"The Changing Faces of
Evil "
A Sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
November 15, 2009
READINGS: ANCIENT & MODERN
Our ancient reading today is excerpted from the Hebrew Book
of Proverbs, Chapter 2:
Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked ones,
from those whose words are perverse,
who leave the straight paths
to walk in dark ways,
who delight in doing wrong
and rejoice in the perverseness of evil,
whose paths are crooked
and who are devious in their ways…
Thus you will walk in the ways of good people
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
For the upright will live in the land,
and the blameless will remain in it;
but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the unfaithful will be torn from it.
Our modern reading was suggested by our choir and is here excerpted
from "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones:
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith
And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank
in the general's rank
When the Blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
I shouted out,
"Who killed the Kennedys?"
When after all
It was you and me
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, have some taste
Use all your well-learned politeness
Or I'll lay your soul to waste,
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name,
Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game.
SERMON:
This morning's sermon is based on a theme chosen by our congregation's
President, Nick Lewis and his First Lady, Judie Rinearson. Nick
and Judie won the right to select the topic by having the winning
bid for it at last year's service auction. I have sort of fallen
into a pattern of doing the auction theme sermon from the previous
year, just before the current auction. I like to think that it stirs
up possibilities for some of you who may wish, this coming Saturday
evening, to place the highest bid for this year's sermon offering.
I recently received an email from Nick giving me some guidance
for this morning's effort. He wrote: "Judie and I came up with
a couple of ideas. I think my favorite one is the nature of evil.
Is there such a thing? Is it a mental defect or something that is
within all of us to some extent? …Judie also had an idea for
a sermon that has something to do with baseball, which I could explore.
But it seems to me that we had one of those in the past few years…"
I have done a sermon on baseball in the past, so I emailed Judie
a copy of the story, "A
Bad Day in Brandon," by Maxon Eddy . I used it as the illustration
in the baseball sermon, and I think that it to is possibly one of
the greatest baseball stories of all times. I have to admit that,
like Nick, I'm a bit more intrigued with the topic of evil. I found
the truth of that by searching my own computer files to find that
in about the past eight or nine years, while I've done only two
sermons on the topic of baseball, there were 90 references to sermons
I have written that - to some greater or lesser extent - addressed
the topic of evil. Some themes never go out of vogue and just seem
to be classically timeless.
So to the questions posed in the e-mail about evil: "Is there
such a thing?" I think there is. "Is it a mental defect
or something that is within all of us to some extent?" I think
this question goes to the heart of the matter. Since I don't believe
that any human life has ever been lived in perfection, I do believe
that we all participate in the activity of evil. So, if evil is
a defect, it is one that is of the greatest pandemic proportions.
The question begged for me here though, is one raised by the Christian
theology of sin, which states that humanity is born into sin through
original sin, and that we have by nature a sinful disposition. I
think that is a lot of theological hooey, intended to keep the boys
down on the farm, so that only holy mother the church can redeem
them.
So, I need to begin by defining what I think evil is. To do that,
I need to say something of what I think it is not. I don't think
evil is something that exists of its own accord, out in the universe,
waiting to strike. I don't think there is a Lucifer who casts about,
luring innocent beings into wrong doing or buying people's souls
with the lure of fame, fortune or a life of endless ease here on
earth.
Just as I think it's foolhardy to imagine that there is some kind
of God that will step in and save humanity at the 11th hour from,
say our environmental folly among the smorgasbord of possible human
causes for cataclysm, it's equally and dangerously idiotic to think
that there's a devil in the works who is deceiving us into believing
the myth that humanity is the greatest gift of all. Arrogance is
a kind of evil. Evil exists alright, but I have to think that it
is of our own human making.
And then I need to define my use of the word, good. I can come
up with no other explanation but to think that the universe is here
because it wants to be here. The want of being, the great mystery
of being is manifest in all that we see, in all that is. If being
were not what's happening, I'm not what's happening, either. None
of us are. So as far as I can see, being is good. The universe is
good, and goodness is universal.
That doesn't mean that there aren't really horrendous things happening
quite naturally in the universe and in our world. Planets collide,
tsunamis rise, earthquakes sunder, young people die. There's a lot
of pain in the universe, but pain is not evil. It's pain. It's simply
part of being. All things, including us, emerge from and submerge
back into the stream of life. And it's not always a smooth transition.
