What's Really Scary Is ...
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
Dear fellow preachers,
It's no surprise that the Beltway sniper is now at the top of every national newscast, which means that the people in your pews are thinking about the shooter and perhaps feeling some fear. So for this week's installment of The Immediate Word we've asked TIW team member George Murphy, pastor of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Akron, Ohio, to write on the topic of "What's Really Scary." The approach of Halloween makes this topic even more timely. Note that George has provided several annotations that suggest additional ideas.
We've also included team comments, a perspective on Halloween by Carlos Wilton, related illustrations, worship resources by Chuck Cammarata, and a related children's sermon by Wesley Runk.
What's Really Scary Is ...
By George L. Murphy
Romans 8:31-391
I'm bothered by the way Halloween is celebrated today. No, I'm not upset by the fact that it's an ancient pagan holiday, and I'm not very worried about kids being seduced to worship Satan. Years ago in our country, Halloween was a time for children to dress up and play pranks, with pumpkins, black cats, and ghosts saying, "Boo!" as standard decorations. Nobody thought of it as a threat. Now there's a house down the street "decorated" with tombstones and corpses hanging from trees. And I can't help thinking that gory displays like this are being put up all over the country at the same time that real bodies of a serial sniper2 are being buried in real graves.
Some Christians think that Halloween is a satanic plot and are scared by the occult aspects of the day -- the idea that demons, ghouls, and sorcerers roam the world. That may be frightening, but in a perverse way it's also reassuring because it enables us to downplay the evil that comes from human hearts and minds. It's not really our fault -- the excuse that Eve gave when she said, "The serpent tricked me, and I ate." In more modern idiom, "The devil made me do it."
But the devil didn't pull the trigger of the killer's rifle. That was done by a human being disturbingly like you and me. Devils don't abduct and kill children. People do that. What's really scary is ... that human beings are capable of calculated but senseless evil.3 And the Halloween displays we see today,4 as well as slasher films and some video games and material on the Internet, show how desensitized we've become to violence and bloody death.
I am not suggesting that all references to the demonic should simply be dropped, for they can play a useful role even if they're not taken as literal descriptions. The myth5 of a fall of evil angels before the creation of the world and the image of a cosmic battle between God and Satan can remind us that evil is a profound mystery with cosmic scope.6 It goes much deeper than particular bad things that individual people do.
The gospel stories of the temptation of Christ and the language of 1 Peter 5:8 about the devil prowling about like a roaring lion "looking for someone to devour" should be taken seriously. They remind us that the world is a morally dangerous place. Perhaps I can say that I've been tempted by Satan or one of his thugs: C.S. Lewis developed that theme brilliantly in The Screwtape Letters. But if I commit any given sin, it's because I finally was willing to commit it and did so, not because the devil forced me to.
We are capable of the same basic sin that the old stories attribute to Satan, the desire to put ourselves in the place of God.7 The tarot card that may have been left by the sniper with the message "I am God" is a chilling reminder of what the desire to be Number One can lead to.8 To be God means to have the final say for life or death. The difference is that the real God desires life for creatures while God wannabes have no true creative power and can only destroy.9 Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).
And the message of the gospel is that God's intention for life is finally greater than any destructive force. The powers of evil have been defeated by Christ through his death and resurrection. The letter to the Colossians (2:15) uses mythic language, speaking of Christ disarming the "principalities and powers" and making a public example of them, triumphing over them in the cross. And because of this Paul can rejoice that nothing -- including angels and principalities -- can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans8:38-39). If we are going to speak of demons at all, we should think of them as being in something like the present situation of the Taliban -- still able to do some damage but their power to rule broken.
