A SERMON PREACHED BY

THE REV DR. DAVID ANTHONY WILLIAMS

AT
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH ON EDISTO
MARCH 8, 2015
Let me bring you into something that I think you should all know. After years
and years of hearing this Gospel story over and over again, I have come to
this conclusion: that were it me, I would not have had the guts that Jesus
portrayed in this Gospel reading. And Ill tell you why. But first, lets face it:
we all might be in the same boat.
As we can see, our Jesus had a way of acting like he was the Son of God and
it is for this reason that we find this reading standing out on the third
Sunday in Lent. The stage is being set. The end is near. The tension builds
and he is getting into big trouble.
Now having said that I would ask you to put yourself into the mind of Jesus
and just for a moment ask yourself: Would I have the courage to do what
he did?
Speaking only for myself I would have to say, No. Why? Because, like
many of us, I just want to be a nice guy. I just want to flourish in the land
of nice. Its sunnier there; more easily managed, no hard slopes to climb,
no terrible crises to manage. Lets just let C.S. Lewis speak for us as he did
in the The Screwtape Letters: the safest road to Hell is the gradual one
the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without mileposts,
without signposts. Being nice can be like that: easy, safe, gentle, no
sudden turnings, just nice.
So when we come to this turn in the road, when Jesus comes out in full rage,
no longer concealing his anger he faced a real challenge for himself. He had
to ask if for some reason he could not control his anger, could he possibly
homogenize it.? When he saw (perhaps for the first time) how the Temple
managed its affairs; how the house of God was being used, could he go with
the flow? Could he just sit still and watch, waiting for another day to
intervene? Could he be enticed not to be prophetic (a dangerous enterprise
any day of the week) but rather be a good Chamber of Commerce guy and, who knows? - maybe one day be asked to give the Invocation at the
Passover festivities?

Could he be nice and not rock the boat, or could he pass on that temptation
and become the one who he found himself to be - a ferocious defender of
the Temple and an openly angry prophet of a different kind?
He chose, as we see, not to be nice. I would propose, though, that he
preferred not to turn away because he could see evil wherever it was, and
he had to respond when he saw it.

In the wilderness the temptations were personal and, in retrospect, rather

easy. This temptation - this Temple moment - grabs us where we live
because in one way or another we have all faced it. To put it even more into
context, a wonderful former Presiding Bishop I met and worked with back in
the 70s, John Hines, once said: They did not crucify Jesus for saying
Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow. They crucified him for saying
Consider the thieves of the temple, how they steal.
Facing such moments, the temptation - the inherent evil we all face - is to
walk away, ignore facts, or just be pleasantly upset and that last notion has
us confronting evil, or, as it is designated in theological circles, The Problem
of Evil.
Evil is a problem because it is inherently built into the system of our lives
and as such we cant live with it any more than we can live without it - both
in secular and sacred terms.
Several years ago, during the Cold War with its threats of nuclear
annihilation, there was a play I read entitled The End of the World with
Symposium to Follow by Arthur Kopit. The premise was that our greatest
danger was not nuclear arms, they were only the means. What really
threatened to destroy us was the force of evil.
One of the characters made this point: we know evil is a force because it
takes energy to resist it. Think about that and the truth of it. Evil is a force in
the world and in life, and neither the Gospel for today nor the Season of Lent
makes much sense without that concept.
C. S. Lewis says that people make two basic mistakes regarding evil. One is
to take it too seriously think of poor old Pat Robertson explaining the
earthquake in Haiti in terms of an ancient bargain with the Devil.
The other is to not take it seriously enough think of almost everyone else, I
wont ask for a show of hands but probably that would include most of us.
So, take a moment to think with me about evil as a force in our lives and in
our world.

