February 1--The Problem of Evil

Jesus and his followers went to Capernaum. On the Sabbath day he went to the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught like a person who had authority, not like their teachers of the law. Just then, a man was there in the synagogue who had an evil spirit in him. He shouted, "Jesus of Nazareth! What do you want with us? Did you come to destroy us? I know who you are—God’s Holy One!"

Jesus commanded the evil spirit, “Be quiet! Come out of the man!” The evil spirit shook the man violently, gave a loud cry, and then came out of him.

The people were so amazed they asked each other, “What is happening here? This man is teaching something new, and with authority. He even gives commands to evil spirits, and they obey him.” And the news about Jesus spread quickly everywhere in the area of Galilee (Mark 1: 21-28).


When I was talking with a pastor friend of mine last week about the process of spiritual formation and discernment the topic abruptly turned to the problem of evil. “The closer we draw to God,” I told him, “the closer the devil draws to us.”

I was quoting from a conversation with my spiritual director about my call to ministry, and this comment had lingered on my heart for several days. But as soon as I said it out loud to another person—another pastor—I knew I was in for a long discussion. It is not the kind of phrase that would normally come out of our liberal, intellectual, overly-rational theologically educated mouths. We gave up a long time ago on the “blame Satan” ideology with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other tempting us toward a good or evil impulse.

Or did we?

The problem is that evil really is all around us—not just confined to one shoulder—and we do well to acknowledge this problem with heavy hearts. Whether we mean evil to be a catch-all phrase for poverty and racism and systematic torture or whether we imagine something closer to spiritual warfare and a demonic entity, we cannot deny that evil is all around us, that evil is crushing us, that evil is us. The story of the fallen angel Lucifer may or may not be the most accurate representation of this thing we call evil, but at least it helps us think about the fact that it exists, that God allows it, that God sometimes—too many times, in my estimation—seems overpowered by it. And we do, too.


So imagine what it must have been for an evil spirit possessing this first-century man of Capernaum who comes to the synagogue when Jesus is teaching. This thing we call evil—whatever it was—overwhelming this man, acting with impunity, accustomed to winning, accustomed to delighting in destruction. And here comes Jesus, drawing closer to God, drawing others closer to God, and thereby drawing evil to himself from the very beginning of his ministry. Throughout his entire ministry. At the painful, crucifying end of his ministry.


“What do you want with us?” the evil spirit says. “Have you come to destroy us?”

And of course we want the answer to be yes. We want evil to be destroyed once and for all and for justice and peace to reign forevermore.

But Jesus has not (yet!) destroyed the evil spirit, at least in the lectionary text for this week. It has not gone away forever. He has only cast it out. But it has come out!


And I imagine that the same is true for us—I know the same is true for us—when the evil and the pain and the abuse that still dwells within us and among us is confronted by the living Christ in our midst, teaching and preaching the good news of grace and liberation and healing. The bitterness, the anger, the trauma, the greed, the pride, the persecution, the death, the destruction . . . it is not (yet!) destroyed forever, but it can be released when we see the face of God in front of us, who has promised to be with us through it all, when God sees the pain and bitterness and warfare and greed within us and commands it to come out of us. And it does.


It is not always a quick process, this casting out of the evil that grips us, and it is not always painless. The scars, the anger, the pride, the greed will cry out along the way, even when we invite God to cast it out. But God is casting it out!

And so we draw closer to God, even when we fear evil, even when we fear being cured of evil. Because we also know the end of the story. Evil really has been overcome, once and for all. Easter is a taste of the final reality. Whatever crucifixion we suffer, whatever crucifixion we cause is not the final answer. Resurrection is!

And we can be part of it in this life and the next. Amen.

Gusti Linnea Newquist

(additional lectionary texts: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13)

January 25--From Repentance to Hope

"The Lord spoke his word to Jonah again and said, 'Get up, go to the great city Nineveh, and preach to it what I tell you to say.' So Jonah obeyed the Lord and got up and went to Nineveh. It was a very large city; just to walk across it took a person three days. After Jonah had entered the city and walked for one day, he preached to the people, saying, 'After forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed!' The people of Nineveh believed God. They announced that they would fast for a while, and they put on rough cloth to show their sadness. All the people in the city did this, from the most important to the least important. . . . When God saw what the people did, that they stopped doing evil, he changed his mind and did not do what he had warned. He did not punish them" (Jonah 3:1-5, 10).

