The Banality of Evil, Part III

So, how do we conspire against evil? How do we actively resist? In this three-part series (Part I can be found here and Part II can be found here) I have tried to "set the table" for this post by reviewing the notion of the banality of evil. I'm more a preacher than a theologian and most of my posts here are sermons. But these thoughts have been nagging at me - and trying to write it out is helpful to me; maybe a few readers too. 

Along the way I mentioned a previous series of posts on The Book of Revelation and on Walter Wink. In one of those posts, I quoted Wink as writing these words: 

The Church has many functions, not all related to the Powers. With reference to the Powers, however, its task as we have seen is to unmask their idolatrous pretensions, to identify their dehumanizing values, to strip from them the mantle of respectability, and to disenthrall their victims. It is uniquely equipped to help people unmask and die to the Powers. (emphasis mine, page 164)

He goes on to talk about homelessness and how we tackle this problem. 

No social struggle can hope to be effective if it only changes structured arrangements without altering their spirituality. All our letter writing, petitioning, political and community organizing, demonstrating, civil disobedience, prayers and fasting move to this end: to recall the Powers to the humanizing purposes of God revealed in Jesus. We are not commissioned to create a new society; indeed we are scarcely competent to do so. What the Church can do best, though it does so all too seldom, is to delegitimate an unjust system and to create a spiritual counterclimate. We may lack the wisdom to determine how homelessness can be solved; and our attempts as churches to feed, clothe, and house the homeless may only obscure the true causes of homelessness and fill us with false self-righteousness. But what we can do is create an insistent demand that homelessness be eradicated. We are not "building the Kingdom" as an earlier generation liked to put it. We simply lack the power to force the Powers to change. We faithfully do what we can with no illusions about our prospects for direct impact. We merely prepare the ground and sow, the seed grows itself, night and day, until the harvest. (Mark 4:26-29) And God will - this is our most profound conviction - bring the harvest. (page 165)

We humbly plant seeds. We don't "fix" the problem of evil like it's a widget. No technical fix will work on this ultimate adaptive challenge, the human condition. But we can name, unmask, and engage the powers. This is what Jesus did all the time in his ministry and we are called to follow him on this path. 

Perhaps the best example I know of from human history of resisting the power of evil came from the people of Le Chambon, France during the Second World War.  I want to focus here on the pastor of that congregation, Pastor Andre Tocme. I wrote about him in this post from 2017. For anyone who doesn't click on that hyperlink, read this much at least: 

When people insisted, after the war, that the people of Chambon had done something "good" they refused to accept praise. They insisted that they were simply doing what had to be done. "Who else could help them? Things had to be done and we were there to help, that is all!"

If you read any connections from this three-part series with the times we are living in right now, then thank you for being an astute and careful reader. But in truth the current context simply clarifies some things I've been thinking about in a lifetime of pastoral ministry. I was raising these same questions in a series of blog posts here during my sabbatical in 2017. But as often happens, I got back to work - back to the daily routine. One nice thing about blogging is that there is a record though and I realize that some of the biggest questions are ones that I circle back to over the course of my ordained life. As Eliot put it, we shall not cease from exploration... [and] we do sometimes find ourselves where we began and recognizing it for the first time. 

I'm now back in a parish, in time when our nation and world are facing incredible challenges. I don't think it's helpful to call a person evil, no matter how badly they behave. It's simplistic and unhelpful. It often leaves us paralyzed. I've tried to uncover some truths here and likely I haven't gotten it all right because these are difficult questions. But I've come back to the notion that the Church matters, and right now the Church has to figure out how to resist evil or what Walter Wink called, "the domination system." We have to figure out how to name, unmask and resist those powers that destroy the creatures of God and steal human dignity. 

Perhaps the counter to the banality of evil is the banality of good, or something like that. It's not flashy. The people of Chambon refused to accept praise because they "were just doing what had to be done." So it is with us. I like that Wink quote as well - the Church is not equipped to even begin to solve the problem of homelessness. But we can and must move beyond charity. We insist on human dignity, no matter what. 