Christians are called to proclaim, in word and deed, this victory of the cross over the powers of evil. Whether or not we want to use the image of the demonic to express that truth is not the most important point.10 We are called to be the instruments by which Christ's victory is put into effect among human beings, and our struggle is primarily with the evil of which people -- including ourselves -- are capable.11
Part of our struggle must be a willingness to name evil -- to say, for example, that violence against innocent people is wicked. Perhaps in some cases we will recognize that such actions are the result of genuine mental illness. We would then have to speak about them as a form of "natural evil" (like the suffering caused by diseases or storms) that a person couldn't help rather than "moral evil" that is freely chosen. But if we can't say that murder, rape, and torture are evil then we have lost our own moral compass.
We must be able to do that without imagining in a self-righteous way that we are fundamentally different from people like the serial sniper. To do that would be the same kind of mistake as blaming all evil on the devil. The doctrine of original sin means, at a minimum, that we share in a common human predicament, and that we avoid evil only because of the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Continued repentance and acceptance of God's forgiveness must be part of our struggle. We should also pray for the repentance of manifest evildoers, even as we do what we can to protect the innocent from them.
Christians are called to fight against all forms of evil. In the liturgy of Holy Baptism in The Book of Common Prayer (p. 302), the person who wishes to be baptized is asked to renounce "Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God," "the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God," and "all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God," and then to accept, trust and promise to follow Christ as Lord. The Christian church called attention to this ongoing struggle of Christians when it placed the Feast of All Saints on November first. The night when the pagans thought that evil spirits roamed the world became All Hallows' Eve, and the imagined activities of demons were placed in the context of God's saving work and the faithfulness of God's people.
What is really scary is ... the evil that human beings like ourselves are able to imagine and commit. We ought to be honest enough to admit the fear that we have in a world in which people are gunned down without reason and without mercy, and should sympathize with the anxiety of our fellow citizens. But we should also hear and trust the message of God's victory over chaos and hatred, share it with those who are enslaved by fear, and take courage to resist those who would destroy God's creatures.
We can join in the struggle against evil with the assurance that God is with us in the battle. The resurrection of Christ and the forgiveness of sins mean that evil does not have the last word.
Notes
1 While several biblical passages are cited here, I have not made this an exposition or application of a specific text, though Romans 8:31-39 is suggested. The preacher who wants to develop a textual sermon might also reflect on Colossians 2:8-15, to which reference is made in the material here. Galatians 4:8-11 (we are no longer enslaved to the "elemental spirits") is also relevant.
2 "Sniper" is the word that the media have used consistently in this case and we probably can't get rid of it. But it's unfortunate that this term, which suggests a heroic military figure, is being used to describe a murderer. Preachers may want to use some other word, such as "shooter" or "killer," but should not resort to mere name calling.
3 Some violence makes a certain kind of sense and can be understood as an aspect of struggle for survival in the natural world. But a great deal of human violence is on a scale well beyond that needed to get food, breeding opportunities, and physical comfort. Many animals kill but humans are the only ones who seem to kill just for the sake of killing. We carry out greater violence than can be accounted for by a concept like natural selection.
4 I would include here also some "haunted houses." Maybe they're harmless fun, but the very fact that they are "fun" is worth some reflection.
5 Preachers need to be careful about the use of words like "myth" in sermons because they may be understood to mean simply "fairy tale" or "lie." It is best to try to present ideas like this in an educational setting, where there is opportunity for explanation and discussion, before they are used homiletically.
6 Biblical passages about the activity of demonic beings are an example of the kind of thing that Bultmann's program of "demythologizing" was intended to deal with. This does not mean that such passages are simply to be thrown out. Even if one does not think that there are literal demons of the traditional sort, it is necessary to try to understand what aspects of our contemporary worldview correspond to the demonic elements in the worldviews of the biblical writers. One attempt in this direction is George L. Murphy, "Toward a Theology of Technological War," dialog 26, 48, 1988.
7 Isaiah 14:12-15 might be thought of in this connection. It is one of the classic texts that have been used to speak of the revolt and fall of Satan or "Lucifer." But this is actually a piece of pagan Canaanite mythology that was used as "broken myth" by the biblical writer to speak of the fall of the king of Babylon. It was a mistake to "remythologize" it and apply it to the fall of Satan. On this see Brevard S. Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament (Alec R. Allenson, Naperville, IL, 1960), 67-70.
