Overcome Evil With Good

Tempting though it often is, it may not be helpful to frame too much of life in terms of a cosmic battle between good and evil.  To do so makes it, perhaps, a bit too easy to suggest that there are only two kinds of people in the world, for one thing.  But it would be a mistake to fail to recognize that there is evil out there in the world - sometimes cosmic, but much more often mundane.  And it’s likely that each of us will have to contend with some measure of evil in our lives.  Again, it’s more likely that we will confront a very mundane sort of evil than that we will engage in a cosmic encounter.

Evil presents itself to us, for instance, in the form of temptation to do something that’s hurtful to ourselves or to others.  Or as resentment or jealousy.  Or as despair in the face of a challenge we fear we are not strong enough to meet.  Or as self-doubt, insecurity, or self-loathing.  Or as greed or selfishness.  Evil lurks behind these entirely mundane emotional realities that are part of our every-day lives.  Evil sneaks up on us like a warming bath for a frog.  And we don’t even have to have done anything at all, or even to have noticed that evil has slithered into our lives.  And yet, most of us will have to contend with some measure of evil in our lives at some point, even if we never identify it as such.

One of the reasons that warfare is a fascination for us, I suspect, is that it magnifies encounters with evil - that can normally be hard to identify and observe when they are so small and mundane - and it purports to makes those encounters with evil easier to see.  Warfare also makes the consequences of how people contend with evil more obvious: we can see that how you deal with evil matters when the conflict is blown up on a large scale.  Of course, warfare is not so straightforward; and in the fog of war tremendous evil is carried out in the name of what’s good.  But that’s part of the genius of evil: it lets you see what you want to see.

St. Paul knew that evil was most often confronted in mundane ways, far from the battlefield; that evil would be encountered on our way to work, in the subway, at the grocery store, and in the unseen silence of our emotional lives.  And he provides us with practical advice:

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.”

Read out loud in church, these words sound a little like they might have come from a greeting card.  But have you tried being patient in suffering lately?  And when was the last time you extended hospitality to strangers?  It’s hard enough sometimes to extend hospitality to those we know.  In fact, nearly every aspect of this advice from St. Paul is much easier said than done, and we have to be careful not to shrug off his admonition as so many nice words.

When we keep reading, it only gets harder: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 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.”  Live peaceably with all.  Including your neighbors who do that thing that drives you crazy.  And your co-worker who you have taken to avoiding.  And your ex, who.. well, you know.…  Do not repay anyone evil for evil.

St. Paul goes on, quoting the Hebrew Scriptures, with advice that I strongly suspect has seldom been followed in the history of the world, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.”  There is a cynical way to hear these words - the text provides that interpretation itself - but I think St. Paul means what he’s saying.  Or at least he’s trying to!  And then he finds a way to say in a nutshell what his various exhortations are meant to convey: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

As I say, it may not be useful to frame too much of life in terms of a cosmic battle between good and evil.  But you don’t have to be living in Ukraine right now to be in need of this advice; you only have to know what it feels like to have been hurt by someone else whom you suspect meant to do it.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  This is a prayer, not a bumper sticker, not a meme.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Again, you do not need to be in the trenches of Ukraine in order to be in need of this prayer.  All you need to be is impatient, or jealous, or threatened, or feeling a little selfish or wounded, or short on cash, or insecure, or embarrassed, or bored, or hungry, or even a little self-righteous… and evil lies close at hand.  All you need is to want to curse those who persecute you - which seems fair enough, right?  Except that when we do, evil walks in the door, under the most mundane circumstances.  Like, when it feels as though there are only two kinds of people in the world: either you are persecuting me or you are not.

It seems important to recognize how mundane evil is, and how likely we all are to encounter evil in these mundane ways, since Jesus’ answer to evil is somewhat radical, and we might conclude that he cannot possibly mean it for us.  The Cross is Jesus’ answer to evil, for it is the place where love triumphs over evil.  And love is the perfection of goodness.  But the Cross is deeply confusing to us, and never more so than we we hear Jesus say that if we want to follow him, we’ll have to take up our own cross.

What?  Why would we do that?  How could that be good for us?

