Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost

Preached on September 15, 2018
Preaching text: Mark 7:17-23

A couple weeks ago, reports came across our newsfeeds and TVs. Another mass shooting, this time at a video game tournament in Florida. Almost without pause to remember the dead and injured, the pundits were on to pontificate about the dangers of video game culture. Are these games turning our young people violent?

It was all even more ridiculous than usual. The game being played at the tournament was Madden Football, a game no more violent than the sport enjoyed by millions each weekend throughout the coming fall months. If a football video game makes people violent, how is it not the same for the millions of people watching the Ravens, the Cowboys, the Steelers, the Nittany Lions, the Hokies, and every peewee, midget, high school, college, and pro football game played across the country each weekend? That’s, of course, a question no one is supposed to raise, because it reveals the folly of this sort of scapegoating.

The real truth is one we don’t want to admit, so we cast about looking for any alternative, no matter how disprovable or ridiculous. The simple fact is, despite what we want to believe, is that people are not always innately good. Some are downright evil, selfish, and uncaring of others. And in a society where they have easy access to powerful weapons, violence of this sort is bound to happen. But the real problem, as Jesus points out, is the evil within each of us.

For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within.

That’s what we don’t want to admit to. That these evil things are within each one of us and sometimes we let them out to often disastrous consequences. This is sin. This is that which separates us one from another and from God. And none of us are immune.

Many years ago, I was rolling up a new character for a tabletop roleplaying game. It was a horror game and the premise was that we were all playing vampires. I was a little short on creativity at the time, so I asked myself a simple question. What sort of person would I be if I chose evil instead of good? That will be the character I play-act in this game.

It proved to be, at the same time, both one of the most enlightening exercises I’ve ever engaged and one of the most terrifying (perhaps that’s appropriate for a horror game were one is supposed to be scared.) My alter ego was NOT a nice person. He was ambitious, cruel, violent, lustful, angry, vengeful, and selfish. Everything I strive not to be. And yet, I came to realize, that WAS me if I had chosen a different course in life. That could still be me if I chose differently now. He was what I was capable of and it is not a pretty picture.

I’m not proud of that part of myself, but I can’t admit that it isn’t real. I keep it buried as much as I am able. That is the choice I make. I choose the good. I choose to, in as much as I am able, to follow in the footsteps of the one who also chose to give his life on a cross for my sake. When Jesus says to love my neighbor, help the helpless, love the unlovable, I seek to embrace that. That’s who I want to be. That’s who I choose to try to be.

And I suspect that’s true to varying degrees for all of us here present. We all have our dark sides. Some of us are more familiar with them than others. Some of us, perhaps with regret, have embraced that part of ourselves more than we should over the course of our lives. Others have been better at keeping that part of ourselves buried and inactive, perhaps even to the point where we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking we’re incapable of evil. But the truth is, we’re all sinners and we’ve all done evil, sometimes without even realizing it, with more frequency in our lives that we’d like to think about. We don’t want to be this way, and yet we are.

So what do we do about it? Well, the bad news is there’s not much we can. Because this is our inner nature, there will always be times when we let our dark sides slip out. An angry word, an impatient shortcut, a lustful glance, and hundreds of other manifestations plague us most every day. Some of us may even be capable of far worse, like shooting up a video game tournament. I certainly hope not, but that is part of who we are. Sinful, evil, broken, lost.

But that’s also why God did what we did. Christ came to conquer sin and evil with his love because we can’t. His devotion to God’s plan, one that drove him even to death on a cross, was to stand as proof of how far God will go to forgive our sins and Christ rising from the dead was proof that evil will not have the last word in our lives. Your sins are forgiven. God has seen to that.

And because of that sacrifice, because of the torment Christ endured for your sake and mine, we should not cheapen his endeavor by taking that forgiveness for granted. And while yes, even that would be forgiven by God’s immense grace, but what about the world around us? As the Jacksonville Madden Tournament gives testimony, there are a lot of people out there who do not choose the good. It falls to us to show them why they should. There is a better way than this horrible violence that we are seeing so often in our society. A better way than the hate and anger and fear that we see in so many.

You and I don’t want to live like that. We don’t because we have been taught by one who says that love and compassion is the answer. And we’ve seen that here in this place. Not everyone here agrees. Not everyone here has the same outlook or opinions. And yet, for the most part, we live in harmony. This doesn’t just have to be within these walls. Yes, there is evil within all of us, but also imago dei, made in the image of God and there is good too. Help the world choose the good. Amen.