Sermon

Rev. Barbara McKusick Liscord
Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Milford, NH

On Friday, I had visitors from Maine and I took them to walk along one of my favorite trails in the Spring: the trail along the Purgatory Brook trail. You may know it. The trailhead is near some large concrete blocks lining the Old Wilton Road, just up the hill from Fitch’s Corner on the North River Road in Milford. It is a beautiful walk no matter what time of year but in the spring, the brook is full and the waterfalls inspire awe. I had discovered the beauty and healing power of this area during my first spring here. On a very rainy afternoon, After a particularly long stretch of gray, rainy weather, I shrugged off my cabin fever and hiked the entire way from lower falls to the upper falls. I was struck by the mythical Tolkein feel of the brook and forest. The time in that magical place healed my spirit. It was one of the many times, I return to the Garden of Eden from days of stress and difficulty to regain a sense of harmony and hope.

On Friday, I realized that I hadn’t been there since last August 19, when I had taken cousins from Seattle there. My hesitation to visit was probably consciously or unconsciously related to the fact that while my cousins and I were hiking, their rental car was broken into and my wallet stolen. If had a supernatural view of the world, you might say things like that are bound to happen in a place with a name like Purgatory – the place you go on your way to hell. Early Universalists believed that Purgatory was where you went for a short while to atone for your sins before being eventually reconciled with the God of love. But the police told me there had been a lot of theft activity in that area due to the heroine problem. Addicts are stealing to support their habit.

This past Friday, my friends and I left our wallets at home and hiked. They oohed and ahed about what a gem this was so close to our home. But then we went around a bend in the brook. I stopped in my tracks. Across the water, a very large area of the forest on a hill had been clear cut. It completely changed the look and feel of this precious area. While I blissfully and busily went about my full and good life this winter, the forest was being cut down. My friends were shocked along with me and asked, “Don’t you have laws in New Hampshire preventing clearing right up to bodies of water?” I didn’t know the answer, but I felt punched in the gut and a sad lump in my throat for the rest of our walk. We crossed the bridge coming back on the loop trail that winds along the other side of the brook at the base of the hill that had been clear cut. My friends continued to exclaim their disbelief. “Look that big tree was cut right next to the water. Look they obliterated the trail here with their slash. Look the only trees they left were the dead ones. They must be required to leave a certain number of trees for a certain unit of area… but they left the dead ones that will come down soon anyway.” We finished our walk and on the drive back up the Old Wilton Road toward Mont Vernon, we carefully looked to see if we could see the clear cut from the road. The only sign was a somewhat obscure skidder type woods road with fresh slash. We could see no clear cutting from the road. My friends exclaimed again, “So they kept the trees near the road, but not next to the river.” I was appalled at the obvious disregard for this beautiful area and felt guilty for not doing more for conservation in our area.

A few years ago, we saw Garrison Keilor, broadcast his Prairie Home Companion from Portland City Hall. Garrison had noticed our church’s Wayside Pulpit- an enclosed glass box with words of wisdom that change periodically. Prior to the show as he was “warming up the crowd”… he said “Hey, did you see the sign in front of the Unitarian Universalist church down the street. It says, ‘We are all responsible for the evil we do not work to prevent.’ (pause) Kind of takes the shine out of your day doesn’t it?”

The consequences of evil we witnessed in the woods on Friday took the shine out of my day. Redeemed only by the good company of my friends and their shared outrage at the needless rape of the land. Our Garden of Eden.

As we were walking along the brook, just before we turned the bend that revealed the clear cut, one of my friends was asking the topic of this Sunday’s sermon. I told her the topic is the problem of evil and I told her some of the things that I would probably talk about in the sermon. She asked me how I happened to pick this theme for this Sunday and I explained how the topic of evil had been postponed from February because of a snow storm. When I asked our webmaster, Rick Davis, to make the change in our description of services on the website, he joked how great it would be if we could so easily schedule evil at a more convenient time. Of course, there is no scheduling “evil”. It just part of the condition of the world and human experience. But I told my friend that there were some interesting connections with the timing of the theme of evil for this Sunday. This weekend marks the third anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. Ironically, the very place where the Garden of Eden is said to have mythically existed.[1]

As often happens in time of war, the enemy is demonized. The battle comes down to the age old battle between good and evil. But as people seeking the truth, we know that many things are not that simple… and there are subtler understandings that more accurately describe what we observe. Sadly, this way of seeing the world as black and white, good and bad is a world view that perpetuates violence, killing, injustice and indeed perpetuates the evil we would like to stop.

