2023 05 21 Sermon
Persevering through Evil and Suffering
Easter 7A
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
During my family trip to Italy last month, a highlight for me was the artwork. Everywhere you go in Italy you're surrounded by great artwork. Museums, churches, palaces, piazzas, ancient ruins, random walls in small towns. Some are masterpieces, some are just pleasant to look at. Many express aspects of Christian faith, others go back even farther, but we saw all kinds of beautiful artwork. A favorite painting of mine was in the Vatican Museum, titled “Rest Stop in Egypt”. It was a painting imagining how the Holy Family took a break in a beautiful spot in the wilderness, after escaping from the forces of evil that had been unleashed in Bethlehem, when King Herod had ordered all the baby boys to be killed. So this painting has Mary sitting on the ground, looking peaceful, while Joseph is standing, leaning over her a bit, and sharing a grape on the vine with 2-year-old Jesus, both of them with a look of kindness, love, and care.
A favorite sculpture I saw was behind an altar in the Frari Church in Venice. This was a 500-year-old wood carving by Donatello of John the Baptist, with the long hair and the ragged clothes, looking like he was about to speak. It was so life-like in detail that you could almost hear John the Baptist preaching his message to repent and prepare the way of the Lord.
But the piece of art that struck me as most unexpected was a fresco, painted onto the back wall next to the door of a 14th century church in the small town of Varenna—because of where the fresco was placed, it’s the last thing you see before walking back outside to enter the world—but it was a painting of the devil literally eating people up. The devil was depicted in an ash gray color, kind of like smoke, with the body of a man and the face of a beast. In his mouth was a person being chewed up with their legs sticking out, and in the devil’s hands he was holding another person and breaking body parts off to eat. It certainly seemed inspired by 1 Peter 5:8-9, which was in our first reading today. “Discipline yourselves. Keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.” So this fresco is a reminder to keep alert, watch out. There are forces of evil at work in the world, and we can get caught up in them!
Last week, when I was attending the National Workshop on Christian Unity, we had a couple of guest speakers from the Milwaukee area one afternoon. One of them was Pardeep Kaleka. You may have heard of Pardeep—he is kind of well-known around the country as an advocate for inter-faith understanding, and he’s also written a book. He wrote this book because he is a member of the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, and his father tragically was one of the members there who was murdered by a white supremacist gunman 11 years ago. So he wrote this book, because in trying to understand how such a demonic thing could happen, he befriended a former white supremacist named Arno Michaelis.
As Arno explained to us his descent into evil, he said he grew up as the “poor kid” in Mequon, which in that context meant that over the summer he “only” got to go to his dad’s cabin up north, instead of to Hawaii. Mix that in with some family issues, and it made him resentful. His resentment led him to become, as he put it, “addicted to hate”, and his addiction latched onto hating racial minorities. He actually became a founder of the white supremacist group—the one that produced the gunman who murdered the people at the Sikh temple. Arno spent 7 years in this group. How did he repent and eventually find a positive direction for his life? He said that at many points over time he was shown kindness and love by the very people he was addicted to hating! That is God at work. Eventually, he saw that the way of hate would lead to him losing anything good in life, including his daughter.
It goes to show, like 1 Peter says, that “your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour”. There are forces of evil at work in the world that can bring great harm to us, and even harm to other people through us. We often can’t see clearly where these evil forces come from, or understand how we can get caught up in them. And it doesn’t even have to be from an organization like a white supremacist group that is actively devoted to hate. Any organization or institution—even ones that are good and necessary—can fall under the influence of evil, when for example, they demand more honor than accountability, or define themselves more by greed or fear instead of seeking the flourishing of all through love, grace, mercy, and justice.
This means that any one of us can become a participant in evil, even when we don’t intend to, or don’t realize it. But God has given us the ability to resist it, by staying steadfast in our faith in God. The first thing to remember in staying steadfast is that Christ himself is praying for us. In John 17, today’s gospel, we overhear Jesus praying for his disciples, and by extension, for us. He is praying on the night of the Last Supper, soon before Judas betrayed him, and he says to his heavenly Father, “I’m no longer in the world, but they are in the world. Watch over them. Let them be one just as we are one.” Jesus knows that trying to make it all on your own makes you more susceptible to the forces of evil tempting you. But being united with God through faith, and united with your brothers and sisters in Christ—forming faithful relationships based on kindness, grace, mercy, justice, love, and forgiveness—these things will strengthen you to resist the forces of evil.
The second thing to remember is, as 1 Peter puts it, to “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.” In order to have humility, you need to cultivate self-awareness—the ability to admit that “I cannot do everything by my own power.” Humility does not mean looking down upon yourself, or being ashamed of yourself. That’s not true humility. It does mean acknowledging that “I need the mighty hand of God to help me, and I can cast my anxiety upon God, because he cares for me.” And this leads to what Martin Luther called “the happy exchange”: that by going to the cross, Christ promised that you can give him your anxieties, sins, difficulties, temptations, worries, sickness, and death—whatever is causing harm—give it to Christ, and because Christ is risen, he will exchange it for God’s love, support, and grace. This doesn’t mean that you will not experience suffering, sadly. But while suffering has the potential to harm you, it also has the potential to transform you into a more loving person when you learn how to continually hand it over to God, and trust his love for you.
So whatever you’re going through; whatever suffering or harm you’ve endured—whether it is systemic evil, or sins of a more personal nature; whether it’s worry or anxiety, or health issues that could be mental or physical—you are free in Christ to humbly ask for and accept God’s help, realizing that very often God sends help by way of another person.
Each of us, along with all of our brothers and sisters in faith all around the world, undergoes suffering at times. Often the suffering comes from forces beyond our individual control. But our faith gives us the resources to persevere, and to seek kindness, love, grace, forgiveness, and justice in this world, as the alternative way to the path of evil. And our faith gives us the assurance that the God of grace will restore, support, and strengthen you—and at last call you to eternal glory—because Christ is risen, and he has the last word. Amen.