Sermon

Heal Your Fear, Unleash Your Power:
When Evil Shrieks

March 9, 2003, 11:00 AM Service

By Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon

Who would you be without your fear?

Who would you be without your fear?

This question will echo forth from each Lenten sermon. Picture it like one of those crawls on the news screen: Who would you be without your fear…Who would you be without your fear…Who would you be without your fear…

Through the gospel of Mark, we encounter the pre-scientific world of demons and angels. If you haven’t read the gospel of Mark, I invite you to do so. It reads like CNN headline news. As you read, you can hear the newscaster’s voice speaking each commentary, see images captured by the newscam--witness encounters as they happen, moving rapidly from one to the next. Imagine this:

Late-breaking news, this just in: "The people of Capernaum never thought they would see this. Reliable sources have told us that some peasant from Nazareth shook up the local synagogue today by performing an exorcism on the Sabbath. Crowds gathered. How many people were actually in the crowd is still under dispute...."
(I couldn't resist...I'm sorry....)

Lest we dismiss this kind of world, I dare us to look it in the face. Many of us find it more convenient to dismiss stories that have to do with demons and evil spirits, but in that convenience, sometimes we also reject or dismiss the power of the Divine. I suggest we are quite fascinated by evil; yet, we'd prefer watching evil or reading about evil than actually doing what the Gospel of Mark expresses, and that is bring us face to face with an evil that we would rather forget; the fear and the evil that has the capacity to live inside each of us.

Capernaum was a center of great activity. It was a place where Jesus and others walked through occasionally. It was a place where exorcisms occurred day after day by healers and would-be messiahs and prophets. We read that the Jewish Jesus entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and began to teach. He practiced the Judaism of his day until the day he died. And when we miss or forget the Jewish identity of Jesus, we miss a lot of who he was and what he was about. The people in the synagogue were amazed at his authority, amazed by his way of accessing and releasing his inner power. I envision a kind of brilliance around him--because, as the Gospel reads, "people were amazed at his teaching." It doesn't say what he taught. The people didn't remember what he said; they remembered who he was. They were amazed at his teaching and compared it to the teachers of the law: "And the people were amazed because here was one who taught with authority, not like the teachers of the law."

Similarly, when people come to MCC San Francisco, I believe each person witnesses a spiritual community that transcends law and looks more to Spirit; for the law does not always equal morality (but that’s another whole road I’m not going down today.) When people walk in here, when they sit here in our sanctuary, regardless of what they've heard from teachers of the law, they experience Spirit. A few weeks ago, Vicki Zalewski, who attends the nine o'clock and the seven o'clock service, celebrated her birthday here. Vicki’s family came from Michigan including her eighty-two-year-old grandmother who later sent Vicki an email (I couldn't believe her grandmother was on email. I think that's great...I love it) saying "I felt the Spirit in your church so much. People were so loving to me and the way that people sang, the Spirit of God was there."

Getting back to the Gospel, there was a man present in the synagogue, a man in the synagogue who shouted loudly and suddenly produced a most startling confrontation. Can you picture someone actually disrupting a worship service? It doesn't say whether he just wandered in or was one of their own. I like to think that he was one of their own because that helps us identify more closely with our own experience. It is easy to take fear and evil and put it out there and not look in here.

This week, I was at a community meeting at Mission High School. For many reasons, some of the neighbors of Dolores Park are having trouble with our shower program. Let me point out that I'm not putting, in any way, a right or a wrong on this. It was a fortuitous opportunity to come together as a community, I suggested that facilitators set some guidelines for the meeting to avoid what happened the month before at the meeting where a shouting match occurred and somebody had to be taken away. As the meeting went on, I was amazed, once again, at how people talk about one another. They speak as if there are always two distinct categories: the neighbors are the good people; the homeless are the bad people. Yet, at that meeting, because we were asked to treat each other with respect, it became less and less about different points of view and concluded with forty people signing up to be in a working group—neighbors and homeless—to solve the problem together. Now, I don't know what the outcome will be, but the process is certainly progress.