To be human is to know pain, separation and suffering. Just watch
a baby being born; that very first experience is filled with pain.
The infant is forced from the womb of the universal mother, through
that mitzrayim, the narrow passage of the birth canal. It finally
makes its way out, takes its first breath and screams in pain. Of
course the parents smile gratefully accepting that their child is
alive.
Gandhi once said that pain is the badge of human existence. On
another occasion he said that suffering is pain given meaning. I
think so. My personal theology embraces this idea of separation
and pain as a universal human experience. We each begin our foray
into the realm of self-consciousness with the pain of separation
and, as our lives unfold, we are painfully separated time and again.
There is hope though. We have, with life, the opportunity to grow
our souls through the experiences of our lifetimes. We have the
opportunity to transcend our pain by living through it, the opportunity
to achieve joy by being more than the pain that we began with, that
we accumulate and that we carry with us. Instead of original sin,
we have something more like original pain, but within that pain
there is blessing, which is the possibility of joy, and also the
possibility of hope.
So now, what is evil? If goodness (i.e. being) is universal, we
might do well to think of evil as a local problem. I would say that
it is man-made, but I suspect it is all of us - men and women alike.
To do evil is willingly or ignorantly to promote pain and separation,
through our actions and our inactions, through our intentions or
our complicit ignorance. To do evil is to hold ourselves aloft,
separate and insolated from the web-work of nature which is the
source of our very spiritual, very physical being. To do evil is
to take or reserve for our individual selves that which we own in
common - with each other and with the future.
Evil is a human concoction that is born of arrogance and fraught
with complacency. Conscious or apathetic denial of our relationships
with the Cause of Being and with the world around us is as good
a definition of evil as I have found. Evil is a choice, not an entity.
It is choosing to promote the individual self in a way that appears
or actually does denigrate the collective self.
Doing evil is choosing to step away from the harmony of being.
It is a step toward the dishar-mony of destruction. I'm not suggesting
that destruction is an unnatural process. I am suggesting that that
human activity of promoting the destruction of others or the planet
in an attempt to encourage our own preservation or some other advantage
is evil.
Goodness promotes the possibilities for the vitality of harmonious
relationships in our lives and in the universe. Evil denies them.
When evil is conducted in the name of goodness, as it most often
it is, it becomes difficult to discern, and especially I think,
by those who are responsible for promoting it. Recognizing, or attempting
to recognize the changing faces of evil needs to become a part of
our repertoire in stemming evil and in promoting good.
A few weeks ago we sang the hymn, "Bring Many Names,"
by Brian Wren. It's a touching kind of an anthropomorphic/humanizing
approach to identifying various aspects of the Great Mystery, which
cannot be identified or even named. The words to the 4th verse of
the hymn are:
Old, aching God, gray with endless care,
Calmly piercing evil's new disguises.
Easier sung than done, don't you think?
I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned once or twice, and some of
you may remember that I recently took a cross-country bicycle trip.
One of the experiences that I had along the way provides what might
be a good look into evil in action. I have to confess that it's
all too often easier to find evil in the behavior of others than
it is to find it in our own. I'm aware that I fail to rise above
that shortcoming in the following narrative. And within the spectrum
of evil, from grand to petite, this is definitely on the wee small
side of the scale. But even though it's not a big deal, it has all
the makings of a big deal.
My traveling companions and I were riding our bikes through the
Rocky Mountains of northern New Mexico, not far from Taos. We were
all fairly well spread out along our route according to our biking
abilities. Of course that meant that I was way at the back of the
pack, as we climbed towards the top of Bob Cat Pass at nearly 10,000
feet. It was a challenging climb to say the least. For me, it was
brutal. There were countless switchbacks with very steep rises between
each of them. Not only were the incredible panoramas, which were
constantly in view, breathtaking - so was the lack of oxygen in
the thin air of the high altitude.
At an event at Toni's Kitchen before I left on the trip, a woman
had said to me, "I'm very concerned about you riding through
those mountains." I assured her that she was not alone in her
concern. I suspected during it, that the climb up to Bob Cat Pass
was just the sort of concerned experience that both she and I had
had in mind.
So I found myself riding up the snow-banked road, straining for
all I was worth, both in my legs to keep pumping the pedals forward,
and in my lungs to keep pumping oxygen into my bloodstream. I would
push myself as hard as I could, only to get as far as a few hundred
yards. Then I would stop, catch my breath, rest my legs and then
push forward again. I'd ride for another few hundred yards and then
have to stop again. The pattern repeated itself for hours. You don't
get very far very fast under those conditions. At least I didn't.