We are called to be faithful, not necessarily successful. We are called to trust God but in the meantime to act in good faith, trusting that our small deeds can ripple out and ultimately change this world. The arc of the moral universe is indeed long (long long) but it does bend toward justice. We are called to live like we actually believe that to be true. 

The Banality of Evil, Part II

 This is the second post of a three-part series. Part I can be found here.

Celebrant: Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
People: I will, with God's help. (The Baptismal Covenant, The Book of Common Prayer, page 304)

What do we mean when we speak of evil? What does it look like to persevere in resisting it? There is a film that I still find compelling, and a scene about the devil that I find helpful. It's from Broadcast News:  

I think this clip has everything to do with the banality of evil. It's not about the cartoon devil in a red suit, but about the ways that we miss the mark and lose our bearings and compromise our core values, bit by bit. Bruce Springsteen sings in the title track of Nebraska about a guy who offers this explanation for a killing spree that he and his girlfriend go on: "sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world." (Critics have noted that Springsteen was reading a lot of Flannery O'Connor before writing Nebraska and that these words echo "A Good Man is Hard to Find," if you prefer a more literary reference than the poet from the swamps of Jersey.)

A book that I read many years ago was written by a Jewish scholar, Jon Levenson, entitled Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence. It's a compelling read but for this post it's that issue of the persistence of evil that I want to focus on. I think Levenson would agree to summarize by saying, "sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world." His argument is the drama is still unfolding and that God is still fighting against evil. God's people are called to share in that work. 

I'm currently serving in a congregation that takes it's name from the Archangel Michael who is said, in the Revelation of John, to have kicked the devil out of heaven but not yet off of the earth. 

We need, I think, mythological and not literal language to speak about evil. But we do need to reclaim this language in our time, starting with John's Revelation. I wrote a series of posts, chapter by chapter, seven years ago, beginning here. One superb guide is the late William Stringfellow. So, too, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series or the Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis. We need to reclaim the language of the faith that it is not enough to just go out and do good and think the world will be better overnight. We do battle not against flesh and blood but the powers and the principalities. See this post for more on this topic.

I'll try to figure out how to bring some of these strands together in Part III of this series, so stay tuned. 

The Banality of Evil: Part I

A few years ago, I travelled with my spouse and some friends to Nuremberg, Germany where we stood in the courtroom where former Nazis were tried after the war. Two thoughts kept running through my brain that day and they have lingered: 

The first was a memory of my New Testament professor in seminary, The Rev. Dr. Kalyan Dey. Kalyan loved to shock us and I loved his pedagogical style. More than once he told us (I believe in the context of studying Paul’s Letter to the Romans) that “Adolf Hitler didn’t kill six million Jews. Good church-going beer-drinking Christians did that.”

I knew that he was right, both theologically and historically. But it went against the simplest definition of evil I’d been working with. If you asked people in my small town growing up to define evil they would very likely say, “Adolf Hitler.” But this left us ill-equipped to deal with the real nature of evil. Don’t misunderstand me or my professor here: I’m not defending (in any way) Adolf Hitler. But when you project a theological category onto one (dead) person it leads to a pretty anemic understanding of the nature of evil. 

Kalyan knew this. He wanted to remind us at every opportunity of another Old Testament text, from the prophet Isaiah, that “all our righteousness is as filthy rags.” Although ordained in the United Methodist Church, his theology of sin was pretty Lutheran and his reading of Romans was through that lens. He challenged us, or at least me, to think more deeply about the web of sin and evil rather than locating it exclusively in one individual.

The second memory I had in that courtroom in Nuremburg was a memory of the phrase coined by Hannah Arendt, in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Eichmann had escaped to Argentina and was tried much later, in Jerusalem. But that phrase about the “banality of evil” kept coming back to me in Nuremberg. In those trials, Kalyan Dey was proven right: Hitler didn’t do this by himself. The trials focused on the charge of conspiracy. How and why did these atrocities happen? 

What did Arendt mean by this subtitle? She observed of Eichmann that he did not display either guilt for what he’d done nor hatred for those trying him. He claimed he bore no responsibility (as others had at Nuremberg) because he was “just doing his job.” He didn’t break any laws. (This can lead down a completely different rabbit hole, but I'll resist that for now. When is it “just” to break an “unjust law?" Or to put it slightly differently, can something be “legal” and still morally wrong? Yes!)

