The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

UUCS Sermons
Sermon by the Reverend Richard R. Davis

            One bitterly cold Saturday morning a little over a year ago I drove here for a meeting.  It was so cold that instead of driving into our entrance as I normally do I stopped my car by the mailbox so I wouldn’t have to walk back out to get the mail later on.  As I was getting back in the car I noticed something out of the corner of my eye by the entrance.   I walked over and discovered that about thirty tire spikes had been carefully placed in our driveway so as not to be noticed by incoming drivers.  This unexpected sight took me a few moments to register emotionally.  Someone – I don’t know who – had taken the time to make these tire spikes with small squares of plywood and roofing nails and then place them here very carefully with the malicious intent of puncturing our tires as we entered.   Someone – I’ve never learned who – doesn’t like us and means to do us harm.  Hopefully, by now they’ve let go of this hate and anger and moved on in their lives.

            Since I was able to remove all the tire spikes, no physical damage was caused, but it did cause a slight spiritual wound.  Now we live with the feeling that there may be someone in our community who may hate us, who may still wish to do us harm.  In the grand scheme of things this was a minor offense, but for me it was a stark reminder of a troubling aspect of life.   Traditionally, theologians call this the mystery of evil because they cannot adequately explain its origins. 

            In the cycle of the year we are near the time - before Easter - when our sisters and brothers of the Christian tradition consider this troubling mystery as they commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus – that gruesome time long ago when sharp nails punctured not mere tires but living human flesh.   It may sound heretical to say this – but that’s OK because we’ve always been known for thinking outside other people’s theological boxes – but Jesus has no monopoly on being crucified.  Lots of folks throughout history have met similar, if not worse, fates than being nailed to a cross.  It’s dreadful and disheartening to consider the scope of such human to human cruelty. 

            Since I’ve already gone out on a heretical limb this morning, let me just climb all the way out there and say this:  You and I have also been crucified on some smaller crosses at some points in our lives.  We bear the psychic wounds to prove it, although they are generally hidden from plain sight.  Each one of us has, at one time or another, borne the brunt of some sharp cruel word or action - something that really punctured your heart and hurt you.  It may have hurt you so badly that you can’t even remember this or face it.   Most of us, if not every person in this room, have been the innocent victim of some cruel, mean spirited word or action.   And it really did hurt us.  

            So you know, deep down in your heart, that you live in a world in which you could get nailed again.   Jesus certainly knew there were sharp thorns hiding in the beautiful rose bushes and warned his disciples “be as wise as serpents (i.e., don’t let down your guard because the world is a dangerous place) and as innocent as doves (i.e., don’t let fear cloud your spiritual vision because the life and the world are a beautiful place).  It’s a balancing act.  Lean too far one way and you fall into the realm of paranoia; lean too far the other way and you fall into the realm of dangerous vulnerability.         

            It all makes you wonder – why do people crucify others?  What could possibly motivate people to inflict such gratuitous pain on others and make the world feel like a perilous abode?   The answer to that question has befuddled greater theological minds than mine, and I won’t be able to put all the pieces of this mysterious puzzle together and propose a sure fire cure for global evil this morning. 

Yet I do see one significant piece of this puzzle.  Strange to say it’s the exact opposite of what you might expect.  It doesn’t have a toxic evil aura or come with some moral warning label.   In fact, this piece of the puzzle has a very good and beautiful appearance.  Call it righteousness.  When you really see and recognize righteousness, you want it for yourself.  Unless your conscience is completely asleep you naturally want to be a righteous person – that is, someone who lives in accordance with the highest values and principles you know.   Traditionally, the righteous person is the one who lives a life that is pleasing to God.  Whether you do it to please God or your highest self, the desire to be righteous is a noble and holy aspiration. 

This desire for righteousness is what led Jesus’ disciples to drop their fishing nets, let go of their former mundane lives and follow him on this high spiritual adventure throughout Galilee .   These disciples recognized Jesus as the most righteous person they had ever seen or imagined could exist, and they followed him because they wanted to glow with the same aura of true righteousness.

They followed him and learned from him. His vision of the beloved community became their vision.  His mission to heal the sick and the brokenhearted became their mission.  The longer they were with Jesus the more righteous they became.  They knew beyond all doubt that they were on a mission ordained by God. 

The time came for them to head to Jerusalem for Passover.  (cf. w/ Luke 9: 51-56)  On their journey they entered a Samaritan village.   Now from the perspective of the Samaritans, Jesus and his disciples were headed in the wrong direction – the Samaritans regarded Mount Gerazim up to the north as the true place for God’s pilgrims to go, not down south to Jerusalem .  So these small minded Samaritan villagers refused to give Jesus and his disciples hospitality.  

In that ancient Semitic culture refusing hospitality was a grievous insult.  Naturally enough, the disciples seethed with righteous indignation – imagine, refusing hospitality to Jesus!   So the disciples marched up to Jesus and asked if he wanted them to call down the wrath of heaven and completely scorch these Samaritans, just remove this malignant tumor of a village off the body of earth.  They were all primed to seek divine vengeance, but then Jesus rebuked them for wishing such a thing. 

