Goodness is stronger than hate
Sermon Notes for Sunday 7th December
on Matthew 3:1-12 by Desiree Snyman
Goodness is stronger than evil.
Love is stronger than hate.
Light is stronger than darkness.
Life is stronger than death.
Victory is ours through Him who loves us.
The prayer was written by Desmond Tutu. Although first published by Double Day in 1995 in “An African Prayer Book”, the prayer surely predates its published form. Prayer, meditation and the reading of Scripture were a daily diet for Desmond Tutu. The prayer was sustenance and hope during the dark days of oppression. Imagine it. The apartheid regime oppresses black people. In response resistance movements rise up merely asking to be recognised as humans. The brutal and violent response of the apartheid regime to resistance movements leaves many protesters including children dead, others in prison and still others in exile. The wave of racial oppression must have felt never ending. In the midst of the doom Tutu experiences this prayer: Goodness is stronger than evil.
A similar version to this prayer is found in the papers of Dieterich Bonhoeffer, penned whilst in a Nazi concentration camp. Glancing at the German victory during World War Two, observing the holocaust, witnessing suffering, Bonhoeffers firm was hope and belief was that ultimately God’s goodness is stronger than evil.
What Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Desmond Tutu with John the Baptist have in common is a stance of hope when the hopelessness seems never ending. The Roman political and military might was epic, indefatigable and unbeatable. In the midst of Roman oppression, in a wilderness place, John the Baptist calls for hope. Scholarship today confirms that John the Baptist was a member of the Essene community. The Essenes, who lived near Qumran around the Dead Sea, had an ascetic approach to life and repudiated the decadence of the world they saw around them. Much of this Essene lifestyle is reflected in John the Baptist, who, like prophets Elijah and Elisha before him, lived in the desert wearing camel skin and eating locusts and honey when he could find them. Enormously admired in his day, John gave voice to the people’s anger at the elites who profited from religious and political hierarchies. More than anything, John wanted God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. The dreams described in Isaiah’s poetry inspired John, a land of safety with enough for all, a land where people’s full flourishing was nurtured and where there were no stumbling blocks to people’s needs being satisfied. In the face of the reality of Roman oppression, John’s sermons must have sounded absurd.
As we engage in this our third week on gender-based violence it is to this theme of hope that I wish to turn. The statistics spell doom. Too often the church has been complicit in violence against women especially in the area of false doctrine such as male headship and female subservience. Despite greater awareness and funding for gender-based violence, we haven’t turned the tide. The Nordic paradox is a term that researchers use to describe the situation in Scandinavian countries like Iceland that have the most progressive and equitable societies violence against women is alarmingly high. Iceland, Finland and Sweden have the highest gender equality rankings.
We desperately yearn for God’s kingdom of peace, hope, justice, kindness, and gentleness. We take communion trusting in a universe where all have enough bread, and all have wine to celebrate. We pray. We worship. Our hearts long for all children to experience safety, love, and hope. Yet the world around us belies our deepest confidences. The political systems of injustice and racism effect the most vulnerable. Aboriginal people still have no voice, no justice, no acknowledgement of the history of pain embedded in their DNA. The war in Ukraine rages against our dreams of peace. We feel frustration like John, Dietrich and Tutu did, Jesus’ revolution of love does not seem to be happening. What can break us free from our prisons of doubt, discouragement, and apathy?
Two things:
Advent asks for waiting and hope and to see with spiritual eyes. Advent turns to several images or metaphors to describe how reasonable this hope is. Advent is described as a pregnant season; we are a pregnant people nourishing the divine within that will birth into the world. The only conviction that pregnant woman can have is hope; you can’t see the baby, but you have the firm hope that a child will be born in 9 months. The image of a seed growing in the ground.
1. Jesus says that God’s kingdom is on the way and is unfolding in our midst. It is true that we live inside the tension of the yet and the not yet. There is a tug of war with God’s kingdom and Isaiah’s dream on the one hand and the reality of war, violence, and injustice on the other hand. Jesus asks that we notice and bless the moments where the kingdom of God blossoms.
2. We are invited to look at the seeds of the kingdom of God growing, and not focus on the dark, dank soil, compost and manure surrounding the growing seed. Live the future now 2. “Strengthen the weak hands,” says the Prophet “And make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!’” The prophet Isaiah who inspired John the Baptist and Jesus paints a vivid picture of God’s new world order. The vision of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven is to inspire people to live God’s promised future as if it is a reality now. Thus, in God’s promised future, there is no loneliness thus we celebrate belonging and community now. In God’s promised future there is no hunger and poverty thus in the present we share our excess so that all have enough. In God’s promised future people have access to education and all that might nourish their full potential thus in the present we support policies that remove blockages to people’s agency and empowerment. To describe how blockages to human growth is removed Isaiah uses the image of a highway, a straight road where mountains are made low, and valleys are lifted up. “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. ”Desmond Tutu.