Arendt observed about Eichmann that he wasn’t able to think for himself. He had a “crippling lack of communication skills” because he relied on cliches and propaganda and euphemisms that made him seem like a normal guy just doing his job. I also find her observation interesting that Eichmann was a “joiner” throughout his entire life. He joined organizations that had a higher “purpose” and he had belonged to groups that he allowed to define him growing up. She also noted that while he clearly had anti-Semitic leanings, he didn’t hate Jews. Joining the SS was part of a pattern. He needed to belong. 

If you Google the word "banal" you find this definition: "so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring." Elsewhere, synonyms like "bland" and "hackneyed" and "vapid" are offered. 

In other words, as I understand Arendt, this isn't like The Exorcist with chairs flying and pea-soup coming out of one's mouth. It's not dramatic. It's boring, but not less real. A lot of bad can be done but never by one person, not even Adolf Hitler. The bad that is done in this world, the evil that hurts and destroys the creatures of God, is done by "normal" boring people who don't know how to think for themselves. 

I've labelled this as Part I with an intent to write two more parts to this series but I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the next two posts so those may not come immediately...

After an Election

I had a perfectly good sermon written, or almost written, earlier this week. (You would have liked it!) But it no longer seemed like the right sermon after this past Tuesday night.

Before I go any further I want to say that if I’ve learned anything at all in my sixty-one years it is that we are not all in the same place today. And whichever candidate we voted for, we are not even in just two camps today. If, though, you were happy about the presidential election, that is your right, and I love you. Perhaps my words will help to bring some understanding and empathy for your neighbors who are in pain right now, and that may (by God’s grace) help you to love your neighbor a little better. But many of us here this morning have experienced dismay and confusion and disorientation since waking up on Wednesday morning. This sermon is primarily for those who are feeling incredible sorrow for our nation right now.

And let me add that this grief is not about one candidate losing and another winning. It’s more about trying to figure out who we are as a nation – what we stand for. And then, what does it mean to be the Church in a time like this?

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The process, as most of us know from experience, is not linear. And it takes time. Trauma is not unlike grief but it’s far more likely that we can get stuck especially if/when we feel re-traumatized. And I know that there is trauma here too. Among others, LGBTQ friends are feeling especially vulnerable right now with all the rhetoric that is quite frankly frightening. In any case I will confess that I’ve been experiencing all those emotions that Kubler-Ross mentions this week except acceptance. I’m just not there yet. But I have been feeling well acquainted with grief and the accompanying emotional roller coaster of denial, anger, bargaining and depression.

As your pastor, at least for a season, I invite you to be gentle with yourself and with your neighbor. Breathe in and breathe out. Keep doing that. Just breathe – in and out. Find your coping mechanisms. For me cooking is one of those and comfort food especially. On Wednesday (a night I usually stay in Bristol) I drove home to make lasagna and a Caesar salad so that Hathy and I could eat together. It helped. A little. A nice bottle of red wine helped as well.

Facebook is at best a very mixed blessing, I know. But I discovered and then shared these words there earlier this week from a woman named Venice Williams, about whom I know very little. As far as I can tell she’s not famous or anything. Yet her words helped to orient me in the midst of so much disorientation. I share them with you today in the hope that you may find them helpful as well.

You are awakening to the
same country you fell asleep to.
The very same country.

Pull yourself together.
And, when you see me,
do not ask me
"What do we do now?
How do we get through the next four years?"

Some of my Ancestors dealt with
at least 400 years of this
under worse conditions.

Continue to do the good work.

Continue to build bridges not walls.

Continue to lead with compassion.

Continue the demanding work of liberation for all.

Continue to dismantle broken systems, large and small.

Continue to set the best example for the children.

Continue to be a vessel of nourishing joy.

 Continue right where you are.
Right where you live into your days.
Do so in the name of
The Creator who expects
nothing less from each of us.

And if you are not "continuing"
ALL of the above, in community, partnership, collaboration?

What is it you have been doing?

What is it you are waiting for?