Think of Jesus on the Cross.  A victim of injustice and betrayal.  Failed by religious leaders, and by the state, and by his friends.   Why would we want any part of that?

The Cross - which is a symbol of suffering, injustice, and death - is the center of Christian philosophy.  Jesus told his disciples, before they could possibly have known what he was talking about, that the paradox of the Cross would be the center of Christian faith.  And this is the paradox of the Cross: that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

As long as suffering, injustice, and death are part of the human existence, the only God who will do us any good is a God who has known all three.  And the Cross is the place where the awesome power of God meets suffering, injustice, and death with all the weakness of humanity.

Part of the strange mystery of Jesus’ death on the Cross is that he is the only loser.  And part of the loveliness of  Christ’s victory on the Cross is that it leaves no one but him in the dust.  The glory of the Cross is that it curses no one, not even those who would have used it as a means of persecution.  Quite the contrary, the Cross blesses anyone who falls beneath its shadow.  And the only declarations issued from the Cross are declarations of forgiveness and hope.  The wisdom of the Cross is that, having been built for the express purpose of accomplishing evil, the Cross overcomes evil with good.

Jesus’ followers must have been confused when he said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  But maybe he was not really speaking to them; maybe he was speaking to us.  Of course, we are also confused by Jesus when he tells us to take up our cross.  We are perplexed by the paradox of the Cross, and we allow ourselves to be confused and exasperated because his teaching is so hard to follow.  Save your life, but lose it?  Lose your life for his sake in order to save it?  Yes, this is confusing.

So St. Paul tried to spell out for us the paradox of the Cross in clearer terms.  After all, it was Christ crucified which he preached.  He knew that the Cross is a paradox and a challenge.  What does it mean to take up your cross and follow Jesus?  How can we do it?  This is what he said:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 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.

Put it more simply, in a small enough space to fit on a bumper sticker or a meme: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.  But don’t let these words become a bumper sticker or a meme, which are easily ignored and forgotten.  Let them be a prayer for us in a world that is not free from evil, in our lives, in which evil intrudes in the most mundane ways, and in those places where the battle between good and evil seems to be under way at a cosmic level.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 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.

Do not be overcome by evil,  but overcome evil with good.

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
3 September 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

The Rock

This morning’s passage from Matthew’s gospel is rather obviously about who Jesus is.  You probably picked that up when Jesus turned to the disciples and asked, “Who do you say that I am?”  That’s clearly the question of the day. 

But to address only that one question would be to ignore the interesting fact that, in a gospel passage about who Jesus is, Jesus spends most of his time on the subject of who Peter is, or more properly, on the subject of who Simon will be now that he is Peter.  

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  

There may be a part of our brains that turns away from these verses when we hear them, because we’ve learned to identify them with the Roman Catholic pope.  We may hear them and think about how much controversy there has been through the centuries over the pope’s authority.  We may think of these verses as only useful if you are trying to establish a papacy or defend the one you’ve got in place.  That’s perfectly understandable.

Or we may hear these verses and have one of those moments we could think of as “historical consciousness” when we are reading the scriptures.  That’s one of those moments in which some of us—I do this, absolutely—will turn away from a scripture verse and think “That issue was important to the early church.”  “This is one of those passages,” we may think, “in which we can hear Matthew’s community processing their relationship to Jewish tradition and establishing the authority of their own teaching and their own teachers within Judaism.”  Fair enough.  As I say, I do this often when I read scripture, because I think it is important to understand the historical context in which the scriptures, as far as we can tell, were composed.  

But either of those responses—a moment’s reflection on the status of the papacy, a moment’s reflection on the early process of forming a Christian church within Jewish society—both of those impulses, as important as they may be, will distract us, if we’re not careful, from the crucial work of learning about who we are supposed to be.  Because whatever Jesus is saying about building his church, whatever he is saying about Peter, he is ultimately saying about us.    

You, my friends, are the rock.  And upon this rock, Jesus has built his church.  You may not be the first believers or the most central believers or the most convinced believers, but Jesus is founding the church in this day, on you. The gates of Hades will not prevail against you.  Against us, together.  

