"The Banality of Evil: I Don’t Want to Disturb
Us (Yes I do!), but Somebody Somewhere’s Making More Crosses Right
Now!"
"He went out, carrying his cross." (John 19:17) Thanks for
showing up. It’s not easy. It’s not easy to preach on a day when
there’s nothing to say. I promised I would try to make the title
longer than the meditation. Not quite. The first part here is the title,
the rest is something else. "The Banality of Evil: I Don’t Want
to Disturb Us (Yes I do!), but Somebody Somewhere’s Making More
Crosses Right Now!" Or nuclear missiles. Or automatic weapons. Or
electric chairs. Or lethal injections. Or any other means of planned
execution, of church-and-state-and-marketplace-organized, sanctioned
violence and death.
Crosses do not just happen. Crosses are made. They are assembled. It
is likely Jesus carries only the crossbar, not the whole cross, not the
whole 350-pound cross, (After scourging?!) up the hill to the garbage
dump. The trunk of the cross is already in place. It is used so
routinely. Is someone making a cross for us even now? For you? For us?
What does it look like? What form does it take? What will it say? Where
for Jesus is written "the King of the Jews"? What
political/prophetic charge can be made against us? Against you? Against
me? Remember the old question: If we were arrested and charged with
being Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict us? Much less
enough threat to send us to death? What threat am I, are we, to what
system? What organized power against the people are we seen to be
opposing?
Crucifixion with the Romans, the empire of context for Jesus, -- in
whose name we must always ask, to be faithful to him, what is the empire
of context for us? – crucifixion is a regular, terrible method of what
we like to call "deterrence." Holly Near calls it killing
people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong.
Deterrence is about as effective now as it was then. So there are
crosses up all the time. At least two other executions are scheduled for
the very same time as Jesus. There are lots of heightened pressures with
all the pilgrims around Jerusalem remembering the old, old story of
their Passover and liberation. There are executions to be done with
before the Sabbath!
We dare not become too "Jesus-centric" about this day, this
event. That his is but one among some 250,000 Roman executions makes
what we may find on Easter morning just all that more amazing,
mind-blowing to me. Resurrection out of such anonymity, such ignominy,
such everyday humiliation and brutalization?! Unlike the current popular
movie, what does our liturgy say of this day? "Is it nothing to
you, all you who pass by"? Just two days ago I was calling people’s
attention to the minute of noontime silence requested in memory of the
800,000 Rwandans crucified just ten years ago. By noon I forgot to
observe it myself. Is it nothing to us, all we who pass by? The miracle
of God in Jesus was, and still is, so few really pay him any serious
attention at all! In death or in life.
Even the soldiers and guards, the occupiers, do not pay him all the
gross attention the film shows. And we can be very sure religious
leaders, preparing not only for Sabbath but for Passover Sabbath, are
not standing around collectively watching a traitor and blasphemer die.
And, yes, I’m afraid Jesus is "guilty" as charged of being
precisely so dangerous, so disturbing, to all of our vested interests!
It’s the only way God is able to get our attention, -- don’t we
think? But would these leaders, in all of their holiness, be caught dead
looking closely upon someone so dead or dying? Remember the story of who
all pass by "on the other side of the road." Yet, for all of
our calculated, well-kept indifference, Jesus keeps popping up, keeps
rising up! In and to all kinds of people! Disturbing us and disrupting
us! Not even angrily, avengingly, but gently, generously, patiently, and
persistently.
Portrayals of evil so blatant as that we get in most of our popular
good guy/bad guy, we/they, for us/against us, democracy/terrorism,
freedom/ tyranny stories, films, and video games – no questions, no
reflections, no intricacies, no subtleties, no ambiguities, no
ambivalences (save that manufactured for Pilate), -- nothing of what the
hymn calls "many a conflict, many a doubt, / fightings and fears,
within, without" – such portrayals do not help much with what I
find myself so full of, specially on this most conflicted, most
contradicted of days. I do not know about you (Yes I do! We’re all in
this together!), but in all my relationships, personal and communal,
religious and profane, local and global (Think a moment of the tragic
loss, the immobilizing manipulation, even the effective crucifixion of
our hope in the United Nations this day.), evil is less blatant than it
is banal.
I’d like to find a word other than "evil," other than
"sin." But finally there is just something so otherwise
unnamable as unknowable, unsearchable, much less undoable, in any sense
of manageable or controllable by us, by us alone, even with all
technologies, all military powers; -- I mean, pick a headline, any
headline! For me this day is about the overwhelming (or is it the
underwhelming?) banality of my own life and work., -- with special
reference to the life and work, the witness and service, this day, this
moment, of the one I call glibly savior and lord, my liberator, my
leader in every and all things. Where am I -- compulsive activist that I
am! – never without a strategy! --never met a meeting or event I didn’t
like! – Where am I on this day? Where are my thoughts? My feelings? My
words? My deeds? My wants? My needs? My intentions? My actions? My
hopes? My dreams? In reference to Jesus this moment?
Virginia Stem Owens pulls me up short: "Good Friday is the day
when you can do nothing." Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not a damned
thing I can do. Not an undamned thing, for that matter. "Bewailing
and lamenting your manifold sins, "Owens adds, knowing me,
"does not in itself make up for them! Scouring your soul in a
frenzy of spring cleaning" (Does she know you, too?) "only
sterilizes it; it does not give it life. On Good Friday, finally, we are
all, mourners and mockers alike, reduced to the same impotence. Someone
else," she regrets to inform us, "is doing the terrible work
that gives life to the world." Someone else. Here I was so
indispensable! Someone else! Someone else is doing the heavy lifting.
For you. For me. For each of us. For the children. For the earth. For us
all. On this day. Amen.
Rev. John Auer
