Morning Devotion for the Season of Epiphany
February 4, 2022
Invitatory
Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him.
Reading: John 7:2-13
Now the Jewish festival of Booths was near. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” (For not even his brothers believed in him.) Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil. Go to the festival yourselves. I am not going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as it were in secret. The Jews were looking for him at the festival and saying, “Where is he?” And there was considerable complaining about him among the crowds. While some were saying, “He is a good man,” others were saying, “No, he is deceiving the crowd.” Yet no one would speak openly about him for fear of the Jews.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
Sometimes one has to simply leap into the deep end of the pool. So, here goes. What distinguishes evil from what we might consider wrong, or bad, or despicable or depraved? (We have quite an array of possible words that we could use to describe things negatively). Sometimes the term evil is meant simply to register an extreme degree of wrong, something on the far end of the spectrum of vice. We also use this word to define wrongs that are inexplicable, that have no basis nor any possible justification. They are wrongs that are unimaginable.
When Jesus speaks of evil, we tend to hear it in these ways. He dared to state directly just how extraordinarily woeful things are. They’re downright sinful. Following suit, the church often speaks in the same way. We’re the ones – at least according to popular reputation – who point out just how immoral, sordid, and perverse the world is. And correspondingly, we as the church are the ones – at least according to popular reputation – who, implicating others, consider ourselves more virtuous, good, and righteous. After all, we actually put in the time and effort to be “not so bad.”
Jesus, however, seemed to have something else in mind when he spoke of evil in this strange text from John. In a very quizzical remark to his brothers, Jesus noted that their time was their time: it was “always there” and, thus, always theirs. It was simply the way they moved through the world, as we all do. But this, Jesus then stated, is itself evil – evil not for its extremity or its irrationality, but evil in its assumption and routine. The works of the world are evil because they constitute a world entirely unto itself.
In contrast, Jesus said of himself that his time was not his own. So, too, throughout the Gospel, Jesus would say that his words were not his own; and his acts were not his own; and his destiny was not his own; and even his life was not his own. In every way, he was entirely dependent on God the Father. He could not simply do whatever he wished whenever he wanted, not even miracles or the signs that the people so wanted to see. Jesus waited upon God – and in such a way that this put him severely at odds with the habits and expectations of the world.
This is what distinguished Jesus as not evil. He wasn’t better than others in a moral sense (the Gospels never explicitly make this claim). He didn’t do more good than others – by being more kind, for example, or tending to needs, or showing compassion. (We have no way to comparatively measure this.) Jesus’ perfection, as we attribute this to him, was not that he never did anything wrong. He is perfect because he, uniquely, spent his life revealing who God the Father is.
Evil, in this sense, indicates, most fundamentally, simply the exclusion of God – and the freedom of God – from our understanding of the world; when everything becomes, then, all about us and our determinations of what must be; which, in the Gospel light, leads to suspicion and fear rather than joy. Jesus’ definition of evil realigns the whole message of the Gospel, in part by opening space for us to see that God’s presence and redemptive will is greater than any wrong we can do, however depraved. Which makes the deep end of the pool much less frightening.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
