A sermon preached at
Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ
Bethesda, Maryland
by the Rev. Rich Smith

September 11, 2005
Romans 14:1-12, Matthew 18:21-35

Grace Beyond the Dark Side

Coming home from vacation I realized that I could no longer fit comfortably into some of my clothing, and so I finally decided to try the South Beach diet. I’m on day 12 now, and I think it’s doing some good, although I still miss fruit, breads and desserts in general. I’ve seen some of them downstairs awaiting our Welcome Back brunch, and am trying to be stoic about it, and rejoicing in the possibility of lower cholesterol.

Coming into the office, I realized that the file drawer in which I keep folders for each Sunday of the year was also bulging -- there seems to be a pattern here. It was full of four years of sermons, and there was no room for the future. And as I was transferring the old ones out to make room, I perused a few, and realized that there may be some truth to what one lady told me at the door after about six weeks at one of my former churches - “Each of your sermons is better than the next!” As I begin my fifth year, I’ll try to reverse that trend!

But I was also reminded that each fall since I have come here, our region, if not our nation, has experienced some sort of very public crisis. 9/11 came during my first week on the job and set my ministry and all of us off in a whole new direction. The second fall we had the sniper attacks, and again had to deal with issues of fear and security and how Christians are to behave in uncertain times. The third year it was a hurricane, which doesn’t seem like much now, but when your electricity is out for four or five days, it does have an impact. Last year we didn’t have any surprises or fall tragedies, although we did have an election. Of course the tsunami in Southeast Asia, just after Christmas, did result in a renewed outpouring of prayer and compassion. And now before I could even get going on year five comes the crisis named Katrina, which will be by far the costliest natural disaster in our nation’s history.

While some of these are considered natural and some perpetrated by human beings, what they have in common is that they are events that either make or break our faith. They cause us to ask questions about the nature of God, of good and evil, and they lead us either to despair or compassion.

These are the kind of questions raised by some of this summers leading movies and books. Star Wars, Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith, tells the story of how a good man, Anakin Skywalker turns against his Jedi mentor and becomes Darth Vader, Lord of the Dark Side. The latest installment of Harry Potter is the darkest of the novels so far, and deals with how good wizards go bad, as in Voldermort. And if you don’t want fantasy, but reality, take in the documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Or turn to the sports section and ponder how someone like Raphael Palmero could test positive for steroid use.

Evil often starts out as good, and somehow along the way makes a wrong turn, for whatever reason. Osama bin Laden began by using his family fortune to help widows and orphans in Afghanistan. Four second-generation British Muslims conspire to blow up the subway in their own country. And almost any actions can be justified as righteous, as Shakespeare explained Richard III,

But then I sigh and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil;
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol’n forth of Holy Writ,
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.

Or as the Washington Post reviewer of Star Wars wrote, “The movie tracks with almost clinical attention the noble Anakin sinking deeper onto turpitude, until he finally commits an act so desperate and vile that it all but exiles him from the community for all time. Thus we see in his embrace of evil the forgetting of his own moral culpability, the drowning of his own memory, the escape from his own demons. Surely that is the great theme: How men purge themselves of sin by giving themselves over to a cause with all their hearts. It explains how you could fly a plane full of mothers and babies into a skyscraper and think you were going on a date with 72 virgins, or how you could goose-step your way towards conquest and genocide while singing schmaltzy oompah music.”

The crisis of Hurricane Katrina may not appear to be on the same order in terms of evil as 9/11, since it was a “natural” disaster. I mean no human decided to use the weather to perpetrate some evil scheme – unless you count a certain TV evangelist’s praying for God’s wrath to descend upon a wicked city.

And yet, there is a lot that was “unnatural” about this disaster. The storm and its impact were surely made worse by the warming of the waters in the Gulf, and by the alarming erosion of the wetlands and barrier islands, the channeling of the Mississippi, and the lack of preparedness. Then as Jim Wallis of Sojourners writes, “The pictures from New Orleans have stunned the nation. They have exposed the stark realities of who is suffering the most, who was left behind, who was waiting in vain for help to arrive, and who is facing the most difficult challenges of recovery. The face of those stranded in New Orleans was overwhelmingly poor and black, the very old and the very young. They were the ones who could not evacuate; had no cars or money for gas; no money for bus, train, or airfare; no budget for hotels or no friends or family with room to share or spare. They were already vulnerable before this calamity, now they were totally exposed and on their own.”

And in like manner, we, too, have been exposed as a nation, a nation that still hasn’t fully faced the sins of racism and the scandal of poverty. As NBC’s Brian Williams pointed out, if this had happened to Cape Cod, a lot would have been different. And an event like this forces each of us, once again, to not only turn to our faith, but to ask what it is our faith asks of us. How do we respond, not only to the outside evil that is visited upon us and the world, but that which is within ourselves? What does it mean to live a Christian life in the world?

Turning to our scripture lessons for the day we find Paul writing to the Romans about the nature of living in Christian community. In the face of their crisis, which was persecution, he says: Don’t get hung up on the little things. You’re not there to quarrel over opinions. In other words, it’s not the time for the blame game! Some of you make a big deal out of the fact that some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. (Sounds like my new diet!) Some observe the traditional Sabbath, others don’t operate on the same calendar. It really doesn’t matter: Don’t be judgmental, and Don’t lose sight of the big picture! You’re all in this together, and you need to be more gracious and forgiving towards one another, for you live and die to God, to whom you are ultimately accountable. And the unspoken but very real truth was, if you don’t do this, or live with this kind of attitude, you will die....to the Romans!

