Resisting Evil

by Chris Chivers

[Ed. Note: This article is based on a sermon that was originally preached at Westminster Abbey on February 29, 2004 .]

The story of Jesus' temptation has for centuries been heard at this point in the church's year, its placement evoking characteristically Lenten resonances: fasting, forty days, the wilderness. But the resonance that the evangelist Luke perhaps most offers has always tended to be overlooked in the Church's haste to impress a Lenten discipline on the faithful.

The traditional focus has thus been very much on the inner life of the believer, rigorously explored for forty days of prayer, penitence, and self-denial. The aim, the cultivation of souls fit to enjoy the elation of Easter, the resurrection life of the saved. All of which is no doubt good for us. A wilderness experience – time spent focusing on the inner life – can indeed be a valuable thing. It can help us to begin to resolve – or at least to explore anew – some of the tensions of everyday life – the gap between what we say we believe and what we actually do, between what we claim to be and what we actually are.

But such an inward looking focus can also lead to an introspection which is often lop-sided, even dangerous. Lop-sided because working away at the inner life can so often simply mean evasion of the world. Dangerous because it may lend itself to a kind of spiritual narcissism, at once self-centered and ultimately self-indulgent. But Luke, as I've said, offers us an antidote to narcissism. And he does so in that telling line with which his version of the temptation story ends. Matthew has Jesus led into the wilderness by the spirit to be tempted by the devil. And the experience is very much an inner thing. It goes on in his head and his heart. And when it's over “suddenly angels come and wait on him.”

But Luke's perspective is very different. The battle on the inside – to conquer temptation – is but a picture in miniature of the epic tussle on the outside between the powers of evil – that Paul also refers to in I Corinthians – and the all-conquering power of God. So Luke ends the temptations with a very different line. No guardian angels here. When the devil has finished every test he departs from Jesus until an opportune time.

And that opportune time is of course the time of Jesus' passion and death when the devil, the powers, the forces of evil will attack Jesus not simply with tempting words and ideas, but with a whip, a crown of thorns, a hammer and nails, and a spear.

Luke's narrative sets a very different context for our experience of Lent. And this context is Jesus' consistent engagement throughout his ministry – our engagement in our lives – not simply with the forces within, but those without. With the reality of forces which bind and shackle, which oppress and destroy, which wrongly suggest to people across the world that they are powerless.

In this sense, Luke's narrative sets a very different context for our experience of Lent. And this context is Jesus' consistent engagement throughout his ministry – our engagement in our lives – not simply with the forces within, but those without. With the reality of forces which bind and shackle, which oppress and destroy, which wrongly suggest to people across the world that they are powerless.

But it's not, of course, the case that Luke has got it right and somehow Matthew has got things a bit skewed. The truth lies in the complimentary nature of both tellings of the story: the connection they force us to make and to confront between the sin and evil that eats away inside each one of us, and the systems of evil that appear to be objective realities, to be out there and to be overpowering us, but which are of course intimately linked to those ways in which we do or do not succumb to the sin and evil within.

And in this regard we must face one of the great fallacies of our age – it springs directly from our inability to recognize and to live out this connection – the fallacy and myth that what we do has no effect on the big picture.

Most of us understand the first of the temptations. We see that to use power merely for our own ends, to meet our needs at the expense of others, this is a bad thing. It leads to a world of selfishness and greed; a world of inequality and injustice. We can get hold of that. We might not be awfully good at addressing it. But we can at least understand it. And, at best, we can even do something about it. We can buy Fair Trade coffee or tea and start to redress the balance – in however small a way.

But when we reach the second temptation we begin to falter a bit. We know enough history to have worked out that power amassed for the creation of world dominance is power that is inevitably corrupted sooner rather than later. Massive empires – whatever they claim – are never run for the good of all. They always lead to oppression of minorities – if not of everyone. But what's that to do with us? Our vote won't make much of a difference. Our voice won't be heard in the corridors of power. These are things for the big people of the world.

And as we falter here so we stumble towards the third temptation – the one we hear invoked whenever things are really badly skewed – that God is on our side, that he is protecting us, and will make sense of it all. So we can leave it with him. Or even the reverse, that none of those things are true. That God has somehow taken the role of Her Majesty's Opposition, and is against us, is our opponent, our adversary.

