Readings (Track 1)

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” How does one overcome evil? How does God overcome evil? That’s one of the questions that runs through both the Old and New Testaments, and that comes into focus in today’s readings.

Very early on Genesis takes up and discards one popular answer to that question. Consider the narrator’s words before and after Noah’s flood. Before the flood:

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” (Gen. 6:5)

And after the flood, as Noah offers a sacrifice:

“And when the LORD smelled the pleasing odor, the LORD said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.’” (Gen. 8:21)

The flood sweeps away the evil-doers, but leaves the evil in the heart untouched. Aleksandre Solzhenitsyn nails it in The Gulag Archipelago: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

In the coming weeks we’ll hear God through Moses bringing Israel out of Egypt. On one hand, it’s clearly about overcoming evil. On the other hand, it accomplishes less than we might have hoped. Moses ascends Sinai to receive the law, and the just-freed Israelites decide that what they really need is that golden calf.

Well, maybe God overcomes evil by overwriting the operating system? Jeremiah’s words regarding the new covenant can be heard this way: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…” (Jer. 31:33). The problem is human freedom: overcome that and you’ve overcome evil. But this does no justice to Jeremiah, and leaves God and Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) indistinguishable.

All of which brings us to Jesus’ “must” in “he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering.” Why ‘must’? Both Testaments offer multiple images and metaphors; we’ve been wondering what they mean ever since–this sermon is part of that wondering. Here are two popular answers in the West: (1) Our sin dishonors God; Jesus dies to restore God’s honor; (2) God’s justice demands punishment for sin; Jesus takes our punishment. But neither of these square easily with Jesus’ portrait of God in the prodigal son parable: the Father who runs to meet the son is scandalously unconcerned with honor and demands no punishment for the son’s misdeeds. As the rabbis teach, if there’s repentance, it’s game, set, match. But what if the prodigal has “made it” in that far country, a little pharaoh oppressing his workers? Or continues to see the father as either irrelevant or the enemy? Not to mention the self-righteous older brother, on the verge of going completely off the rails. How to overcome the evil that has no interest in being overcome?

So here’s what I’d invite you to wonder about. Jesus’ ‘must’: not about God’s honor, or God’s justice, but about how evil is overcome: with good, with non-retaliation. Jesus “must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” And why must Jesus do that? There are more reasons than fit into a sermon; here are three.

First, Jesus is about to tell his disciples “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Human history is full of generals who send the grunts into battle and stay comfortably behind the lines. Jesus isn’t going to ask us to do anything he hasn’t done himself.

Second, when it comes to the Kingdom of God, human history is full of examples of using it to feather our own nests. At the start of Jesus’ ministry the devil suggested three variants on this: feed the masses, give them the spectacular, give the gatekeepers their due, and you’ll do just fine. Or European Christians entering the Americas proclaiming their theft of indigenous land as God’s will. No: Jesus understands the difference between “Your kingdom come” and “My kingdom come.”

Third, that “and on the third day be raised.” Regimes then and now encourage compliance by claiming to have the last word. Jesus submits to death to prove that claim false. God bats last. The book of Hebrews puts it this way: “Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (2:14-15).

What do Jesus’ words to the disciples come to? That Christians will always be persecuted? No: that depends on the decisions of those currently in power. That Christians are called to lose their life for Jesus’ sake and so find it? That’s what Paul lays out in our second reading: “extend hospitality to strangers.… Bless those who persecute you… weep with those who weep.… associate with the lowly… Do not repay anyone evil for evil,… Beloved, never avenge yourselves,… No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink;’… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” That’s hard work: can I bless with equal sincerity Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson?

The New Testament scholar Gerhard Lohfink puts it this way:

“Sin does not just vanish in the air, even when it is forgiven, because sin does not end with the sinner. It has consequences. It always has a social dimension. Every sin embeds itself in human community, corrupts a part of the world, and creates a damaged environment.

“Even if God has forgiven all sin, the consequences of sin are not eliminated. What Adolf Hitler set in motion was by no means eliminated from the world by his death in April 1945, even if he was contrite and even if he himself was forgiven. The fearful consequences of National Socialism poison society until today, and they are still nesting in the lives of the surviving victims, even in the lives of their children and grandchildren.

“So the consequences of sin have to be worked off, and human beings cannot do so of themselves any more than they can absolve themselves. Genuine ‘working off’ of guilt is only possible on a basis that God himself must create. And God has created such a base in his people, and in Jesus he has renewed and perfected it” (Jesus of Nazareth: What he wanted, who he was).

In other words, evil is overcome in history, in the daily and sometimes unnoticed decisions of God’s people to bless, to repay evil with good. In the Eucharistic Prayer: “This is my Blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” The forgiveness of sins: God forgiving us and we forgiving others. Here, as elsewhere, Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.