And so, if we are going to claim the exalted status of Peter, it might be important to understand why it is that Jesus has suddenly invested Peter with the keys of the kingdom.  And there we return to the original question, the one this gospel passage is more obviously about.  Simon becomes Peter, apparently, because he knows and is willing to say out loud that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.  Both the terms “messiah” and “Son of God” have long traditions for the people of Israel.  

“Son of God” for us is likely to sound like a reference to the second person of the Holy Trinity.  There is God the Father, and there is Jesus, who is God the Son, and there is the Holy Spirit.  But in the Jewish scriptures “Son of God” means “King of Israel.”  In the line of King David, the kings of Israel are adopted sons of God, not divine exactly but deeply connected to and, maybe we could say, “fostered” by God.  “Messiah,” means “anointed one,” which in Greek is “Christ.”  Again, the connection here may be more Jesus as God’s anointed king.

But let’s make that even more complicated.  Scholars also attest that there were groups within first-century Israel who had a more direct sense that the messiah would be a kind of divine figure. Our understanding of Jesus as God may be pretty close to Simon Peter’s statement of faith, even if the full doctrine of the Trinity was not firmed up for a few centuries after this text was written.  

I’m grateful, actually, that this key statement of faith is life-changing—Simon becomes Peter—and foundational—the church is built on this rock—and yet belief remains mysterious at its core.  There is, Jesus points out, more than flesh-and-blood logic at work here.  Belief is not merely something we learn or think.  And Simon Peter is doing more than acing a test here, more than providing the correct answer.   And our lives as Christians are also mysterious way down deep at our core.  

Simon becomes Peter because in Jesus he has met the one Jesus calls “father.”  Jesus himself seems almost surprised that this encounter between Simon and the Father has taken place.  “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah,” he exclaims.  Simon who has a mortal father becomes Peter who knows God as father.  Meeting God in Jesus has allowed Simon Peter to know who Jesus is, and through Jesus to know who God is, and also now, who he himself will be.  

And looking back on all of this from the twenty-first century, we have questions.  We have disputes about the exact nature of the divinity of the Christ in scripture.  We have a bitter history of mistaken beliefs, prejudices, about how Jesus as Messiah means that we are or are not connected to Judaism as Christians.  Even knowing and cherishing the doctrine of the Trinity, we continue to wonder what it means for us.   

And look, just next week we are going to hear that Peter doesn’t really understand what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah and the Son of God.  In the next verse after the ones we are reading, Jesus will speak about suffering and dying and being raised from the dead, and Peter will rebuke him, and Jesus will call him “Satan.”  Peter’s great belief in Jesus will have become what Jesus calls “a stumbling block.

So here we are with Simon Peter, laying claim to belief in ways that may surprise even us, and at the same time finding that understanding remains elusive.  We are way over our heads in this relationship.  Jesus is and always will be more than we can handle.  

And yet we have the keys to the kingdom of God.  Even our judgment, shaky as it may be, has a kind of eternal significance in the eyes of Jesus.  Our moral decisions and our actions aren’t just part of a portfolio we are putting together to help us gain admission to heaven.  What we do as the church is vital, part of the lived reality of the kingdom of heaven.  We walk through this world with a kind of authority, because Jesus has identified himself with us. 

Who you say that Jesus is, by allowing your life to change, by confronting the mystery of faith, by owning the full mystery of Jesus every time you cross yourself or bow your head or take communion—this is not just a haphazard practice that has fallen into your life as an echo of something more ancient.  This isn’t a quaint remnant of religious conviction.  This is your encounter with God.  

It looks messy, this life of faith.  It looks sometimes like it’s held together with theological chewing gum.  And it is enough.  While we bumble, we are held, actually, not by theology or history, but by God.   The gates of hades will not prevail against this. 