You may not yet appreciate these words, and that’s ok too. But I offer them as a beacon, perhaps for next week or next month or next year. We don’t always allow time in our culture to grieve. And we need to allow for that space. Grief is disorienting and the Bible has lots of ways to express disorientation, especially in the psalms. My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? A few weeks ago we spoke here about Job, who could not find God when he looked to his left and right and ahead and behind.

But at some point we will need to get re-oriented – we cannot stay in a fetal position forever. The words I shared are there for me and I hope for you to help us to get our bearings and at least know where we might be headed. Yes, there will be many challenges. And yes, it may be worse even than our worst nightmares. Still we are called to be the Church. Still, we are called to continue in the work God has given us to do. That matters. And still we are at a season in the life of this congregation when we are seeking clarity around mission and purpose as we look to identify the next rector of this great parish. Don’t lose heart.

I want to invite you to come, today, any who so desire, to be anointed with oil that was previously blessed by our bishop. Healing is not magic. The oil won’t make it all better instantly. But it might remind you of the claim God has on you. We will skip over the creed today and the prayers of the people and confession. It’s ok – this is not a stealth move to remove them from the liturgy. Only today.  I invite you to pray silently, for yourself and others.

I’ll be up here with oil. Come if you so desire. If you remember back to last Sunday when we celebrated Holy Baptism on All Saints Sunday, we anointed that child, Colton, after the water, to remind him and his parents and godparents and ourselves that nothing can separate him from the love of God in Jesus. Nothing. That he has been sealed and marked and claimed, forever. No matter what.

And that’s true for every person here today. Whether you come forward or not for anointing, I invite you to spend this time in prayer for yourself, for those dear to you, for your neighbors including those who drive you crazy. Pray for family who will gather on Thanksgiving, knowing that this year might be a tense one. Pray for healing in this nation. Pray for this parish, that we will continue to grow together and toward a greater awareness of what we are called to be about in this time and place.

And if you would like, come forward to be anointed with this holy oil – an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace that reminds us all, through it all, that we are beloved.

For All The Saints

I grew up with a Baptist Grandmother. She was one of the many saints of my life. Both of my grandmothers, in different ways, were big influences on my spiritual life from an early age. But Esther Warner Simpson, my dad’s mother, was big on the Bible. One of the ways she showed love for her United Methodist grandchildren was to have us memorize Bible verses.

Jesus wept. That one was pretty easy! Just two words in the Revised Standard Version or, as she preferred, the King James Version. I like the New Revised translation that we used today better on most days, but it bums me out that they require four words when Jesus arrives at the grave of Lazarus, his friend: Jesus began to weep. I like the older version better. Jesus wept.

In any case, there is a lot going on in this liturgy today, one of the great days in the church year. Over the weekend, many of you have put pictures of loved ones and candles on the tables in the back and offering prayers for those who shaped our faith and now are among that great cloud of witnesses. I want to invite you to take a moment, whether or not their pictures are on one of those tables, to give thanks for their lives. Take a moment to celebrate what was good about their life and if there is any unfinished business, any lingering need for forgiveness and healing, offer that up to God as well on this day. We trust that in death, life is changed, not ended – so the relationships are still real and the bonds of love are stronger than death. I’ll give you ten seconds.

Just as we wept at the grave of our loved ones, so Jesus wept at the grave of his friend. Grief comes in waves and although time does help, it’s not exactly true that time heals all wounds. Jesus wept for the same reason we do: because death is hard.  Jesus called his friend out and they unbound him and let him go because love is stronger than death. We put our trust in that same truth that nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Jesus and in the love of God we share with those who have gone before us.

At the other end of the spectrum, today is one of those days when the Church celebrates Holy Baptism and we will do that here today. Baptism is about belonging, something we spoke about all last month in our stewardship journey. Today we say that Colton belongs to God – that he will be claimed and marked and sealed as God’s own. Forever. Nothing can change that. Nothing can separate him from the love of God. He will always have a home here and even when the Church doesn’t get it right, we dare to proclaim that Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so.

