Confronting Evil with Love and Forgiveness

Jesus was very aware there is evil in the world and it needs to be named and very often for some reason in our more secular culture it's just hard for people to use that word and then periodically things happen so when we see what happened in Israel babies being beheaded um innocent people elderly people being kidnapped held as hostages held uh to be used by Hamas as human Shields um that is barbaric and it's great evil and it needs to be condemned and cried out as such. [00:01:40]

Part of what Jesus points out is uh that evil does not just exist it is in me, sometimes we'll look at events like that and think what kind of person could do that and Jesus's teachings the teaching of the Bible is there is none that is righteous no not one all we like sheep have gone astray and uh I've grown up in a certain kind of culture other people have grown up in different kinds of culture with different kinds of suffering and they have been exposed to levels of brutality and violence. [00:02:20]

There is tremendous complexity with this evil it gets into systems and powers and principalities that are Beyond any one person's ability to control so part of what is so difficult for us when we look at what's going on in the Middle East right now is there is Israel and we think of the Holocaust and what the Jews have gone through uh over the centuries often at the hands of those of us who call ourselves Christians and then there are the Palestinians and so many of them have lost their homes and grow up in great poverty or without much education. [00:03:19]

Jesus was keenly aware of the role of government in life and he quite explicitly rejected the notion of playing the role of government people tried to make him King and he fled from that and he said things like my kingdom is not of this world and that you ought to pay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar but then pay to God what belongs to God not everything belongs to Caesar. [00:05:13]

The teaching here is not saying that governments are always right clearly early Christians themselves sometimes defy the government we must obey God rather than human beings but as a general rule because of the existence of sin and our capacity to hurt each other God has instituted government to have the power of the sword that is to be able to coerced to be able to put people in prison to be able to use uh physical means to establish justice and the idea is that there to do that to keep people safe uh for there to be deterrence so that people will be discouraged from the kind of violence that we have seen. [00:06:12]

Jesus was also keenly aware of what it is to suffer and to suffer at the hands of an unjust government and it's important to remember as we look at this situation um Jesus life was not like mine Jesus was not buffered from the problems of violence Middle East has been suffering from uh just a powderkeg of violence for a long time and it was in Jesus day at that time Israel was oppressed by Rome and it was a very brutal Society. [00:07:03]

In the midst of that violence and oppression there were a number of responses real quickly um there were some people who were committed to violently overthrowing it and they were the Zealot they were called the Zealot sometimes called the sicker that was the word for daggerman people sometimes wonder with Judas es scariot was he one of those people and we don't know we do know that one of the disciples was Simon the Zealot and then there were other people whose response to Rome was we just want to withdraw from them. [00:08:48]

There were other people that basically got co-opted by them that colluded together with them the tax collectors were this way the Sadducees people who ran the temple for the most part were pretty much colluding together with the Romans to profit from them and then there's Jesus and people could not figure out what category you put him in his response was nope we're not going to I'm not going to kill him not going to try to knife him and I'm not going to withdraw from I'm not going to run away and hide from them and uh I'm not going to collude with them I'm going to love them and I'm going to love all of these people. [00:09:15]

The foundation of his teaching is that um the most important dimension of reality is the existence of love the most important uh priority of Ethics is the priority of love and we are to pursue that above all to love someone is to will their good and we are always to do that evil is to will the bad for someone and Jesus says God is so good God is love so that no matter what evil thing a person does God does not cease to be loving God never Wills the bad and we are to be that way. [00:10:24]

Jesus's response was not to try to seize power it was to go to the cross and the cross is the ultimate expression of the power of forgiveness do not pay back Evil by evil do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good now how we try to apply that politically how people who have governmental power the power of the sword do is work I'll talk about that a little bit more next time it's not always easy clear or simple but understand Jesus was not being naive the power of forgiveness the power to love is a power in life that is in infinitely greater than the power of the sword coercive power. [00:11:17]

The hope of our world does not lie in politics or military strength we want to pray for what's happening in the Middle East Nancy and I are giving to the Red Cross right now just to try to help there to be relief from suffering in that part of the world you can ask God God what do you want me to do to try to be helpful here but the ultimate hope Remains the man on the cross and to love and to forgive those are not naive that is the power that alone can redeem the human race and we get to be a part of that this day this day this day forgive us our. [00:12:16]