8 At the time of writing it is not certain -- and some experts doubt -- that this card was in fact left by the sniper.
9 In the Christian tradition, the devil cannot be seen as a kind of "evil God," a mirror image of the true God, and cannot really create anything. An element of truth expressed by the image of the revolt and fall of Satan is that if we are to speak of devils, we must think of them as creatures of God. They are good as far as their bare existence is concerned, but their wills oppose that of God. Goethe called the devil "the spirit who always denies" (der Geist der stets verneint).
It is also worth noting that the concept of fallen angelic powers is not the only way to speak of the demonic. Karl Barth, e.g. (in Church Dogmatics III.3, 289-362), preferred to speak of evil as the nothingness that God has not chosen.
10 Whether or not imagery of the demonic will he helpful in a sermon will depend to a considerable extent on the congregation. In any case the existence of a personal devil should not be made to seem a condition for the truth of the gospel, as if it were an article of faith. Neither the Apostles' nor the Nicene Creed mentions Satan.
11 Ephesians 6:12 notwithstanding, few Christians are called to be exorcists or to be otherwise in spiritual combat directly with demonic forces. Those who are should be in our prayers. But for most, this mythological language should remind us that -- as I noted earlier -- evil is something more profound and mysterious that a mere collection of bad human actions.
Team Comments
Chuck Cammarata responds: I think we very much need some balance in this piece. Scripture teaches that the principalities and powers are in fact real and that they do have an impact on us, but we are still responsible for our actions. Satan may tempt and push and tug at me, but I decide what actions to take and not to take. The devil may not have made me do it, but he may have influenced me to do it.
The material implies that the biblical passages on the fall of angels from heaven -- and maybe even the idea that there are demons and angels -- as well as the reality of Satan are all mythic. For many this will be offensive. Sometimes there is a need to be offensive -- the gospel itself can be offensive -- but we need not be offensive in this case. We can change some of the language; for instance: "The myth of the fall of evil angels" could read something like, "Whether we see the story of the fall of evil angels from heaven as myth or actual event -- the point of the story in scripture is that evil is all around us. Instead of saying, "The imagined activities of demons," we might simply say, "In instituting the Holy Day All Hallows' Eve, the church placed demonic activity -- or the reality of evil -- in the context of God's saving work."
The point of this sermon is that evil is not the last word, and we need not take on the issue of the reality of the demonic in order to speak to that point. If we want to take on this issue, I think we need spend more time on it and deal with text like "our conflict is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities and the powers -- with the rulers of this present darkness." We need at least to acknowledge that the idea that the demonic might be real, that it is not just a pre-modern unsophisticated position but one that many educated people still hold to. People including the great intellectual C.S. Lewis made it a centerpiece of his theology.
I guess in the end I just think that we either need to deal with this in a serious way or disarm the potentially offensive nature of the topic by making it clearer than the current article does -- that whatever position we may take on this issue, we do need to deal with our own responsibility for the spread of evil in our culture.
Lastly, for me this piece does not answer the question that we posed when engaging the topic. The question was, I thought, what makes this sniper so scary? I don't think the sermon answers that question. For me the answer has to do with the concerns about the randomness of life and the fragility of life that the sniper has exposed. To deal with that we need reminded not only that God has overcome evil, but that God is sovereign -- in charge in some cosmic sense -- even when it doesn't seem that way here in the temporal world in which we all live. Where is God in this? -- that's the aching human question. Why is this allowed? That's the fearful refrain of those who feel an absence of the divine presence. How do we Christians explain this if we affirm that God is in control? That's why I used Job material in the Call to Worship. I feel like this article gets sidetracked into stuff that is not central. To a certain degree it misses the point.
