Good People and Evil

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
July 8, 2007; 6th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 10:1-11, 16-20) -- After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house!' And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.'

"Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me."

The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" He said to them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
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I want to go back a week before we look at today's readings. Last Sunday we read two paragraphs of Luke's Gospel that precede what you just heard. In a way, those words set the stage for today's story. Let me read you part of last week's Gospel.

When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but [the Samaritans] did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' But Jesus turned and rebuked them.

Today we hear how Jesus sent advance teams of disciples in pairs, "like lambs into the midst of wolves." He expects mixed results. Go in peace, he tells them. If those to whom you go share in peace, "your peace shall rest on that person." But if "they do not welcome you," wipe the dust of that place off your feet and do not let it cling to you as you leave. Let the dust be your witness. You need not react yourselves.

When the disciples come back, elated at their experiences, Jesus speaks words of moderation. Yes, you have authority "over all the power of the enemy," he says, "and nothing will hurt you." But focus on the certainty of final victory -- "your names are written in heaven" -- rather than on the interim experience, for good or for ill. Jesus tells them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning."

These verses were in my mind this week when I read a review of a new book The Lucifer Effect, Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. The book's title comes from the cautionary myth of Lucifer, whose name means "bearer of light." According to the story, Lucifer fell from God's highest favor to a state of rebellion and evil. Like so many powerful myths, Lucifer's story also reveals something about the nature of our humanity.

The author of The Lucifer Effect is someone who may be familiar to you, if not by name, at least by reputation. Philip Zimbardo knows something about the human potential for falling. He was the director of the infamous Stanford Prison experiment.

In 1971, Zimbardo randomly assigned twenty experimental subjects to be either "prisoners" or "guards" in a makeshift jail in one of Stanford University's academic buildings. All of the participants were run-of-the-mill undergraduates who had passed multiple screenings, designed to weed out anyone at risk for mental instability. Zimbardo was primarily interested in how the prisoners would behave during their two weeks in "jail," but to his surprise and eventual horror, it was the guards' behavior that stole the show. Asked merely to maintain order while enforcing a handful of rules (i.e. "Prisoners must address each other by number only"; "Prisoners must participate in all prison activities"), the students playing guards quickly became overwhelmed by their role. Within the first twenty-four hours, arbitrary punishment and verbal abuse had become the norm. Physical abuse followed, and before the first week was out, some of the guards were gleefully forcing half-naked and thoroughly demoralized "prisoners" – students just like themselves who had committed no wrongdoing – to simulate sodomy. When the experiment was terminated on day six, one of the guards observed with dismay that some of his compatriots were disappointed – "somewhat because of the loss of money, but somewhat because they were enjoying themselves."

These were normal, middle-class students with top-notch educational backgrounds. Almost all of them had professed a preference to be assigned "prisoner" status before the experiment; they found the authoritarian role of guard distasteful. So Zimbardo felt certain that something other than personality was at work. Nothing in the initial psychiatric screenings predicted the disturbing behavior of the "guards," but the situation they'd been put in was toxic. In other words, this wasn't a case of a few bad apples, but rather of a rotten barrel. "Within certain powerful social situations," Zimbardo posits, "human nature can be transformed in ways as dramatic as the chemical transformation in Robert Louis Stevenson's captivating fable of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

(Science & Spirit, May/June 2007, "Books," p. 51f)

Our world today is full of toxic situations. We are subject to tales of horror from real life in our nightly news. Acts of terror and inhumanity assault us almost daily. These stories and images affect us. Our souls are at risk. We are good people living in evil and toxic times. Times when it is so easy to become the evil we would cast out. Part of the lesson of the Stanford experiment is that each one of us has the capacity to do evil. Like James and John we can become desperate enough to cry, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them."

I hear regularly from people who are struggling to live as people of peace in the presence of such toxicity. Someone said to me the other day, "I dread the coming of another election. The rhetoric is so polarizing and inescapable. I don't think I can take it."

Zimbardo and others (like Stanley Milgram) who study how normal, good people find themselves doing evil, take note of some of the situational factors that help create a toxic environment. The first is dehumanization. Whenever we speak of another as less than fully human, we risk turning them into a thing rather than a person. In the Stanford experiment, the "prisoners" were numbers. In every war the enemy is given a dehumanizing identity. Labels of any kind can become demonic. Commanding fire on Samaritans was not too difficult for James and John, raised in a culture that disdained Samaritans. That's why Jesus' parable about the "Good Samaritan" was so shocking. No politician today will tell a story about the "Good Islamicist."

Steven Charleston's first lecture when he visited as part of our McMichael Speaker's Series in May was about the inner difficulty of living into our baptismal covenant to "respect the dignity of every human being." There are human beings who I believe are threatening humanity itself. Yet I am called to respect their dignity as fellow human beings. That is so hard to do.

There is something about the Stanford experiment that I find helpful. That experiment involving nice college kids in 1971 -- kids like me in 1971 -- reminds me that I too am capable of evil. Christian piety has always invited the faithful to meditate on our participation in the crucifixion of Christ. During Holy Week it is common for congregations to be assigned the role of speaking for the crowd at Good Friday; we shout "Crucify him; crucify him." A standard part of the Holy Week liturgy is the hymn "Ah, holy Jesus." We confess with these words:
Who was the guilty Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee: I crucified thee. (Hymn 158)

It is not a distant gulf that separates us from the evil and inhumanity that horrifies us. We are reminded of that whenever we pray the Lord's Prayer consciously: "Deliver us from evil." Maybe better translated "Save us from the time of trial." In that prayer Jesus taught us to acknowledge that there are situations that can overwhelm us, normal good people.

That is why we must pray for those who are overwhelmed, those who may find themselves in situations that overwhelm their humanity. It is unlikely that they can pray effectively for themselves. Only if we have enough compassion and empathy for them, can we offer the intercession that will add some coherence and peace to their situation rather than more violence and despair.

Barbara Crafton spoke of this when she visited us. She urged us to pray for our enemies, but carefully. She says pray blessing for them, but don't linger too long. At least not long enough to suggest to God what kind of blessing would be most appropriate for them, lest our hostility poison our prayer.

Earlier we heard Paul at the end of his passionate and conflictive letter to the Galatians. He is furious. He is angry. But he connects it all to the crucifixion. "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul realizes that in every overwhelming situation of evil, Christ is present, absorbing the violence, hatred and death. Only the cross will soak up such things without adding to them. Dorothy Sayers said, "God did not abolish the fact of evil. He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion. He rose from the dead."

What God does with evil is resurrection. As Paul says, "A new creation is everything!" The only way we can live in the presence of today's banal version of evil is to live as citizens of the new creation. That's why Jesus tells his disciples there's no need to rejoice even when you "tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy." After all, living in the new creation, "nothing will hurt you."

What we embrace when we embrace the resurrected Jesus, is that Christ has already overcome the divisions: Samaritan and Jew, prisoners and student guards, Isalmicists and those who would call down fire from heaven upon them. Jesus has soaked up all evil into God's own life in the terror of the cross, and raised it into a new creation that no hell can prevail against. We are invited to live in that new reality, and to pray for those of us who are overwhelmed by that which is passing away.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

(Prayer attributed to St. Francis; Book of Common Prayer, p. 833)