You were Simon.  Every day still, you may wake up as Simon, or fall into being Simon.  And every day Jesus will call out of you the statement of faith that you are blessed to make by the way your live your life, and sometimes even by what you think and say and learn and believe.  And Jesus calls out to you daily, telling you that you are Peter.  Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.  Try not to make Jesus call you “Satan.”  You are his rock as he is yours.  Upon this, the church is built.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
August 27, 2023
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia

The Mystery of Faith

We have to ask ourselves what possible reason there could be to recite in church this episode from St. Matthew’s Gospel - to sing it, for goodness sake! - an episode in which a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus because, she says, her daughter is tormented by a demon.  Because, to start with, most of us do not believe in demons, except in the figurative or metaphorical sense.  And the story, short as it is, gets worse from there.  Jesus coldly ignores the woman’s pleas; his disciples rudely ask him to “send her away.”  And, in what seems to be one of Jesus’ worst moments in all the Gospels, he insults the woman, calling her a dog, perhaps more by inference than directly, but the inference is unavoidable.  As I say, we have to ask ourselves why we read this stuff out loud anymore, and whether we can expect people to take it seriously, or to take us seriously when we do.

The mention of the demon connected some dots in my mind this week when I read about the recent death of William Friedkin, who was the director of the 1973 film “The Exorcist.”  I’m not a fan of horror films, and I’m not sure I have ever watched “the Exorcist” all the way through.  But I took note of several commentators this past week who pointed out that the film is more than a horror movie.  It’s actually a film about faith and religion.  In fact, Friedkin, who was Jewish, but, agnostic, I am told, said that the movie is actually about “the mystery of faith,” taking a phrase right out of the eucharistic liturgy.

The main religious character in the film is Fr. Karras, who is not only a Jesuit priest, he is also a psychiatrist.  And the plot of the film follows an arc that moves from the insistently therapeutic treatment of the troubled girl to the terrifyingly awkward possibility that she is possessed by an evil spirit, or by the devil himself.  And possession would be a situation for which an explicitly religious solution (and old-fashioned religion, at that) - an exorcism - is the only possible help.

I suppose it’s possible to see the film as a story of conflict between good and evil (Friedkin said it is), but it’s not really presented that way.  Because good and evil are not engaged as mere generalities in the film.  The evil in the story is actually an Evil one, who has at least a few names.  And the good in the story is actually a Holy and Blessed One, who has a Name, and a history, and a church, and priests, and entire liturgies of prayers that may be directed to him in his Name.  And the question the film explores is not precisely whether good will triumph over evil (although that question, too, is implied).  More to the point, it asks whether there is any merit to the out-moded and antiquated, explicitly religious and spiritual approach of the exorcism, after the failure of the therapeutic model to bring any peace to the tormented young girl.  A recent article in the NY Times says that the question at the heart fo the film is this: “Is religion an expression of a transcendent moral and metaphysical order?  Or is it just another way of pursuing ideals of compassion and social justice….?”*  Good question, I say.  Good question!

Well into the film, Fr. Karras is still certain that the girl’s problem (Regan is her name) can be diagnosed as a psychosis.  It’s all in her head.  But when Regan’s mother challenges him to say that he knows “for a fact” that an exorcism will do no good, Fr. Karras admits, “Well, there’s little in this world that I know for a fact.”  Honest, but telling.

Enter the exorcist, Fr. Merrin.  Old-fashioned Fr. Merrin believes in the transcendent moral and metaphysical order.  He does not for a moment think that the child’s problems are all in her head.  He takes the demonic possession seriously, and he takes the demon seriously, too.  And he does so without dismissing the importance of the psychological realm.

This is the warning Fr. Merrin offers to Fr. Karras about the demon as they are about to enter the room of the possessed child together for the first time: “He’s a liar.  The demon is a liar.  He will lie to confuse us; but he will mix lies with the truth to attack us.  The attack is psychological….  And powerful.  So don’t listen.  Remember that, do not listen.”  The demon is a liar.  He will lie to confuse us.

They got their demons; we got ours.  But they all lie.

Fifty years after “The Exorcist” came out, it’s telling that in many ways the same questions pester us.  Is religion an expression of a transcendent moral and metaphysical order?  Or is it just another way of pursuing ideals of compassion and social justice….?  And when we come to church and hear about a woman who thinks her daughter is possessed by a demon, I don’t think the best approach for us is to compare and contrast the different world views over the past two millennia, and track the development of therapeutic and diagnostic insights we have gained since the first century.  Because to do so is to miss the point.

