Final word of prayer: Listen to the word of grace – Jesus Christ is the light of the world, the light that dispels all darkness. Jesus Christ is the sinless one who, by conquering death, broke the power of evil. “If we confess our sin, God is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) So I declare to you who call on his name that your sins are forgiven. Thanks be to God.
Benediction
Go into the world unafraid to see the evil in it: you carry within you the light of Christ that dispels all darkness. We confronted with evil, call on the grace and mercy of God.
And may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:7). Amen.