In the Garden of Eden story, we see the human yearning to live “creatively, intensely and effectively in the world,” with all the wisdom it takes to do so.[2] As Karen Armstrong writes in her wonderful new interpretation of Genesis, In the Beginning. Men and women “long to fulfill the potential of their nature and rid themselves of the impediments that so often hamper their progress. But in order to live a blessed and effective life, human beings need wisdom and insight. In the Bible, wisdom and knowledge aren’t pursued speculatively for their own sake but for pragmatic reasons. The wisdom of God makes (God) able to fulfill whatever (God) has in mind.” God had told Adam and Eve that they would die from eating the fruit. The serpent told Eve that she would not die, but by eating the fruit she would know good from evil, like God. We know that Eve and Adam ate the fruit and then saw the world as it existed. In this story, the serpent was more truthful than God.

It wasn’t until the 5^th century that St. Augustine developed his doctrine of original sin and from then on, Christians in the west “have seen the story of Adam and Eve as a catastrophic fall from perfect innocence to chronic guilt.”[3] Eve and of course the whole female sex are blamed for the fall of man. The serpent is seen as Satan, “the fallen angel who became a devil and lured humanity away from God.” And Jesus’ death on the cross is seen by many western Christians as saving us all from the sin of Adam.

But Karen Armstrong invites us to look again at the Genesis story, in much the way our Universalist forebears probably read the story. Our Unitarian and Universalist forbears shook off the blinders of church doctrine and took another look at the scriptures. The story isn’t so much concerned with “morality, but more interested in the existential fact of our separation form the divine source of all existence. The Bible itself does not obsessively dwell on this do-called ‘original sin’ and the serpent never appears again.[4] “The Jewish tradition does not blame Adam and Eve for the human plight. The point of the story is to depict the human plight. Adam is everyman. Eve and the serpent are both aspects of humanity. We have all experienced the inner conflict that works against our best interests. Like Eve, sometimes we are greedy for life. And like the serpent we have an inherent tendency to question and rebel. These attributes can be destructive, but they also have been responsible for some of the most admirable achievements of humankind.”[5] These human qualities were God given, so that the so-called “fall” may have been inevitable. By plucking that fruit, human beings became conscious of their capacity for good as well as evil. The writer of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was more concerned with showing the effects of their actions- their sins- than its cause.[6]

The story also shows the human tendency to project their guilt on others and label the others as evil. Adam blames Eve. Eve blames the serpent. The story shows that what is good and evil- who is good and evil- is far more complex than our leaders may have us believe. We should be wary of simplistic characterizations of others as constituting an “axis of evil” as President Bush has done. Who cannot question the violence that we ourselves are perpetuating on people around the world in the name of good versus evil. Sometimes, evil is a matter of perspective.

Adam and Eve’s actions and accusations of others dissolved community and produced the opposite of wholeness and integrity. Of course, their sin was that they disobeyed God and we independent, liberal thinkers don’t tend to think of unquestioning obedience as a virtue. “It seems a denial of our autonomy and an unworthy subservience to and external authority.” But Armstrong invites us to see the sin of Adam and Eve as a refusal to accept the nature of things. They grabbed for something for themselves without heeding the consequences. A love for life turns destructive if it becomes a lustful expression of “rampant egotism,” which takes no care for the rest of the world.[7]

The Jewish tradition has a pragmatic attitude toward sin and evil as an unfortunate fact of life. She goes on to say, “Much of our God-given energy can erupt in creativity and the life-enhancing arts as well as in uncontrolled hatred or egotism. The secret is to learn how to master and channel the power that lies coiled at the root of our nature, waiting to spring and recoil upon us. Instead of using it to destroy… we can deflect it and make it a source of blessing.”

