The Episcopal Church of the Epiphany

Third Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 6C, June 13, 2010

Eternal God, in whose Kingdom no strength is known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad Your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and forever. Amen.

An idea that has been generated in Christianity-actually by some of the church's greatest theologians like Thomas Aquinas and Tertullian-is that one of the greatest experience of bliss for those who get to heaven will be to see the just punishment of those who have done evil in this mortal life, those who are damned.

But if this were true, heaven would not be all that different from this world, and in fact, as some have said in response to this view, it would just be another version of hell. C. S. Lewis clearly conceives and portrays a very different understanding of heaven in his wonderful novel, The Great Divorce.

I agree with those who think a great story can portray the truth better than any other medium. That is why the Bible is so powerful; it tells the truth in story form.

The people in C. S. Lewis' story have died and they are in a life after death kind of existence. At the beginning the existence they are in is very banal and meaningless, but they get the opportunity to leave.

They get the opportunity to board a bus, and they are all very anxious to get a seat on the bus even though they don't know where it will take them. This bus takes them to an extraordinarily beautiful place.

But it is a place they are not prepared for, physically or mentally. The grass that is so astonishingly green is too much for them; it hurts their feet to walk on it. Water is the same way, everything is the same way; they don't have the bodies or the mentality to endure this world. Their bodies and minds as yet are too unsubstantial.

But the great, substantial and wonderful beings-the people who exist in this place-are so completely loving and willing to help these new arrivals develop what they each individually need to develop in order to live and remain in this huge and wonderful existence.

Yet some of these wonderful, substantial beings are people they knew in their mortal life. Some are even members of their family. Many of these people are ones that they had issues with in their previous life.

Some of the new arrivals are frankly shocked to see these people from their past life living here and looking so beautiful and doing so well. They probably thought they would be in hell rather than in this place.

And the problem these new arrivals face is, they don't like seeing this and they don't want to give up various beliefs and aspects of themselves in order to do what they need to do to develop the attributes and qualities they must have to live in this heaven.

They certainly don't want to forgive those who they see there, those who have hurt them in their previous life, even though that person very sincerely expresses regret and love and has a deep desire to help the new arrival make the transformation that is necessary stay there.

Others don't want to give up strongly held opinions of how things work or should work. One of these new arrivals is a bishop who is just appalled to find his theological opinions are not all that important or significant, or even correct.

He makes the decision that if this is how this place works, he is just going to board the bus and go back to the previous banal existence he had just left.

One man in the story was willing to have a beautiful and loving being remove from him his addiction to lust, but he had to be totally willing for that to occur, even though he was told it wouldn't be an easy experience. He found it to be liberating and was overcome with joy.

The thing is, no one could exist in this beautiful, loving and glorious world if that person desired to cling to anything that was not of love, of forgiveness, or embraced any type of exploitation of another being or clung to any belief system that maintained a feeling of superiority or arrogance.

To live in this heaven people had to give up the often deeply satisfying desire to see justice served, that is, to see those they had deemed as evil, punished. And we all know it is such a normal desire to see justice served. It is part of our makeup, so it can't be entirely wrong.

When we read the story of what Jezebel did to Naboth, who of us doesn't want to see justice occur in response to that kind of evil? Who doesn't want to see justice occur in response to all sorts of evil we hear every day on the news? How can this be wrong?

From time to time I am asked the question, "Do you think evil really exists?" Well, yes, I do. If it doesn't why did Jesus teach us to pray, "deliver us from evil?"

Evil does exist and evil systems exist. If we couldn't believe in some kind of justice, what would be left is hopelessness and despair.

But the problem is, we all can be inadvertently and unconsciously part of evil systems, and so part of that prayer, I think, is asking God to help us see how that occurs? Help us see what keeps evil systems alive and well. Fear? Greed? Help us see how we participate.

I've just read the book, The Help by Kathryn Stockett a novel about segregation, and now I am reading Island Beneath the Sea, by Isabel Allende a story about slavery. All of the people in these two stories were not evil, but they sure participated in evil systems, just as we do.

The B. P. Oil disaster-is evil involved? Greed certainly seems to be involved. But you know, if the evil that comes from greed is involved, how do we participate?

Some things seem to be very clear-cut and obvious where evil is concerned; but other situations, they are not so clear as we might like to believe.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, "If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

We don't tend to acknowledge what Solzhenitsyn said here. When we pray, "deliver us from evil," we are not really praying to help us see our own hearts or deliver us from our own hearts.

David Loy, a university professor and Zen Buddhist, had this to say in an article for Tricycle magazine: "We all love the struggle between good (us) and evil (them).

"It is, in its own way, deeply satisfying. Think of the plots of the James Bond films, the Star Wars films, the Indiana Jones films. In such movies, it's quite obvious who the bad guys are.

"Caricatures of evil, they are ruthless, maniacal, without remorse, and so they must be stopped by any means necessary. We are meant to feel that it is okay-even, to tell the truth, pleasurable-to see violence inflicted upon them.

"Because the villains like to hurt people, it's okay to hurt them. Because they like to kill people, it's okay to kill them. After all, they are evil and evil must be destroyed."

There are people, like Jezebel who embody the caricatures of evil, but let's take a look at the woman who fell at Jesus' feet weeping and wiping his feet with her hair. If you really think about it, that was quite a spectacle.

We should really be clear here; her life-style and her behavior were obviously disgusting to all who were present, all except Jesus.

Let's consider, who do we invite to dinner parties? Who would be our guest of honor? What would we expect out of that person and our other guests; a certain kind of decorum I should think.

How would we feel about some uninvited person, say a prostitute, or a drug addict or a street person crashing our party and acting in a totally inappropriate manner? I mean, this woman's behavior was over the top. And what if our guest of honor just seemed to encourage it?

Most of us in this situation would see it in a pretty clear-cut manner; these people made the choices in their lives that brought them to their degrading situation, (the word "sin" is not really popular). But they clearly have missed the mark.

We haven't made choices like that. We are good upstanding citizens, pay our bills, our taxes, have jobs, go to church, etc. Why would Jesus seem to prefer someone like that woman, over the Pharisee who worked very hard to obey every aspect of the Law and was obviously an upstanding citizen?

In C. S. Lewis' conception of heaven, why would we expect to see this appalling woman there, transformed and beautiful, helping someone like that Pharisee to develop in order to be able to remain? Why would we see the Pharisee and others at the dinner party choose to board the bus and go back to a banal existence?

The Pharisee was confined and defined by his self-image, as were the other guests. He also had defined in his mind who Jesus was, or certainly should be. And so he was not able to see himself truthfully, and he was not able to see who Jesus was, this amazingly loving being who was in his presence. They weren't willing to accept the Good News He brought. That Good News is, Jesus came for everyone, to save everyone, and to offer Heaven to everyone, no matter what their circumstances, because none of us can claim to be innocent!

The woman who crashed the party wept with joy and gratitude, because she was able to see what was being offered and who was offering it. She was able to see this pure presence of love in her midst, and so she chose heaven.

But if a person like her could be seen as acceptable and could get into heaven, then this Pharisee sure didn't want that and refused such a place that would accept someone so unworthy.

And so he chose to board the bus and keep his confined and defined self-image in tact, and go back to an existence of banality and meaninglessness for eternity. That's the choice. Heaven is a choice we can all make. Amen.