Wes Runk responds: I must agree with Chuck. However, I am of the opinion that this point of view rather than hurting feelings should be the option that many are looking for. I personally believe that Satan, the demonic, evil, fallen angels, whatever we choose to call it, is a very active force in this world and is involved in creating the chaos and fear that we live in. We may not want to see it exercised in the life of one person but I tend to believe it is part of the whole terror that we are living in. I recall once that someone told me that there is not as much in a story when there are many involved, such as the disaster of a mine cave in or even the group of terrorists who committed 9/11. But when the story involves one person, like a child caught in a well or in this case, a sniper, the story becomes a national headline, hard to escape.
The sniper has achieved one of his goals and that is to be feared and to be known by many. He declares himself God after killing several people. Every day he seeks to increase his hold over people, causing more fear and a sense of helplessness among the people who live within the area. There may be copycats out there thinking that this is their way to go. They will not shoot from college bell towers or walk into cafes and school grounds packed with dynamite but rather attack in the manner of the sniper. With each happening, just like the hostage takers, the shooter will increase the level of fear among people. All the urging of mayors, presidents, and clergy will not quiet the emotional fear of mothers and fathers across the USA. People will be drawn to their TV sets to see some quickly written drama, to the newsstands to read some pulp fiction and to the nightly news for the latest outbreak of sniper terror.
Did you know that Friday night's football games and many other events were cancelled? The area is paralyzed in fear. The fear is magnified by the finding of the card. This is not simply a person angry over the loss of his job (post office scares and other office scares), or a rejected lover filled with some hate, but a person who wants the attention of being able to take life in a random way. This is not a person attracted to young men or women. This is not the abductor of children. This is a beast roaming about the area trying to create fear and is being totally successful.
People in our area of rural Ohio are asking the question of when will it visit us. Not the same coward as in Washington, but some other strange person who sees the attention this is getting and does not need a specific anger to go out and gain the notoriety that comes with it.
Are we surprised that we are in this situation? Have we not bred violence on a daily basis in our media? Have we not stood back and glamorized outlaws in our movies and television shows? This Halloween, we adults will don the masks of Jeffery Dahmer, Jack the Ripper, and other violent people and entertain ourselves in fashions that we can only pray that we will avoid in our normal daily lives.
Last night in a discussion with friends, they spoke of a world out of balance. For several weeks we hear only of child abductions, then it is the capture of terrorists, which only exposes more fears since the terrorists were co-workers in the factories and offices in America. Meanwhile another talks of campus rapes growing and now the cowardly acts of a man gone crazy with the aspirations of being God. It makes people afraid to be a part of any community.
Is there any other answer for the church than to simply minister to the families of those harmed and keep people from thinking that God has left this world to let us fight it out on our own?
Charles Aaron responds: In some ways, the sniper seems like almost pure evil. At the time of this writing, he is nameless and faceless to us, a part of the unknown, a mystery. He seems to have no remorse or conscience. He is not moved by the horrific grief he causes others. He takes a perverse pride in his power. In all of those ways, he reminds us of the demonic. Examples of evil, of the demonic (however one understands that term) are so prevalent: murders, cruelty, terrorists, hate crimes, and now a cowardly sniper. What we want is a clear view of goodness, a straight on sighting of God's work in the world. What we get instead is an indirect glimpse of God. We see the after-effects of God's work: a church that reaches out to victims, people helping strangers, etc. The view of God's work never seems as unmistakable as the evil. Just as Moses saw only God's "back" (NRSV, from Exodus 33:23 part of the OT lesson for October 20), so we see only the results of God's providence and presence. We have to look hard to see goodness, and even then we get only a reflection. We have to hold on to those glimpses of God, and use them to nourish our faith, so that we don't give in to despair.
Carter Shelley responds: While there are endless items one could explore, the scariest thing for my husband would be bankruptcy. For me, at age 5, it was Godzilla movies I never even saw, but my older brother described them to me in chilling detail and that kept me awake nights for weeks.