We promise to be a community of faith that shares that love with all the world. Today we will renew our own baptismal promises to be the Body of Christ, to be the People of God. So similarly, take a few moments to reflect on what you hope for today for this child and his generation in this town and around the planet – maybe for your own children and grandchildren. (Ten seconds)

But that’s not all, folks. That’s enough and that’s always what this holy day is about: birth and death and the love that binds us together into one great fellowship divine. It’s enough and honestly, although I love preaching, the liturgy holds all that today: those candles and photos of our loved ones, the water and the oil and not just one beloved child of God but a whole congregation full of them. What more needs to be said?

Well, I’m not going to belabor this, but in case you have forgotten, there will be a national election on Tuesday. The stakes are very high. I have strong opinions about this election, but those opinions are my own. I have thoughts I’m happy to share with anyone who asks me over a cup of coffee or a beer. But it is NOT my job to tell anyone of you how to use that precious right on Tuesday. I know some Christian leaders do that. I’m not personally afraid to do that, or worried about losing tax-exempt status: I just take very seriously that I am ordained to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, not to be a political operative.

And yet…

And yet, we do well to remember that Jesus lived and moved and had his being in the Roman Empire. He will be executed by the state. Jesus was “spiritual and religious.” The root word for religion is religio. It literally means to bind together. We can be spiritual on our own but we cannot be religious without others, to whom we are bound. For Jesus as a practicing Jew that was about a way of life, set apart. For us, bound together in Holy Baptism, it is also about a way of life. This way of life is about core values – those values found in The Baptismal Covenant. When we remember those, a vote becomes an expression of our identity, and a kind of prayer for the world that looks more and more like God’s will on earth as in heaven.

I want to say three things about this and then I will sit down. First, as this week unfolds, remember who you are and whose you are. Remember that we have promised and still promise to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being, no exceptions. We are a people who are called to seek and serve Christ in all persons, no exceptions.  

This is what our ancestors in the faith taught us, some of whose pictures are back on those tables and all of whom continue to cheer us on whenever we are in danger of losing hope. Always the two great commandments remain: love God and love neighbor. This is what we promise to teach Colton not only with our lips but in the way we live our lives. These promises are not for inside this building only, although that’s a pretty good start. We practice at vestry and committee meetings so that we can do it at home and work and yes, when we vote.

The second thing I want to say is that the opposite of faith is not doubt. Good old Thomas, the patron saint of Episcopalians everywhere, reminds us that doubts and questions can lead to deeper faith. Rather, the opposite of faith is fear. Fear divides us from one another. Fear appeals to our worst angels; faith appeals to our braver angels. We should vote based on our faith, not fear. Faith binds us together – religio; fear divides us.

Third: we may gather here next Sunday and still not yet know the results of the presidential election. It’s going to be very close and there are a lot of ballots (my own included) that went in early but will be counted late. We need to be patient at a time when the stakes are very high. But whatever happens and whenever we know of it, God will still be God and we will still be called to follow Jesus. The work God has given us to do is the work of reconciliation.

When I was an undergraduate in Washington DC in the 1980s, I used to go hang out on the Mall and in particular I’d hang with honest Abe Lincoln there and read the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural. I said earlier I liked the verse “Jesus wept” because it was short, but I’ll tell you that there was a point in my life when I could recite both of those speeches by heart.

You will remember that the second inaugural was on March 4, 1865, when the Civil War had bitterly divided this nation and almost rent it asunder. Lincoln appealed to the nation’s braver angels when he spoke these words, words I feel speak to us across the years to this time and place:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

My brothers and sisters, the work we are called to share in the name of the risen Christ means choosing wisely on Tuesday, choosing in a way that will lead us toward peace on earth and good will for all. Your faith and your life experience will inform how you see fit to vote. But that is your sacred right and it is not my job to tell you which bubbles to fill in.

But on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and next Sunday morning and beyond,  we have work to do together, as followers of Jesus. And it is my job, for a season, to proclaim the good news. It is my job, for a season, to be your pastor and to build up the Body of Christ here, always with God’s help.

With malice toward none and charity for all; firm in our convictions but knowing we don’t ever see fully, we are called to the work of healing and reconciliation, of binding up this nation’s wounds, of seeking and serving Christ in all persons, of respecting the dignity of everyone. No exceptions.