Before I began seminary in 1996, I fulfilled the Unitarian Universalist Association’s requirement to undergo several days of psychological testing and career counseling. The psychologist tested my generally optimistic outlook on human nature. As I was talking with her, I had an insight. While I believe in a God of Love, I don’t believe in the devil. Although she wasn’t trying to change my fundamental theology… she wanted to make sure that I had acknowledged the shadow side of life. In particular- my own shadow side. We all have a shadow side that manifests itself in one way or another at some times or another.

So it behooves us all to make friends with our shadow side… we all have it. A helpful way to do this is to observe your patterns of human relationships, when you are under stress. There are times when you find yourself fearful or anxious and saying things or doing things that are ultimately not in your best interest or not in the best interest of your relationship with others in your life. You might want to try to figure out what fear underlies your behavior and then going deeper, what fundamental need are you yearning to fulfill. It is not that there is a devil or evil influence outside us… but rather our huge capacity to create can move in either positive of negative directions. There is no literal, personal devil that makes us do what we do.

This kind of individual internal work will make a difference in our lives and in the world. But this path toward greater self-knowledge and wisdom is not enough by itself. Since the conflicts in Iraq and other parts of the middle-east are grounded at least in part by religious and ethnic differences between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it is interesting to note a crucially important truth in each of these monotheistic religions. They all insist that practical charity to others is the most important religious value of them all.[8]

We are often staggered by the weight of suffering in the world caused by evil actions. But I abide in a faith that tells me that the forces of good, no matter how seemingly fragile are just as real and more powerful than the evil of violence, destruction and suffering. In his play, J.B., based on the biblical story of Job, Archibald MacLeish, wrote:

As my colleague Bruce Johnson wrote, “There really is no solution to the problem of evil, as if it were a mathematical puzzle. But there may be a way to live into the mystery of evil and suffering that preserves and deepens our human integrity and strengthens our compassion.”[9]

Our task is to notice the little green leaves in the wood and the wind on the water. And the course of a brook and wonder-filled water fall. Our task is to notice and then do something. I know many of you participated in a peace march yesterday and are doing so much to name and work toward ending the evil of war. In the end, looking evil in the eye and taking positive steps toward harmony and integrity… does not take the shine out of your day. What brings shine to the day, is the company we have in each other along the way. Next week, we will gather to learn about the humanitarian crises rising from the violence in the Darfur region of the Sudan. But we’ll put shine back in our day by doing something. Our youth and others in our congregation will lead us in a postcard action- part of a huge coalition that will bring our leader’s attention to the enormity of the slaughter and ripple effects throughout that region and the world.

By the way, yesterday, as I was writing my observations of the clear-cut by the brook, I felt moved to call someone about it. I talked with a founding member of the Purgatory Watershed Conservation group. She encouraged me to call our town’s conservation commission. I expressed concern about runoff from that steep hill into the brook. And she told me that near the lower purgatory brook there is an aquifer that Milford uses for its municipal water supply. I called and left a message on the answering machine of the chair of our town’s Conservation Commission. And those of you who live in Milford, may want to do the same.

I end with these words from the poem, Natural Resources by Adrienne Rich, written as she observed a spider building a new web.

[1] Suggested by Rev. Don Beaudreault in sermon entitled Dear President Bush (Part Two): The Devil, delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, Florida, February 19, 2006.

[2] Karen Armstrong. In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis. New York: Knopf, 1996. p. 17, 26.

[3] Armstrong, p. 21, p. 30.

[4] Armstrong.

[5] Armstrong, quotes and paraphrases. P. 30.

[6] Armstrong, quotes and paraphrases. P. 30.

[7] Armstrong, quotes and paraphrases. P. 31.

[8] Armstrong.

[9] MacLeish quoted in the sermon by Rev. Bruce Johnson, February 2006 at the UU Fellowship of the Upper Valley, Norwich, VT. (sent to me by Rev. Johnson)