The scariest thing about the sniper is the emotionless precision of it all. He/she seems straight out of The Day of the Jackal: hard to catch because he's a pro. The scariest kind of evil is that which operates without passion or feeling. That's why sociopaths and psychopaths are so dangerous. They are incapable of feeling another's pain. God defeats evil on the cross, because God feels the pain.
I will be very surprised if the sniper does NOT turn out to be yet another terrorist strategy.
All Saints' Day offers a nice antidote to Halloween's downside and also to those things which scare us most. Those who've gone before us offer great role models of courage and faith in the face of many different kinds of evil.
Carlos Wilton responds: I think a stronger beginning would be to mention something about the sniper scare (which you only refer to in a couple of offhand remarks later on in the paper). Beginning with some mention of what's been in the headlines would immediately engage the readers.
I know you're writing for preachers here and aren't providing a fully-developed sermon, but there are some homiletical pitfalls related to using the word "mythic" to refer to a biblical text. Many people in the pews have never read Bultmann or Joseph Campbell, both of whom work hard to reclaim the concept of "myth" as having positive value. Many of our people, though, have no understanding of the fine nuance of meaning that differentiates "mythic" from "mythical," and may jump to the conclusion that you're dissing the Bible. (I know whereof I speak; I'll never forget the Sunday I mentioned "the Genesis creation myth" in my sermon, without further explanation, and got some unexpected reactions on Monday from some of my parishioners!)
Thank you particularly for the footnotes, which provide a number of different options for preaching.
A Perspective on Halloween
How Halloween Has Changed
By Carlos Wilton
Our contemporary Halloween traditions may have begun as a way of psychologically dealing with the horrors of death and the grave, but they've developed into something very different.
One way of dealing with anything we dread is to boldly confront it. That's the original meaning of the skeletons and ghosts of Halloween. A couple hundred years ago, death seemed all-pervasive, unexpectedly snatching people of all ages by means of war, disease, and starvation. One way of confronting the very real dread of death was to display images of the thing most feared -- in much the same way as we inoculate people against epidemic disease by injecting them with a tiny amount of the deadly microbe. "See, we're not afraid of you!" is the original message of Halloween fright symbols. The fact that they were displayed on the eve of All Saints' Day, the church's great celebration of eternal life, was all the more significant.
Those who live in the eastern United States or who travel to Europe can see graphic evidence of this confrontation tactic, carved into old gravestones. It's surprising how frequently 18th-century gravestones display images of skulls, hourglasses, scythes, and other harsh reminders of the inevitability of death. In one sense, these messages were a reminder to the living that death could come at any time, and to get their spiritual house in order. Yet in another sense, as the Christian community gathered in those graveyards in years gone by, they saw these symbols as speaking for them. The gravestone imagery shouted in death's face: "See, we're not afraid of you!"
Now, the situation is very different. Death is no longer part of our everyday experience -- and even in those infrequent circumstances when death does intrude, our society does its best to deny it. Yet the Halloween death-images persist. As our children have learned about those death-images, they've come to see them not as symbols of dread, but as sources of amusement.
A number of years ago, I read an article citing some research that had been done, focusing on children in the United States and in Hungary. The researchers showed the children images of death -- skulls, skeletons, gravestones, and the like -- and asked them what they thought of them. The Hungarian children, who had heard from their parents terrible firsthand accounts of the Second World War, reacted with dread. The American children, shielded from any real awareness of death (and remembering good times spent trick-or-treating), saw them as sources of fun.