If we can recognize that evil is a force, if only because we know it takes

energy to resist it, the first question that comes to mind is Why? Why is it
here, messing things up? Why did God let it loose among us? Our Gospel
story provides no real clue. It is not like a flawed Toyota gas pedal or a GM
ignition switch.
Rather it is something more interesting and a lot more troubling: Evil, of all
sorts, is here to stay. Its a part of us as well as the system.
Look at the Gospel stories for the last several weeks: At his baptism Jesus
realized and accepted his role as Messiah but as soon as he did so he was
forced, driven, into the wilderness of temptation. From the outside looking in
that just doesnt seem fair. Why do that to Jesus just as he makes his
commitment? Answer is: It is built into the system. It is automatic.
Commitment immediately and automatically introduces the element of
temptation.
If we pledge to lose ten pounds, then almost immediately cake becomes a
temptation it was not and could not have been before the pledge. Where
there is no commitment there can be no temptation but as soon as a
commitment is made temptation appears. It is part of every baptism, every
marriage, every promise and every agreement.
Why would it be like that? What could God have been thinking? I dont know
the whole answer but I do know a piece of it. Without evil and temptation,
we cannot be moral people. And God clearly wants us to be moral people.
We cannot succeed as moral people if there is no chance to fail as moral
people.
Horses or fish or dogs and cats are very nice creatures, but we never think
of them as moral or ethical because the force of evil does not touch them.
They get no credit for being what they were created to be because they
have no real freedom to be less than what they were created to be.
But we have that freedom. We experience the force of evil that pulls us
away from Gods design for us toward human-ness, and it is that humanness thing that causes all us moral and ethical people to resist it. Without
that pull towards moral failure there can be no claim to moral success.
How does evil work? I cannot take on earthquakes and cancer cells, plane
crashes and hurricanes this morning so lets just think about the focus of
Lent how evil works in our lives.
For the most part it pulls us away from what we were created for, and briefly
put, we were created to be whole and happy. The path to true happiness and
wholeness is in living life outwardly and generously, rather than inwardly
and selfishly.

Evil is all the fear, anxiety, pressure and experience that pulls us off of that
path, selfishly inward, away from Gods intent for us. Most of the time it is
subtle; at other times it is obvious as we see in the Gospel. Sometimes, you
just have to stand up and shout.
Being nice could have bought Jesus some time, but he could not abide what
he saw.
The path evil takes is subtle but the goal is grand: ruination in any of its
many forms. Most public figures who have authored their own moral demise
would tell us that they got to their own private hell that way, as would most
addicts and abusers, the chronically angry, the selfishly lonely, those in the
solitary confinement of an empty marriage, and every form of lifelessness
around us and within us. Its always a slow and easy decent.
Didnt Jesus die to take all that way, you might ask? No. Jesus did not die
to undermine the moral and ethical enterprise. He did not die to make our
lives pointless by removing the consequences of our actions and inactions.
Jesus died to make it clear that while evil is opposite of God, it is not the
equal of God.
No action, inaction or consequence can separate us from the love of God. He
did not die to keep us from wandering off and suffering from it. He died to
make it clear that we can come home from anyplace we wander to, no
matter how far.
The practical among us may begin to wonder: What, then, does faith offer us
in a world beset by evil? The answer is strength and guidance.
Put on the whole armor of God, Paul tells us in Ephesians (6:1018). The belt
of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes of the Gospel, the shield of
faith, the helmet of salvation and take up the sword of the spirit in order that
we might withstand the force of evil.
I am more than sure that few if any of us have tapped ALL of the strength
for generosity and wholeness, healing and well-being that God has available
for us.
The 23rd psalm reminds us that God leads, guides us, in the paths of
righteousness so that even when we walk in valley of the shadow of death
thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
I am more than convinced that none of us have ever been in a valley so dark
that God could not find us and comfort us if we remember that the biblical
word comfort literally means to strengthen. Strength and guidance are the
tangibles our faith offers us.
But if the truth be told that is not what most of us want. What we usually
ask for is a set of circumstances where neither is needed.

Take away my affliction; then I wont need strength. Keep me safe; then I
wont need any guidance.
Alas it does not work that way. The offer is (1) strength to resist the force of
evil and (2) guidance to keep us on the path we were created for.
We know that evil is a force because it takes energy to resist it. It is true. It
is built into life. It is what makes it possible for us to be moral and ethical as
God created us to be.
Evil is mostly subtle in our experience but always grand in its desire: to pull
us away from Gods intent and toward our own ruination. Dont take it too
seriously. If evil were all that powerful our lives would be far worse than
they are. But dont dismiss it either. Jesus saw it for what it was in an
instant; others around him simply saw it as the way things were. His
problem was that by word and action he named it and, worse yet, those who
were the perpetrators from the top down.
As Peter wrote, Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your
adversary the Devil prowls around looking for someone to devour. (I Peter
5:8).
The season of Lent is about that discipline, the alertness that allows us to
tap the strength and follow the guidance our Lord offers us that we might be
whole, generous and happy as God created us to be.
It is not about giving up candy or fried chicken or losing ten pounds. It is
about being watchful and alert to everything that pulls you away from the
love of God through his Son, Jesus Christ. All the other give-up stuff is
silliness against building the moral muscle to say,
there is nothing that can separate me from the love of God, nor height, nor
depth, nor principalities nor power - nothing that can separate me from the
love of God.
But those powers of separation are out there. The question for all of us to
answer is simply this: do we have the eyes to see them and then do
something about them?