Transcript
From John’s Gospel: “Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ’Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” I speak in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is our privilege and joy this morning to witness the baptisms of Asher, Collette, Sloan, Reagan, Edward, Jude, Parker, Jack, Wesley, and Hudson. They and their parents and godparents will be asked, “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?” And they will reply, “I renounce them.” And, “Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?” Again, “I renounce them.” And so for them, indeed for all of us who are baptized, we do well to contemplate these renunciations.
To say yes to Jesus is to say no to evil. We should be clear about that. So for those being baptized, indeed for all of us promising to do all in our power to support these children in their life in Christ, here are a few thoughts about evil.
Evil doesn't understand good. It’s so much smaller than good that it can't quite see how good works. That’s why Screwtape and the devils in that book The Screwtape Letters, by CS Lewis, just cannot get their minds around the idea that somebody might actually want to love God and their neighbor. What's the catch? they say. What's up with that? What’s going on there?
One of the things that marks off the Middle Ages from the Renaissance is that medieval people knew that, at the end of the day, the Devil was stupid; cunning, but stupid—that there's something fundamentally that he did not get. By the time we arrive at Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost, it's all become a bit grand and melodramatic.
And a lot of me prefers the slightly comic and dim-witted demons of the Middle Ages to the sort of grand posturing of Milton's Satan. In some of the medieval mystery plays, and in William Langland’s great Piers Plowman poem of the 14th century, you have a dramatic representation of Christ harrowing hell on Holy Saturday.*
And it begins with the devils arguing, Whose fault is this?! Here’s the risen Christ advancing towards the gates of hell, about to liberate the spirits in hell, and the devils are asking, Who dropped the ball here? Who should we blame? The devils are in a panic and pointing the finger at each other. Well, he made the decision! And somebody says to Lucifer at one point, Well, you started it!
It's a richly comic picture.
The Bible uses a metaphor from archery to speak of sin: sin is “missing the mark.” We might just as well speak of sin or evil as missing the point. We turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as Savior and Lord, not wanting to miss the point. Evil misses the point; it’s like not getting the joke. When we renounce Satan and the evil powers of this world, we’re saying to him, to the diabolical at some level, You just don’t get it, do you?
Here is somebody, some power, some agency, some impulse in us and in the universe at large, that is mysteriously just not getting the point, not able to tune in, a kind of tone deafness. And that's why another great spiritual writer, Julian of Norwich, can talk about God looking with pity, not with blame, upon those who don't get it, those who can't sing in tune, who can't join in this great sort of symphonic production that is the universe. And so they stay shrunk, they stay stuck.
About the claim that Jesus is risen from the dead, Thomas has some honest questions because obviously. If Jesus who was crucified has appeared to his disciples, as the two Marys and the other disciples have claimed, then it’s not because he’s come back from a business trip! He’s come back from the dead. He has overcome evil and put death to flight. And today, with Thomas, and with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we say to Jesus, “My Lord, and my God.” In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
* See 1 Peter 3. 18 – 20: “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.”