Nowhere, perhaps, is this shift from dread to amusement more evident than in an event that took place the evening of Friday, October 11th in the Six Flags Great Adventure theme park, Jackson, New Jersey. The theme-park operators have discovered that one way to stretch out their season is to market the weekends in October as "Fright Fest," adding a Halloween theme to their rides and attractions. As incredible as it may sound, each year a certain number of couples choose to get married or to renew their vows during Fright Fest. This year the mass ceremony included 30 couples (10 of whom were actually getting married, not just renewing vows). Most of these showed up in costume, to exchange their vows before local mayor Michael L. Broderick of Jackson Township. Our local newspaper described it this way:
"Broderick, who also officiated at last year's mass wedding, was accompanied by 'best man' Count Dracula (as played by John Carol) and 'maid of honor' Evil-Lynn (Nikki Lauren). The wedding was hosted by the Phantom of the Opera (Vincent Mazella).
'Don't they look great?' asked Kristen Siebeneicher, the theme park's public relations manager....
Though the ceremony was meant to be a fun time, Siebeneicher said park officials would never compromise the dignity of matrimony. 'The vows are traditional, and we play the wedding march,' she said. 'But it's the couples and the way they are dressed that makes this unique.'"
[Asbury Park Press, 10/14/02, p. B4]
Some of us may disagree about the "not compromising the dignity of matrimony" part, but the mere existence of such a practice illustrates how relaxed our society has become with imagery of death.
Related Illustrations
On the subject of the sniper attacks, an account from Thomas Lynch's book, The Undertaking, may be of some use. Lynch has the rare distinction of being both an undertaker (he uses that word with pride to describe himself) and an acclaimed poet. The meditations on life and death in this book are superb.
This mediation, titled, "Faith Is The Only Cure For Fear: Stephanie, Killed By A Falling Gravestone," is about a girl who was killed by a bizarre accident, when a vandal dropped a tombstone from a highway overpass and it shattered the windshield of the family car. It's about as random a death as that suffered by the unfortunate victims of the sniper.
Lynch begins, "Faith is, as far as I know, the only cure for fear -- the sense that someone is in charge here, is checking the ID's and watching the borders. Faith is what my mother said: letting go and letting God -- a leap into the unknown where we are not in control but always welcome."
Then, after narrating the tragic event that took Stephanie's life, Lynch says that trying to make sense of it "sometimes it seems like multiple choice." Was it a) the hand of God, b) not the hand of God because he doesn't intervene to counteract the laws of nature (like gravity while the stone was falling), c) the Devil, d) none of these things, or e) all of them.
Lynch concludes that none of the answers satisfy, "The alibi changes every day." But he says that the answers that faith does not require belong to Stephanie's grieving parents. When Lynch took them to the cemetery to buy a grave, her mother pointed to a statue of the Risen Christ, indicating that she wanted her daughter buried "at the right hand of Jesus," beneath the outstretched granite right arm of the statue.
(Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking [New York: Penguin, 1997], 54-57.)
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Nintendo, which built its fortune by offering happy games such as Mario Bros. for children, has been branded a good guy in the video gaming industry. But with markets shrinking, Nintendo is now courting teens and adults, offering gory games with titles like "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem," which includes bleeding walls and "bone thieves" that can enter a human body and take over. The challenge the company is working on is how to market their new violent games without harming its reputation among parents as a game platform they can trust for their children. As one step they are planning to use the videogame industry's rating system, labeling some games "M" for "mature." (from The Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2002, B1)
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In Moby Dick, Melville speaks of the prudence of the Pequod's first mate, Mr. Starbuck:
"'I will have no man in my boat," says Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage is that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward."(chapter 26)
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Three preachers sat discussing the best positions for prayer while a telephone repairman worked nearby.
"Kneeling is definitely best," claimed one.
"No," another contended. "I get the best results standing with my hands outstretched to heaven."
"You're both wrong," the third insisted. "The most effective prayer position is lying prostrate, face down on the floor."
The repairman could contain himself no longer. "Hey, fellas," he interrupted, "the best prayin' I ever did was hangin' upside down from a telephone pole."
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A sergeant in a parachute regiment took part in several night-time exercises. Once, he was seated next to a lieutenant fresh from Jump School. The young officer was quiet and looked a bit pale, so the sergeant struck up a conversation. "Scared, Lieutenant?" he asked.
