“The Day When Evil Wins”

Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – October 4, 2020

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 19:1-11; Matthew 21:33-46

 

    Today, we are going to consider one of Jesus' darker parables.  Jesus was wise enough to consider the possibility that there will come times when evil people will triumph over the people who stand for love and compassion.  The title of my message this morning reflects this possibility.  However, the word "Day" appears in the title indicating that when this happens the period of time has a beginning and an end. 

    As we have discussed before, all cultures rise and disappear. Once Egypt dominated world history, then Greece, Persia, Rome, and on down to our modern age.  Every nation during the many cycles of history has experienced its modern age.  Always history is filled with the good guys and the bad guys. No matter how advanced the culture may be the appearance of this duality happens.

    When I was a child, I was awakened from my sleep by a lot of talking and laughing in the living room of our parsonage.  This was a most unusual experience for our normally quiet home. In the morning, I was the first to get up.  I discovered what caused the noise during the night.  Cheverly's Trustees surprised my parents by giving them our first television set.  It was a small black and white TV, among the first of its kind made by DuMont.  Initially, I did not know what it was.     

    In time, I became addicted to watching cartoons. I can recall Mighty Mouse who began his show by flying through the sky singing, "Here I come to save the day.  You know that Mighty Mouse is on the way."  One could always be confident that the good guys would win.  The bad guys were easily recognized by the rough, mean-spirited sound of their voices.  Right on time, Mighty Mouse always saved the day just as Superman would do much later in my childhood. 

    When my babysitters would read to me the fairytales that were created by the Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen or the German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the good guys in most cases would win over the wicked witches. I grew up believing that the good guys would always triumph over the evil plans of bad guys.

    As a child I never considered why there were two kinds of people.  I grew up with the idea that there must always be a savior, whether it was Tom Selleck's Magnum P.I. or RoboCop.  There was always the need to have a savior come to save the day.  That theme goes back for thousands of years.

    When Jesus came, he brought with him the knowledge that there are two worlds.  The problem was that one of those worlds was invisible.  Jesus was one of the first pioneers to live in that invisible world while also living in the one to which all humanity has grown accustomed.  However, in our world, sometimes evil wins.  We know this as a fact because it was men who crucified Jesus.

    The parable that we have before us this morning tells how the tenant farmers killed two groups of men sent by the owner of the vineyard to collect his portion of the vineyard's profits. Finally, they killed the owner's own son. Jesus concluded his dark parable with these words from a Psalmist:

The stone which the builders rejected as worthless turned out to be the most important of all.  This was done by the Lord; what a wonderful sight it is. This is the day of the Lord's victory.  Let us be happy and rejoice.  (Psalm 118:22f) 

    Jesus continued:

I tell you The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to people who know how to produce good fruits. The Chief Priests and Pharisees knew that Jesus was talking about them, so they tried to arrest him.  However, they became fearful of the crowd who considered Jesus a prophet. (Matthew 21:43f)

    It is amazing that today we still have the good guys and the bad guys in our midst.  The two groups can never seem to get along.  Could it be that this is the way our world was created?  Every strong-willed spirit that incarnates into this world, strives for what he or she wants for everyone else.  Jesus was no exception. 

    Jesus wanted everyone to live in his world where each individual could live according to the Golden Rule.  Yet, to the people who live only in the competitive world of winners and losers, Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you."

    Jesus' world had to do with one thing: Helping the behavior and attitudes of people to find spiritual freedom.  They did so by anchoring their spirits in the bedrock of loving energy that they always directed toward others.  Building their lives on a solid rock separated them from others who have built their lives on what will always be changing. (Matthew 7:7:24f) What Jesus brought had little to do with the organized body of believers in the Church.

    As early as the Apostle Paul, there were divisions among the groups of believers.  (I Corinthians 3:3b-4) Throughout the Church's history the good guys and the bad guys existed together. History is quite clear on this thought. 

    Pope Leo X was as corrupt as most of his priests, a condition in the body of believers that inspired the resistance from Martin Luther which gave birth to the Reformation. Luther would have been killed by an order from the Pope were it not for Luther's association with King Frederich, Elector of Saxony who protected him. 

