Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, February 23, 2019

I woke up yesterday thinking, “Why can’t people just be good? And do the right thing? Why do we mess up so often?” This month’s worship theme is “evil,” and it’s not fun to look at evil, it’s unpleasant to think about the bad things people do, the ways our actions, and our inaction, can cause suffering. Still, I hope we will take evil seriously; that we will make an honest accounting of ourselves and ask, “What have I done, and left undone, that I need to apologize for, and make amends for? What do I need to try to repair and restore?” Because we do have power, for good and for ill. It matters how we live, and the choices we make.

But this kind of self-assessment isn’t easy. It’s in our nature to diminish our own faults and mistakes, to pay more attention to the faults in others. Human history is full of people projecting their fear and evil thoughts onto others: the crusades, colonialism, Nazism, all manners of ethnic cleansing—these horrors have been done in the name of God and goodness, in the name of purity, in defense of the homeland. This is what theologians Krister Stendahl and Matthew Fox are talking about in the words at the top of the order of service today: "Most of the evil in this world is done by people who do it for good purposes. Real evil in this world happens when Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

Even the metaphor of light and dark can be problematic. I love and appreciate these images and experiences of light and shadow. But you know our country’s history; that it was racist from the start. In the name of God and country and profit, our forebears stole the land of native people and stole human beings from Africa and brought them here to build this nation. Our ancestors took the metaphors of light and darkness and called one good and the other evil. They applied this to skin pigmentation, they came up with the idea that whiteness was superior. There was a time in our young nation when poor white people could have made common cause with black people; could have joined forces to work for a more equitable society. But wealthy white landowners divided and conquered; they said to the poor whites, “at least you’re not Black,” they promoted their philosophy of white supremacy, which haunts our country to this day.

Racism has been called American’s original sin, and the political upheaval we are in right now is the struggle between two different visions for this nation; the old way, which talked about liberty and justice but reserved it mostly for straight white Christian men, and a more expansive vision of our nation, what Jesse Jackson called a “rainbow coalition,” a diversity of people, different races and genders and other ways of being human coming together to fashion a more varied and more beautiful tapestry—that’s the promise of these United States.

This is the struggle we are in these days, and I’m grateful that our Social Justice team has made its goal this year to reach out to communities of color. I’m grateful to Susie Clark and Paul Floyd, who attended a training on anti-racism work last summer, and who have continued to meet with a group of Haverhill folks doing this on-the-ground work of dismantling our nation’s culture of white supremacy. I’m grateful that we have this long friendship with our neighbors at Calvary Baptist Church, and our shared history of befriending and supporting one another. 

Speaking of our friends across the street, I hope a lot of us will show up at Calvary this Thursday at 6:30 pm to watch a documentary film about the killings at the Mother Emmanuel church in Charleston, SC, when a young white supremacist shot people who were gathered there in a prayer group. Appropriately, the gathering at Calvary is going to begin with prayer, before we watch the film. And how else are we going to deal with evil? How else do we open our hearts to what is hard and challenging, to what is calling us to change and grow? How else, except by being still for a change, and listening for what we need to hear, that still, small voice of Love eternal? By stopping—  waiting— for that voice, that Presence, which comes when we are quiet and still. With its blessed reminder that we aren’t in charge; its assurance that life is good, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

In these days when there is so much upheaval, when people are anxious and afraid, and aggressive too—what do we have to offer as antidotes for evil?

What I know from experience, what I know in my bones, is that when things are hard, especially when I need to stretch and grow and be better than I have been, I need to be grounded. I need to be rooted in that which is deep and life-giving, in what true and good. I get there by spending time in silence and in in prayer; by finding ways to “rest in the grace of the world,” as Wendell Berry puts it. 

There’s a meditation manual titled, “Don’t just do something, sit there.” Isn’t this good advice for these days? Start with being, before doing. Practice being present and open, when you feel like running away. Practice being hopeful, when it would be easy to be anxious and afraid. Practice being faithful, keep showing at the prayer mat or meditation cushion, when all those voices are tugging at you, trying to pull you off center.

For me, the antidotes for evil are all about presence: being awake, and abiding with what is right here, right now. Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg gives this instruction for meditation: “Sit like a mountain. Sit with a sense of strength and dignity. Be steadfast, be majestic, be natural and at ease in awareness. No matter how many winds are blowing, no matter how many clouds are swirling, no matter how many lions are prowling, be intimate with everything and sit like a mountain.”

We heard a similar message in our reading today, the call to be present to what is, whether that is hard or easy. Pádraig Ó Tuama practices this daily, with his community in Ireland, and in his words you hear the transformative power that is available to us, if we will receive it:

So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us. Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug, let’s lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up, and out, and around. The world is big, and wide, and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning. Oremus. Let us pray.”

My spiritual companions, let us be praying people. And by that I mean let us be gardeners of the spirit, who take what has been defiled and broken, and begin to  restore and redeem it. Let us in our lives, in our presence, be antidotes for the division and the meanness in our midst. So we may be inspired to use our power to heal and not to harm, to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, to serve you, Spirit of freedom (from a Passover Haggadah).

Amen.