My companions Bill and Kris fared much better and for all I knew
they were hours ahead of me.
Eventually though, I knew that I was nearing the top of the pass.
There were even road signs that promised it was coming. Oftentimes,
when you're near the very top of a pass like that, things get easier.
The pitch of the grade eases and you can finish the climb in fine
form.
Not this time. The ascent was vicious to the very end. My feet,
clipped to the petals, were barely going around, as my legs pushed
against them with what felt like the very last shred of strength
they could muster. My lungs felt like they were ready to burst,
as they tried to keep up with my body's demand for oxygen. All I
could do was, all I could think was - pump, breathe, pump, breathe…
As I drew within a couple hundred feet of the summit, I saw a person
walking along the side of the road. I recognized that it was a woman
we'd met earlier on the trip. She was smiling at me as our paths
approached one another. As best I could, I attempted to smile back,
all the while still thinking - pump, breathe, pump, breathe…
And then I watched in horror as she brought her hands out from
behind her back. She grinned broadly, as she pelted me with two
ice balls she'd dug out of the snow bank. One hit me in the face
and the other went into my chest. I was in total disbelief. I was
so afraid that I was going to fall over on the bike, my feet clipped
to the petals. I was scared to death. All I could say to her was,
"Don't do that. Don't do that to me now."
I know this is not a big deal, but I really was horrified. I suppose
when you're almost 60 years old and you've just pushed yourself
to your absolute physical limit, you're not in the same frame of
mind you might be in, say, in other less threatening situations.
Turns out that the woman had spoken with Kris and Bill earlier
as they'd passed through. She'd been expecting me, and she thought
it would be fun to have a little welcoming party. What she had failed
to take into consideration though, was me. She was up for a party
and she didn't notice that I was barely up at all.
I said this wasn't a big deal and it wasn't. But this is how I
think evil often works. People act in their own self-interest, and
they fail to consider the consequences that their interests have
on others.
Today in our remembrances we commemorated Transgender Awareness
Week. 115 people were brutally murdered this past year because others
could not put aside fears of their own sexuality, and so they struck
out to remove the threat rather than expand their understanding
of what it means to be human. This kind of evil is a big deal.
Today suicide bombers murdered men, women and children, soldiers
and civilians. So many thousands have been killed because of conflicting
theologies and ideologies and the inability to take the interests
of the other to heart, as a part of our own larger self-interest.
This kind of evil is a big deal.
Today women and children across our country, in our towns, and
I dare say in our congregation are reeling from the effects of domestic
violence that they suffered, maybe as recently as last night. Their
interests were sacrificed because someone else, someone whom they
love, would not dare to feel a loss of control. This kind of evil
is a big deal.
Today children in Newark and in cities across our country woke
up hungry and cold and afraid because our economy requires a willing
workforce and is unwilling to share the riches gleaned from the
suffering of an uneducated, untrained population that keeps labor
costs low. This kind of evil is a big deal.
Today the planet is being abused through waste, overuse, carelessness
and pollution. The self-interest of comfort keeps us all numbed
to the degradation of our Mother Earth's body, as the mitzrayim,
the narrow passage toward our shared survival grows smaller with
each passing year. This kind of evil is a big deal.
Today people were quiet when evil was perpetrated against enemies
and the marginalized and those who were thought too be less human
than someone else. Privilege was preserved and so was silence. Self-interest
went unnoticed, as the status quo was safeguarded. This kind of
evil is a big deal.
"Is evil something that is within all of us to some extent?"
Nick asked. I have to say that I think it is. As human beings we
know about pain. And often we try to deny our pain rather than live
through it. When we deny our own pain, we tend to deny the pain
of others. When we deny the pain of others, we commit evil.
It is a choice we make. But we can choose to do something else.
We can choose to promote harmony rather than discord.
And when we do, the many faces of evil will show themselves for
what they are. And then we can pierce their new disguises. Maybe
not calmly like the hymn suggests, but we can pierce them. And then
we can be for and not against one another.
Goodness promotes the possibilities for the vitality of harmonious
relationships in our lives and in the universe. Evil denies them.
The responsibility for paying attention is ours. And the choice
between them, between good and evil, dear friends, that choice is
ours to make.
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