Jonah was not the first Hebrew prophet to speak God’s justice to Nineveh. The prophet Nahum also addressed this city of bloodshed, this city of violence, this city of imperial expansion that had led the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel 700 years before the birth of Christ.

"How terrible it will be for the city that has killed so many," Nahum proclaims in righteous anger. "It is full of lies and goods stolen from other countries. It is always killing somebody. . . . Many are dead; their bodies are piled up—too many to count. People stumble over the dead bodies" (Nahum 3:1, 3b-c).


If Nahum is like any one of us who has been deeply wounded to the core of his being by a violent oppressor, he wants God to punish his mortal enemy without mercy. If Nahum is anything like me, he expects justice to look something like vengeance, he wants his oppressor to hurt as deeply as he and his people have been hurt, he feels his justified outrage turn into simmering anger, he puts that anger into the mouth of God.


"'I will pull your dress up over your face,'" Nahum says to Nineveh, supposedly on God’s behalf, "'and show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame. I will throw filthy garbage on you and make a fool of you. I will make people stare at you'" (Nahum 3:5b-6).


Nahum’s language is as bad as it sounds: murder and rape and shame employed as tools of divine justice.

Is this what God tells Jonah to say? Is this the call to repentance that leads all of Nineveh to comply? Is this the kind of punishment God decides to withhold?


It is a shocking message, indeed, for we who claim to worship a God of peace.


But those of us who have suffered extreme violence at the hand of another—whether it be rape or bombing or the insidious damage of mental or spiritual abuse—those of us who have been violated to the very core of our being know that it is just plain honest in the midst of our agony to admit we do pray for this kind of justice to roll down like waters. To admit we do want this kind of righteousness to flow like a mighty stream.


“It is not right what they have done to us!” Nahum reassures a broken people. It is not right what they have done to us, the preacher declares to a broken world.


Nahum did not expect Nineveh to repent upon hearing the news of God’s anger. But Jonah did.


“’This is why I ran away to Tarshish,’” Jonah complains to God when Nineveh repents. “’I knew that you are a God who is kind and shows mercy. You don’t become angry quickly, and you have great love. I knew you would choose not to cause harm!’” (Jonah 4:2b). How could you let my enemy off so easily!


It can be easy to blame Jonah for running from God’s call. It can be hard to understand his frustration with God’s mercy. Unless we understand the modern-day parallels.


Jonah speaking repentance—and mercy—to his mortal enemy Nineveh is perhaps something like Ghandi speaking repentance—and mercy—to the British colonialists. Jonah speaking repentance—and mercy—to his mortal enemy Nineveh is perhaps something like Martin Luther King speaking repentance—and mercy—to racist White America. Jonah speaking repentance—and mercy—to his mortal enemy Nineveh is perhaps something like Sister Helen Prejean speaking repentance—and mercy—to death row inmates awaiting execution. It is really, really hard.


For some of us reading Jonah this week, God may be challenging us to take the hard step of speaking the truth in love to those who have hurt us, asking them to change their hearts and minds, trusting God’s merciful love to restore us all to new life.

For others of us reading Nineveh this week, we hear God’s call to repentance, to acknowledging that others have good reason to hate us, to changing our hearts and minds, to committing to a new way of life.


And for me reading Jonah on this particular day, in this particular week, I cannot help but hear God’s merciful and joyous celebration over the people of the United States, who continue to repent of our racist heritage, who continue to say we don’t want to live that way anymore, and who ask God to continue walking with us to the end.


Surely God’s concern for Jonah, God’s concern for Nineveh, God’s concern for every one of us will correct us when we fail, will applaud us when we succeed, and will sustain us every day of our lives yet to come.


May it be so now and forever. Amen.

Gusti Linnea Newquist

(Additional lectionary texts: Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20)

January 18--The Beauty of the Body

"You made my whole being; you formed me in my mother's body. I praise you because you made me in an amazing and wonderful way. What you have done is wonderful. I know this very well. You saw my bones being formed as I took shape in my mother's body. When I was put together there, you saw my body as it was formed" (Psalm 139:13-16a).

"You should know that your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit who is in you. You have received the Holy Spirit from God. So you do not belong to yourselves, because you were bought by God for a price. So honor God with your bodies" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).


I spent most of my twenties in ministry with young women in college through the National Network of Presbyterian College Women (NNPCW). Over and over again, we returned to both of these lectionary texts, praying with one another for the wisdom and courage to honor our bodies--to honor God with our bodies--in a cultural climate that seems to vascillate wildly between the extreme poles of objectifying our bodies on the one hand and controlling them on the other.