This unnamed man in the synagogue had yelled out, right in the middle of the service, all of the sudden, "What do you want with us?" He questioned, "What do you want with us?" Yes, us, because when we get to that precipice in our lives, we don't get there by ourselves. When we get to the place where fear is overtaking us, we don't get there alone. We didn't get there by ourselves. There were a lot of factors and a lot of people who helped us walk down that path. And after all, we all have our own brand of insanity anyway, don't we? And if you're not nodding your head, you just haven't touched yours yet. It's true. If, at times, you don't even touch the brink of madness, you must not be fully engaged with the world. There's a fine line between prophets and mad people.

The man continued, "What do you want with us? Have you come to destroy us?" Why us and not I? Jesus doesn't answer the question, because Jesus never answers direct questions. Have you noticed that? If you read the gospels, Jesus...never...never answers a direct question. Have you come to destroy us? Well, in a sense, yes. Jesus, in his life, came to break down not only individual fear that often controls us; but also, and as well, the social systems of domination that control us, or oppress us as clearly was the case for the people of his time. As evil begins to leave the man, he yells at Jesus, "You are the Holy One of God." That is not something Jesus said about himself. This is what this “one” said because at some very basic level, evil recognizes goodness. Never forget, Jesus was executed; and not because he broke the law.

Jesus then said to the man "Come out." And the evil left with a shriek. When does evil shriek-- when it encounters, in whatever form, goodness and authenticity. And by authenticity, I mean that alignment of our inner and outer life. I mean that impeccability of our word. I mean that purity of inner truth that, unashamed and unafraid, confronts whatever comes at us. And it doesn't always mean to push back; sometimes, it means to flow forward working with the momentum.

Let me tell you a story about one of my personal heroes, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. As he's walking along, he came to a street where the sidewalk was like a narrow tunnel. At the other end a white man appeared. He entered and suddenly stopped. He looked at Bishop Tutu at the other end and said, "I'm not moving. I don't give way to gorillas." And Bishop Tutu replied, "I do. Come on." Bishop Tutu’s words stand as a powerful example of how to overcome evil with wit and humor and how to meet the negative energy and gently move it in another direction and still maintain your power of authenticity.

Let’s take a look at who you would be without your fear and how it relates to the subject of evil. I don't often talk about evil and I very rarely talk about the evil within any of us, because, especially in the queer community, we've had far too much of that. But sometimes, I think I’ve shied away from the subject, perhaps too many times, because the evil directed toward us has been about at one thing, and is typically hurtful. However, the subject of evil presents an opportunity to look at many things in our lives. So I want to talk for a moment about evil, because that word and the power of evil are being thrown around so much. I mean, can you listen to one day of the news, or read one newspaper that doesn't have the word "evil" in it somewhere? But when we fight against injustice of any kind, and that injustice moves us deeply, it often, somehow, exposes our own personal wounds. In other words, when we look at evil, it's so easy, especially right now to be looking at evil "out there", and project the evil from within onto the world and at other times, we, without our knowledge, allow ourselves to take the evil within. Are you with me?

Sometimes the evil we resist with the greatest passion is the evil we fear most in ourselves. That's really deep to think about, and it takes courage to face. Because sometimes what we want to do is get on our high horse and be against evil because that makes us good. But that's not the path. It's not the path that Jesus, a spiritual teacher, chose. He chose to be fully engaged. Ghandi insisted that no one could join him who was not willing to take up arms and fight for independence because one can only renounce what one has entertained. So unless you and I are willing to entertain our own propensity to strike back then we better be careful about what we say about anybody else. If we're not willing to look at our own capacity and capability for making somebody else the "other," then we better pause before we criticize any administration.

The struggle against outer evil sometimes unleashes fear and deep things within us. There's nothing wrong with fear. In fact, it can be a very healthy emotion. But when it's out of proportion, it begins to control us. Likely, we'll never be completely free from fear; we wouldn't be human if we were. In fact, it is a protective mechanism. But when we layer it onto unnecessary situations it is then that we begin to be ruled by fear and relinquish the healthy benefits. Sometimes, when we struggle against evil and there's a lot of that going on in the world right now, it can bring up some painful things from our own soul. However, that is no reason to avoid resisting evil-- perhaps this work is part of our spiritual evolution.