The film does not dismiss the value of good, therapeutic, psychiatric care.  Nor does the Christian faith dismiss these excellent  resources.  These are gifts that were not available to the people that Jesus ministered to all those centuries ago, but they are very much available to us  now, by the grace of God.  And we should use them.  Believing in the Gospel does not require us to dismiss the good and marvelous gifts we receive at the hands of talented doctors and therapists.  Nor should those doctors and therapists be so eager to dismiss the insights of a transcendent and metaphysical order.

And the question that lies somewhere near the heart of  “The Exorcist” is the same question that lies somewhere near the heart of the story of the Canaanite woman.  It is not a question of whether or not you believe in demons - you may or you may not, I suppose; I’m not ready to stake a claim on this matter.  No, it’s not a question of whether or not you believe in demons.  It’s a question of whether or not you believe in Jesus.

The more I live with the story of the Canaanite woman - which rubs me the wrong way because of what Jesus says to the woman, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” - the more I live with it, the more I see that it is entirely possible that the only reason Jesus gave voice to those ugly thoughts is because he knew that that’s exactly what all his disciples were thinking.  So Jesus gave voice to the possibility that this woman, or any woman, or any person, should not be cared for, accepted, or helped because of her gender, or because of her ethnicity, or because of something we might call her race, or because of where she lived.

Maybe (I hope this is true), maybe Jesus is setting up the Canaanite woman to give her reply because he already knows of her faith.  But whether he did so or not, the fact remains that on the Gospel’s own terms, the demon is sent out of the woman’s daughter; the girl is healed, explicitly not because of her identity, but because of her mother’s faith. “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”

The good news of this episode does not depend on whether or not she or you or I believe in demons.  It only depends on whether or not we believe in Jesus!  And  the good news of this piece of the Gospel does not depend on the Canaanite woman’s - or anyone’s - gender, ethnicity, race, or any other aspect of her identity.  The good news depends only on faith, and on the loving and unfailing grace of Jesus.

St. Mathew tells us that as a result of the faith of her mother, and the powerful grace of Jesus, the daughter of the Canaanite woman was “healed instantly.”  In “The Exorcist,” the decisive moment in the process of the exorcism  comes when the two priests declare over and over that “the power of Christ compels you!  The power of Christ compels you!  The power of Christ compels you!”  The demon begins to falter, not because the two priests have found the right incantation, but because they have at last come to a synchronized distillation of their faith in Jesus, which is more than the demon can withstand.  And in reaching this moment, which takes place both in the real world and on a transcendent and metaphysical plane, the mystery of faith begins to vanquish evil.  And although it will cost both priests their lives, the girl, Regan, will be saved.

Shortly before the final confrontation with the demon, the two priests speak outside the room, and Fr. Karras asks, “What’s going on in there?  What is it?  If that’s the Devil, why this girl?  It makes no sense.”

To which Fr. Merrin replies, “I think the point is to make us despair - to see ourselves as animal and ugly - to reject the possibility that God could ever love us.”

The demon is a liar.  He lies to confuse us.  The attack is often psychological, and it’s powerful, making us despair, tempting us to reject the possibility that God could ever love us.

I don’t know that I am ready, myself, to profess a belief in demons.  But I know all too well that I have heard within my own soul, more times than I can count, the voice of one who lies to me, who lies to confuse me, to make me despair, and to reject the possibility that God could ever love me.  And it’s psychological.  And it’s powerful, whether or not I believe in demons.  So I should not listen.  I suspect that you have heard such lies, too.  Remember that, do not listen.

And I do believe that there is a transcendent moral and metaphysical order to which we all have access.  And I am here today, with joy in my heart, and a song on my lips, not because I know whether or not there are demons in the world, and I have defeated them.  I am here today with rejoicing because I believe in Jesus.  And I know that he loves me, and I know that he loves you.  And knowing that is more than enough good news for me!  Which is why, I guess it makes sense, after all, to tell this old story of demons, and ethnic suspicion, and of faith in Jesus, from an episode of the Gospel that I thought I could very well do without; and in telling the story, to give thanks for that great and wonderful mystery of faith!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
20 August 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia

*Matthew Walter in the NY Times, 12 August 2023, “The Ultimate Horror Movie Is Really About Heaven and Hell”