We've long-since given up on believing that we can do anything to influence events. And we've certainly long-since given up on God. We've stopped listening to him, believing that his voice – heard in its own terms – counts for anything. We've stopped perceiving, both within and without, that the battle against evil is a joint enterprise.

All of which leads us to succumb to the greatest temptation of all, apathy. Since whether God is for us or against us matters very little when we've reached this point. We've long since given up on Fair Trade. It's but a pathetic drop in a massive ocean. We've long-since given up on believing that we can do anything to influence events. And we've certainly long-since given up on God. We've stopped listening to him, believing that his voice – heard in its own terms – counts for anything. We've stopped perceiving, both within and without, that the battle against evil is a joint enterprise. It's God's and ours. We don't, in fact, think that it can be fought at all.

But if that's now sounding a bit theoretical, let me take you to a Sunday morning beside the pool of the Hotel des Milles-Collines in Kigali, Rwanda. The year is 1994. Pre-lunch drinks are being served. Around the pool are gathered an odd assortment of folk. Smartly-dressed foreign diplomats, government soldiers with their rifles, leading Hutu businessmen and a smattering of government ministers and civil servants. A handful of blue-bereted UN troops stand together, close to a group of waitresses – we'll call them that, though they in fact double as high class escorts for the bourgeoisie. There are some aid workers and a few journalists and cameramen from around the world. The talk is rather mute – whispered, in fact. The call has gone up for loyal Rwandans – for which, read: Hutus – to join the battle against the inkotanyi, the cockroaches – for which, read: Tutsis. This has been heard on the local Hutu radio station – it bears the same name as the hotel, Milles Collines. “The grave is only half full,” the commentator has said, “Who will help us fill it?” This is dismissed by some as rhetoric. A group at one table laugh it off as ridiculous nonsense. “It is imperative that we maintain our dignity,” says one of the civil servants. “These are times of great change. In a few months things will come right.” As some of the diplomats join him the conversation changes to the time not far off when they will be recalled from their postings. “Thank God for that,” one says.

All the while the government soldiers eye some of the waitresses, most of whom are Tutsis. “They'll be dead, soon enough,” one mutters. “We'll enjoy them while we can.” A journalist hears the comment and is clearly disturbed by it but lets it pass. Noting his distressed facial expression, one of the waitresses approaches him. “Please help me, Sir. I have Hutu papers but they say that I look like a Tutsi.” The journalist knows what this means. They arrange to meet later. Others at the poolside sip their drinks and exchange disapproving glances.

A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. To those who know the novel of that name by Gil Courtemanche, I apologize for the way in which I have conflated snatches of its narrative. But to those who don't know it, I recommend it as Lenten reading. It's not in the least bit comfortable. In fact much of the narrative is shocking – repulsively confronting – and its powerful depiction of genocide through the medium of fiction makes it doubly so. But I can guarantee that as you follow its horrific contours, through 100 nights ten years ago that left 800,000 people rotting on the streets of Rwanda; 100 nights during which most of the world focused on other things – you won't be able to avoid the truth which that one journalist at the poolside seemed to grasp, namely that when we've ceased believing that we can make a difference, however small, when we've stopped connecting the inner life with the outer reality of the world, when we've given up on a sense that anything matters beyond self-preservation, then all we're left with is Calvary.

But like the man at the poolside who arranged to meet that waitress to try and help her – a meeting in Coutemanche's novel that transforms life for both of them – we all know that Calvary isn't, in fact, the end of the story. And when we resist evil – in however small a way – we proclaim that. We send out a ripple of hope that will one day reverberate through the whole world. Because we promise that though evil may be waiting for an opportune time, we won't avert our gaze, we will be there to meet it, and to defeat it, with the only means we have, the power of sacrificial love. Amen.

The Rev. Chris Chivers is Minor Canon and Precentor at Westminster Abbey. His regular column on “A Globe of Witnesses” is Tell It Slant . Chris may be reached by email at Chris.Chivers@westminster-abbey.org .