What caused the disciples to be filled with such murderous rage?  Well, while they weren’t paying attention, their righteousness had imperceptibly mutated into a dangerous condition known as self righteousness.  Self righteousness often arises when we take our noble altruism and offer it to the world and we get rejected, put down, dismissed, ignored or even persecuted.  Say you discover something good and true and wonderful that really does work for you.  A new spiritual path, or a righteous cause that seeks to bring peace and justice into the world, or a new way to live so as to help heal the earth.  It works for you and you just know it can also work for others, if only they will listen to you.   You become very attached to the idea of others buying into this – it’s now your baby.

So often, however, other people just don’t get what you get, they don’t see the light, or they don’t act, or vote, or get involved like you know they should if they really cared.  Other people – that is, that part of the human race not here this morning - can be so obtuse, so clueless.  It’s maddening.   Now in my personal experience it is at just such moments of frustration that the devil steps right in and puts his or her arm around your shoulder to commiserate with you, to assure you that you should be filled with righteous indignation, that you have every right to feel aggrieved, full of anger or self pity or smoldering resentment because things haven’t gone as you wished, or some injustice has been committed against you, one of the representatives of truth and goodness in the world.  

Now you may be a bit alarmed, even shocked, to hear that I – normally such a rational person - believe in the devil.  Actually, I’m not saying that I do.  Call me a skeptical agnostic on that front.  Perhaps there is no malignant, trans-psychic cosmic being commonly called Satan or the devil who slyly insinuates him or her self into our lives; but I do know that there is a demonic voice within my being - who I believe can commonly be found within all human beings - who does a pretty remarkable imitation of the devil.   It is that extraordinarily seductive inner voice who bids us walk the path of petulant self righteousness down into the deep dungeons of bitterness, anger, resentment.  This voice within the human psyche has been strong enough for it to win a starring role in the religious narratives of all the major religions.  It is known by many names:  Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mara, Iblis, yetzer ra, the Devil, the Tempter, just to name a few. 

And this demonic force knows exactly how to hook us: It does not confront us as some horned devil with a pitchfork and a hellish gleam in its eye.  No, it comes up beside us, heading in the same direction we’re already going, carrying the banner of truth and justice, wearing an expression of righteousness.   It subtly, seductively tweaks and twists our sense of righteousness into self righteousness.  Self righteousness is one of the great perverse joys of life - it gives us license to project all negative characteristics out onto others. 

And therein lies a great danger.

Consider the harm that we do to each other in this world.  Analyze the motives behind much of this and a common theme is self righteousness.   Whether it’s vindictive office politics, road rage or spousal abuse, a primary fuel in such incendiary madness is a sense of self righteousness. 

Then, too, consider the chilling math of self righteousness where two plus two equals much more than four.  The Jewish writer Elie Wiesal, spoke of this in his autobiographical account of the Holocaust, Night.   Wiesal noted that this evil – the Holocaust - was greater than the sum of its separate parts.  Individual Germans, weaned on anti-Semitism, became unified by the demonically charismatic leader under a banner of national outrage and self righteousness.  The evil they collectively committed exceeded their individual intentions.  So, too, with other instances of genocide such as occurred in Rwanda and Bosnia .  It’s tragic and ironic - groups of people, who march under the banners of righteousness, fail to perceive the delusory shift to collective self righteousness and thereby wreak so much harm in the name of good. 

And so innocent people get crucified in battles large and small, waged by self righteous zealots.  We hurt one another.  And when we get hurt, we want to return the favor.   After all, isn’t it the perpetrator’s karma to get their just desserts and isn’t it our right to serve it to them?  And so it goes, tit for tat, from generation to generation as we bequeath our grudges and resentments, our narratives of self righteousness, on to our children.  

Self righteousness blinds us to our own complicity in the tragedies of human history.   Jesus knew this.  Once a community leader seeking advice addressed Jesus as “Good Teacher.”  And Jesus immediately responded “why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.”   For years I wondered why Jesus couldn’t just accept this innocent sounding compliment.  Finally I was struck by his profound spiritual insight.  Jesus knew that the moment you identify yourself as “good” you set yourself for a fall into self righteous.  Certainly Jesus was good, but he knew better than to attach himself to this idea of himself.  Why?  Because when you only see yourself as good you cannot see your shadow side and you will project this onto the world.  If you can only think of yourself as good the only place for you to place the dark and demonic thoughts and feelings is outside of yourself on other people’s shoulders. 

The journalist and war correspondent Chris Hedges – who has seen the tragic and bloody results of collective self righteousness notes:  “the best defense against evil is to seek it within.  When people come to believe that they are immune from evil, that there is no resemblance between themselves and those they define as the enemy, they will inevitably grow to embody the evil they claim to fight.  It is only by grasping our own capacity for evil, our own darkness, that we hold our own capacity for evil at bay.  When evil is always seen as external, then moral purification always entails the eradication of others.”

This is a call to walk the path of true humility.  It is a steep path to walk, whereas the well paved downward road that leads to self righteousness is all too easy to take.   Yet as you strive to let go of the heavy assumptions of self righteousness, you begin to make a marvelous discovery.  You feel lighter and freer.   G. K. Chesterton once noted:  “Angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly.” 

And being lighter and freer, you naturally see and feel more of the life around you.   Feelings of love and compassion begin to flower.  You discover opportunities in your own unique environment to help create a world where there is less of the hatred and anger and malice that can so diminish our lives.