One of the questions I ask of parents in a baptism service is “Desiring the freedom of new life in Christ, do you seek to resist evil, and to live in love and justice?”. A more traditional wording might be something like “Trusting the gracious mercy of God, will you turn from the forces of evil, and renounce their power?” (some traditions might simply say Satan instead of the forces of evil). Very similar (if not exactly the same) questions are asked in a Re-Affirmation of Baptism/Confirmation service. Part of entering the Christian family is recognizing the need to resist evil in the world.
What does that mean, to resist evil? It is my experience that United Church folk do not like to use that word, evil, very much. We love to talk about seeking justice. Indeed as a denomination with deep roots in the Social Gospel movement it sometimes seems that a particular understanding of seeking justice is our primary raison d’etre. But what about the second half of the sentence? What are we resisting as we seek justice?
In her book Inspired the late Rachel Held Evans talks about the various types of stories she finds in Scripture. Last night I finished reading about Fish Stories, next I will read about Church Stories. One of the earlier chapters was about Resistance Stories. In that chapter Evans reminds the reader that there is a consistent thread of resistance that runs at least from Exodus to Revelation. Over and over again the people of God resist various empires that are actively working against God’s vision of the world. I think that thread of resistance continues to this very day.
As people who follow The Way of Christ we resist those people and forces and systems that work stand in contradiction to the Reign of God. That is what it means to me to say we resist evil. Evil is a word we use to describe those things that work against the abundant life for all of God’s children promised in the life, ministry, teaching, death and resurrection of Christ. Conveniently (and I am sure wholly coincidentally) the English word evil is the mirror image of LIVE. Evil stands against life. As people called to celebrate life, to live life to its fullest, to help all our neighbours live life to its fullest, we have no choice but to resist evil.
And how do we do that exactly? Part of it is by telling and remembering the stories. When we tell the stories of our faith, when we remember the hope and the promise we hold up a different vision of the world. When we tell the stories and we look at how the stories intersect with our lives we find the strength and courage to stand in the face of Empire and proclaim a bold new world. We also resist evil by sharing our worlds of hope and love and resistance. Empire never gets defeated if nobody challenges it. So we challenge. We challenge all those “isms” of our world that degrade and attack and dehumanize our neighbours. We challenge the assumptions that there have to be winners and losers, where the winners triumph on the backs of the losers. We resist evil as we seek justice. We are not satisfied to challenge the way things are, we are not satisfied to share a dream or a vision, we actively seek ways to help bring the vision to reality. We actively change the story of our world, we change the rhetoric, we change the assumptions. And there is one more piece...
Look again at those questions in the first paragraph, particularly the second one. It asks about turning from evil. Other wordings of the question ask the candidate (or their parents) to renounce Satan/the forces of evil. We can only be honest about our attempts to resist evil if we are willing to acknowledge that at some times and in some ways we have been and are complicit in that evil. Resisting evil and seeking justice is never only about changing them. It always involves being honest about who we are and opening ourselves to change. That is the path to new life. It is hard to advocate for systemic or structural change. It is harder to admit that we are a part of those systems and structures.
May God help us all to resist evil and seek justice – both out
there and in side our own communities, inside our own homes, inside
our own selves. And may God’s will be done, God’s Kingdom come,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Gord
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