And in the midst of our crisis, we too would do well to heed the same advice: don’t get hung up on the little things. As Brian McLaren reminds us, we should be less concerned about whether or not the Ten Commandments are displayed in front on public buildings than we are about actually keeping them, living them out, he says, “in relation to our suffering neighbors.”

And then, in the Gospel of Matthew we come upon one of Jesus’ most famous and difficult teachings, about forgiveness. Peter asks him, how often do I need to forgive someone who sins against me? The text says “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive - seven times?” Interesting, because when Jesus and Peter were walking the earth together, there WAS no church, so that part was no doubt a later addition, meant for the early Christian community, struggling with what it means to be the people of God in their world, just like we struggle with it now, whether in our families, our church, our place of work, our community, our nation. The answer, however, is certainly in line with the kind of thing Jesus would have said, and you know it well: Not just seven times (which seems quite magnanimous), but seventy times seven. In other words, there’s really no limit. In fact, if you keep a record of the offenses so that when some sins against you for the 491st time you can take revenge, you’ve missed the point! And just so that we don’t miss the point, Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant, about a man who was forgiven a huge debt himself and then failed to forgive a small debt that was owed him. The point is plain – we with all our faults and imperfections have been treated with such grace and forgiveness by God, how can we fail to have a forgiving attitude towards others? And not to be too literal about the torture that was inflicted as a result upon this unforgiving servant, (“So God will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”) I think that people who are chronically unforgiving, who are more concerned with vengeance, or getting even, are already living in their own kind of hell, largely of their own making.

It’s really a matter of attitude – an attitude that is non-judgmental, open, forgiving, compassionate. As Jesus and Paul have consistently said, you deal with evil by loving it to death, and you deal with the “dark side” by bringing light, and showing by your words and actions that there is grace beyond.

Right after the hurricane hit, the United Church of Christ national office started the “Hope Shall Bloom” fund to assist with emergency aid and long term rebuilding, to make real the “grace beyond”, just as after 9/11 the church began the “Hope from the Rubble” fund. A few days ago, the “Collegium”, or top five officers of the Church, led by General Minister and President John Thomas, presented a “Covenant of Compassion”, which expands our response beyond the giving of money. In it we are asked to do five things, which I believe are in line with the kind of life that these scriptures describe. We are asked to pray, to contribute our financial resources, to provide shelter for the displaced, to engage in physical rebuilding, and to participate in a witness for justice. Interestingly, we pretty much talked about all of these at our staff and Executive Committee meetings earlier this week, before this covenant was received.

It is important to pray - for the victims, of course, but also for the responders, whether they be the hands-on search and rescue emergency sort or the leaders of our government and its agencies who don’t seem to have responded soon enough; and for our nation, that as the depths of poverty and social stratification have been again exposed, we can repent of our sin and move now on a different path. We can’t pray that God won’t send anymore hurricanes, because I don’t believe God micro-manages the weather. Storms happen, and always have. What we can pray for is the strength to deal with them, and respond compassionately in their wake. It’s probably worth a whole sermon, but I really take a kind of ecological view of prayer, in that you and I and everyone and everything else are all part of one organic whole; prayer is a way of making ourselves right with it, finding our place in it, listening to the heart of the universe, which is the heart of God. When any one of us is out of sync the whole organism doesn’t work as well. When we join its rhythm and feel its pulse and work with it, healing happens, synergy happens, wholeness is achieved, and individuals on the other end of our prayers feel the difference. So it is important to pray!

And it’s important to give – as noted this will be the most expensive natural disaster in our nation’s history, and there’s a lot that won’t be covered by insurance or government assistance. Of course we’ll already pay, because energy costs will go up and that affects just about everything, well beyond the price of our own gasoline. But that will make it all the more important that we be generous, to help those who are impacted far more than we are. I do commend the UCC’s Hope Shall Bloom fund, to which you can donate online at www.ucc.org, or though Westmoreland with a check marked “hurricane”, because 100% of the money will go to where it’s needed, and right now it is needed greatly! And, as you will here, we will be co-sponsoring with the Washington Conservatory of Music a fund raising concert in October.

We have talked as well about what we can do to be hospitable – some of you have already collected things or gone to the Armory – but our Executive Committee voted that if we can find four people willing to give of their time and energy, we will help resettle a family in our area. Pete will say more about that a bit later, but here’s an opportunity for hands-on mission work!

Eventually, the time will come to rebuild, and then we may want to be part of workers who go back into the devastated areas with our hammers and saws or whatever else we can offer.

And finally, we want to be part of a witness for justice, to advocate for better energy policies, tax fairness, policies that alleviate poverty, demonstrate that we really are one people, one country. In the long run, this may be the most important thing we can do. Again, as Jim Wallis wrote this week, “Restoring the hope of America's poorest families, renewing our national infrastructures, protecting our environmental stability, and rethinking our most basic priorities will require nothing less than a national change of heart and direction. It calls for a transformation of political ethics and governance; moving from serving private interests to ensuring the public good. If Katrina changes our political conscience and re-invigorates among us a commitment to the common good, then even this terrible tragedy might be redeemed.”

In the end, transforming evil into good is what it’s all about, and I am far more fascinated with goodness than I am with evil, and find it even more of a mystery. Why do some people give of themselves with abandon? Why do some risk alligators and toxic floodwaters and even crossfire to find survivors? Why did New York City firemen run up a doomed and burning building on that morning four years ago today? Why do economically stressed people open their hearts and pocketbooks even more fully to those afflicted and in need? Why is our faith the story of an irrational, incomprehensible, incredible love, that just keeps giving and forgiving, and emptying itself completely? It is a mystery, even more than evil is, but a mystery for which I am grateful, a mystery of grace beyond the dark side, which I pray I might live into and live out of, and I hope you will, too!