Paul's concern with faithful sexuality was certainly part of our discussion (what college student isn't preoccupied with sex!) . . . but so were other basic physical needs: adequate sleep, proper nutrition, safety from violence, healing from childhood abuse, recovering from eating disorders, embracing a visible ethnic identity in a still-racist society, regulating menstrual cycles, facing endometriosis, getting a new haircut, buying flattering clothes, and generally cultivating the physical beauty required to attract a mate while longing to be loved for a lifetime for our minds and hearts, as well as our bodies.

"Surely you know that your bodies are parts of Christ himself," Paul tells the community of Christ in first century Corinth. "Surely you know that you are the body of Christ," we tell each other over and over in the centuries to come.

The church is the "Body of Christ," we say, and we mean it as metaphor, as a nice way of talking about diversity and the importance of every member.

But this is not a metaphor!

"The body is not just an ephermeral entity inferior to the immortal soul," Eugene Eung-Chun Park writes in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary. "Rather, it is the locus of the union with Christ in the present life of a Christian" (259).

Our bodies are literally the Body of Christ. Every one of them. And all of them together. How we treat our bodies--and how we treat the bodies of others--literally is how we treat the body of Christ, whether it is through our sexual relationships or our soup kitchens or our military actions. And our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made!

College women are not the only ones concerned about the beauty of the body. So is God. And our prayer is that the God who breathed life into the first human--formed from the humus and pronounced very good--will continue to breathe life-giving honor into our bodies as we strive to honor the bodies of one another and ourselves. Amen.


Gusti Linnea Newquist


(additional lectionary texts: 1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20); John 1:43-51)

January 11--A Baptism of Repentance

“John was baptizing people in the desert and preaching a baptism of changed hearts and lives for the forgiveness of sins. All the people from Judea and Jerusalem were going out to him. They confessed their sins and were baptized by him in the Jordan River. John wore clothes made from camel’s hair, had a leather belt around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey. This is what John preached to the people: ‘There is one coming after me who is greater than I; I am not good enough even to kneel down and untie his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

At that time Jesus came from the town of Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan River. Immediately, as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven open. The Holy Spirit came down on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love, and I am very pleased with you’” (Mark 1:4-11).


I really love this translation of the baptism story. It comes from the New Century Version of the Bible . . . one I picked up this summer because I wanted something small and light and easy to carry for travel. I had never heard of this version before.

I like this translation because it gives a full meaning to the Greek word usually translated as “repentance.” So often we equate repentance with badness: I did wrong. I confess. I promise not to do it again. But metanoia is about transformation. A new heart. A new mind. A new life. And it is happening all the time.

A baptism of true repentance can be a powerful, powerful thing. A drug dealer can decide to turn his life around. An addict can seek help in recovery. An abused spouse can leave a toxic relationship. An old cynic can learn to love. God can make a way out of no way. God can transform every part of our lives.


The great debate in biblical and theological scholarship around this baptism story has been about why Jesus needed to be baptized. If he was truly without sin, scholars wonder, what was the point?


But baptism is broader, I think, than the individual sins we do or do not commit and our need for forgiveness from them. Baptism is just as much about the sin committed against us and our need to be healed from it.

Jesus certainly did “take on” the sin of the world . . . and not just as a priestly sacrifice on our behalf. He was betrayed, denied, despised, rejected, beaten, oppressed by an occupying power, spat upon, tortured, killed. Perhaps his baptism was about trusting God to transform the sin committed against him. Perhaps his baptism sustained him as he encountered that sin, as he stared that sin down, as he felt abandoned, as he died.


We who follow Christ have a deep, powerful, transforming message to proclaim through baptism. God will not rest until our hearts and lives have been changed. God will not rest until good comes from evil. God will not rest until resurrection comes from crucifixion.

In baptism we acknowledge that we need to be transformed, every one of us, whether we have done wrong or whether we have had wrong done to us. In baptism we accept our human limitations and admit our need for God’s transforming grace. In baptism, we admit that evil exists in the world, that we are a part of it as perpetrators and as victims, and that we don’t want to be anymore. In baptism we bring every broken part of who we are, offer it to God, and ask to be reborn through the life-giving water of the Holy Spirit. Whether we were baptized as infants or adults, and whether or not we have formally participated in that public ritual of transformation, we can trust God to make us new, to change our hearts and lives.


May we experience this kind of repentance throughout the new year. Amen.


Gusti Linnea Newquist


(additional lectionary texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29:1-11; Acts 19:1-7)