I think Jesus grappled intensely with being a person of non-violence. He could not have been the spiritual teacher he was had he not himself overcome the very same things each of us are faced with. I believe that's why he disappeared at times and went off to pray. He prayed to center himself and to sustain his own integrity. I think that's why, at times, his family called him crazy. I believe that when he went to the garden to pray, shortly before he was betrayed, he had a sense of what was coming, not because he was clairvoyant, but more that he could read the writing on the wall and hear the soldiers marching toward him. And when he said "I will drink this cup, but if it is Your will, let it pass from me," maybe the cup was a valid symbol of non-violence. Maybe what he really wanted to do is strike back, is to gather his disciples and say "Look, if you love me, if you're loyal to me, then let us fight to the end." Maybe that's what he really wanted to do. But out of his integrity, he chose neither to fight nor to choose flight. He chose another way, a third way: non-violent engagement. Hear these words: "Not my will, but Your will be done."

Sometimes when we face situations or events in the world that are evil, patterns of destruction may emerge from deep within. When I returned from South Africa in 1991, (apartheid had not yet been dismantled) the evil of apartheid and having lived in that country, beautiful as it is and as much as I loved the people there, the endless evil there affected me psychologically. I stopped eating. I was twenty pounds lighter than I am now. I could not deal with what I had experienced there. I think what was really going on for me, was that I had seen, in that particular place, so much evil done by people of the white race to the people of the land of South Africa, that at some level I did not want to exist as a white person any longer. It's not rational, but it was real. I was able to break the cycle of violence by coming to the realization that by destroying myself I only perpetuated the evil. Only then was I able to free myself, eat again, and begin a healing cycle.

Non-violence is a spiritual challenge of epic proportions. And when we resist evil with evil we simply mirror it and perpetuate violence in our own lives and in the lives of others. My niece, whose name is Abby, as many of you know, left this week with her army unit for Kuwait. I think about her as I watch the news. I witness preparations for house-to-house combat At least that's what some of the reports...reliable sources are telling us. And I started to bring it down to a really personal level. It's so global, so overwhelming, that sometimes I just want to run away. Don't you? But the courage it takes to look it right in the eye is our spiritual challenge. We must accept this challenge and each of us must determine our individual identity and sense of integrity. I think about my niece, Abby, and I think about her holding a weapon, approaching a house, not knowing who was in there, and potentially killing or being killed. You know, this is flesh of my flesh, all right? This is my blood; yet I don’t forget-- she didn't get there by herself. She went in the army to get away from the violence in her family. People do join the army for very noble reasons; but this is not about any military statement; this is about my niece. For her, it was a chance to flee from the cycle of violence she endured from her family. Had her home life been different, the service would not have been her choice. She had practically flunked out of school because of all of the disturbance and conflict in her heart and life. I ask why didn't her mother, my sister, protect her from the molestation that went on in her home? Was it the cycle of violence in my generation? I heard that still, small voice. It told me 'Stop the cycle of violence no matter what has gone on before us; it will continue to perpetuate itself in all kinds of ways; even death and destruction.' Every one of us has the choice, with the help of God, and with the help of community, to break cycles and discover a new relevance to our lives.

In Rwanda, a place where the greatest genocide of the twentieth century occurred, a woman named Severa was forced to watch her seven children killed...butchered. She then was gang-raped repeatedly and thrown away for dead. She actually survived. Soon, she realized she was pregnant. At first she did not want to give birth to this child; but then came to the realization that this child is innocent. She gave birth to a daughter and named her Akimana, which means "the child of God." She had been the victim of horrible suffering and evil; but she consciously decided that this evil cycle would stop with her. She raised this child and I heard Severa’s voice on NPR. Through translation she said "I think I perhaps love this child even more than all my other children because it has come out of such suffering, but I want to find a new way."

Maybe we need a certain kind of exorcism, (which just means "to get rid of"); a cleansing of our mind, of the flushing away of misinformation that tells us it is ok to fight evil with evil as individuals or in any other way. Maybe we need a cleansing of the way to achieve union with that deep power and beauty that resides within each us and to use it as a healing force for our world. Perhaps, finding strength in our individual authenticity will cause our fears to flee from us and free us to experience healing and to channel this new-found energy as agents of change in a world that needs it so desperately. Perhaps we can be, like the rose. Hafiz says "How did the rose open its heart and give to the world all its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light upon its being." Feel the encouragement of light upon your being today. Remember, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love.

Amen.