    We can assume that Jesus knew about this separation of the good guys and the bad guys. Jesus said, "Let the wheat and the weeds grow together.  Separate them at the harvest." (Matthew 13:30)

    He also knew that the world was perfect for what it was designed to do.  Without the dualism that separates the quality of individuals, we would never have choices to make.  We need light and darkness, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, as well as our struggling for material prosperity instead of pursuing spiritual maturity. (Matthew 6:19)

    Jesus gave us a consistent, never changing instrument by which to evaluate our attitudes – his dying body on a cross where he quietly prayed for his enemies, "Father forgive them, they have no idea what they are doing." (Luke 23:34) Jesus' living in the invisible world gave him a power that is available to all of us.  This power gave him the ability to overcome the bad guys and their world. (John 16:33b)

    All of us have a choice to be or not to be when it comes to expressing unconditional love to others who may not deserve it.  Equally, it is absolutely amazing how real the energies of the physical world appear to be. They can easily seduce the best of us to walk on the dark side.

    Again, the world is perfect for what it was designed to do. The harvest comes when we graduate from this life and we stand in judgement of ourselves in the realm of our origin.   God allows us to learn from our physical experiences.  We might have failed miserably even by human standards.

    Once spirit-beings leave this world, they may ask themselves, "What was it that caused me to behave and feel the way I did during my journey in the physical world?"  Their sojourn offered them countless paths to walk that will cease to exist the moment they pass from this world to the next.  It was the choices made in total ignorance of their true identity that governed the quality of their experiences. Remember, we lose most of the memory of our former selves soon after our incarnation into the physical world.

    This understanding has been missed by the organized body of believers. If we thoroughly knew the maze of choices that would come up for us in the visible world, there would be no reason to incarnate.  Our authentic identities will always remain intact even when we choose to be one of the bad guys.

    God is never disappointed with any of us as many of the faithful and their priests believe. God does not have human emotions as many people have assumed from Old Testament times.  Loving energy becomes a very different presence once we understand the way divinity communicates. 

    God would never allow our eternal destiny to be determined by our responses in a world that does not exist.  This understanding of reality was recognized by an extremely insightful Psalmist who was talking to God:

I could ask the darkness to hide me, or the light around me to turn into night, but even darkness is not dark to you, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are the same to you. (Psalm 139:11-12)

    We do not often find such an understanding in the Scriptures.  Jesus said, "There are so many things that I wish I could tell you, but right now, you would never understand it." (John 16:12) This is where our hope, faith, and trust enter to support the love that we freely give, even to the bad guys.

    We are living in a movie that cannot ultimately hurt us. No punishment awaits any of us for our mistakes even if we were a powerful archangel. Such a spirit-being instantly learned how humbling it is to have dedicated most of its life to grasping for temporal power that was both meaningless and useless.  (Matthew 16:26) While in the flesh, that spirit-being ignored the opportunity of being fully alive in its limited form by forsaking the substance for the shadow.

    This can happen to any of us because this material world is all that many people understand. Jesus came to be a teacher of the students who would follow him since all of us find ourselves in life's maze of multiple-choice paths.  Are we paying attention to this teacher? More than that, are we doing our individual homework?

     

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER

Thank you, God, for bringing opportunities into our lives where we can express understanding, kindness, and generosity.  When Jesus came among us, his message was simple – extend your hope among the troubled, your compassion among the lonely, and your friendship among those who feel lost. Jesus did not mind washing the feet of his followers.   He found value in the one leper among ten who returned to say, "Thank you."  He felt compassion toward the widow who gave away everything that she had to the Temple.  Inspire us to make visible in our lives the teachings of your son.  Amen. 

     

PASTORAL PRAYER

Loving God, we are so grateful that in our blindness to some forms of truth, you still lead us.  We are grateful that during times when we do not understand life, you know that there is nothing of which we ever need to be afraid.  We are grateful that when our minds are challenged by so many unanswered questions, we understand that you never lose control over any aspect of creation. 

We are so troubled by people that appear to have no regard for the value of human life. We find innocent people suffering in so many places due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus. We cannot make sense of what is happening in our world where so many people are unhappy with their lives and their nation's governing bodies.  We sense frustration when our world leaders find few solutions that might heal humanity's lack of trust in each other.  What we do know is that we are living in a world being guided by our trust that you can make sense of all of it. 

There are those of us who desire to make visible your vision for humankind.  We do not need to know how the story ends before we become loving-participants in life's drama.  We do not need to make sense out of our experiences for us to express the truth that we know.  We do not need to have clarity to any outcome before we become a healer with our responses.  As we come to the table this morning with Christians around the world, help us to understand that our combined strength is the leaven for the loaf that humanity represents. We pray these thoughts through the loving spirit of Jesus who taught us to say when we pray . . .