"No, just a bit apprehensive," the lieutenant replied.
"What's the difference?"
The lieutenant answered, "The difference is I'm scared with a university education."
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Not long before his own death, Henri Nouwen put it:
We are afraid of a lot of things -- most of all, we are afraid of death. This fear takes away our freedom. But when we can reach beyond our fears to the One who loves us with a love that was there before we were born, and will be there after we die, then nothing will be able to take away our freedom." (Our Greatest Gift, 1-7).
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Death is not an enemy; living in constant fear of it is.
-- Norman Cousins
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Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, co-pastor with her husband of First Presbyterian Church in Pitman, New Jersey, wrote a hymn in response to the Columbine shootings. The hymn has since been included in a book of new hymns from Geneva Press, and is included here with permission. Carolyn's other hymns may be viewed on her church's website, www.firstpresby.org.
A Prayer for Our Children
Tune: "Ah, Holy Jesus" Herzliebster Jesu 11.11.11.5 by Johann Cruger, 1640
Text: Copyright (c) 1998 Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved. 305 South Broadway, Pitman, NJ 08071 Email: Bruce.Gillette@ecunet.org. Permission is given for free one-time use of this hymn. Geneva Press is publishing it in a forthcoming book titled Gifts of Love: New Hymns for Today's Worship by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. Gillettes would appreciate a copy of your worship bulletin.
God, we have heard it, sounding in the silence:
News of the children lost to this world's violence.
Children of promise! Then without a warning,
Loved ones are mourning.
Jesus, you came to bear our human sorrow;
You came to give us hope for each tomorrow.
You are our life, Lord -- God's own love revealing.
We need your healing!
Heal us from giving weapons any glory;
Help us, O Prince of Peace, to hear your story;
Help us resist the evil all around here;
May love abound here!
By your own Spirit, give your church a clear voice;
In this world's violence, help us make a new choice.
Help us to witness to the joy your peace brings,
Until your world sings!
Reproduced from GIFTS OF LOVE. (c) 2000 Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. Used by
permission of Geneva Press.
Worship Resources
By Chuck Cammarata
CALL TO WORSHIP
This reading could also be used elsewhere in the service as a dramatic reading or as a responsive reading. If you choose to use it as a dramatic reading, an alternative call to worship is provided below.
READER #1 -- I said, "Lord, why are innocent people being shot in schools and parking lots in Maryland?"
READER #2 -- I cried out, "Papa, hopelessness and hatred in the Holy Land. When will it end?"
READER #3 -- I asked, "Children starving in Malawi while we have abundance. Righteous God, where is justice for the children?"
READER #4 -- I listened to one who had been tortured by an evil tyrant in Iraq and wondered, "How long, O Lord, must we suffer a world filled with Hitlers, Stalins, Husseins, and the like?"
ALL 4 READERS: HOW LONG, O LORD?
READER #1 -- And then I heard a quiet voice say,
READER #2 -- "My child, where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
READER #3 -- "When I made the clouds and wrapped them like a blanket around the earth?
READER #4 -- "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?
READER #1 -- "Do you give the horse his strength or clothe his neck with a flowing mane?
READER #2 -- "Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom?
READER #3 -- "Does the eagle soar at your command and build his nest on high?"
READER #4 -- Then I realized, that I spoke of things I did not understand,
READER #1 -- Things too wonderful for me to know.
READER #2 -- For your ways, O God, are higher than mine.
READER #3 -- Your thoughts are beyond me.
READER #4 -- But I do know this,
READER #1 -- That you are God.
READER #2 -- Awesome in power,
READER #3 -- Unending in love,
READER #4 -- And I am yours.
READER #1 -- And these things I know are enough. AMEN.
The above reading could be followed with a hymn or song affirming God's faithfulness
HYMNS
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
To God Be The Glory
Our God Our Help In Ages Past
CHORUSES
God of Wonders -- from the "City on a Hill" worship CD & book
Humble Thyself in the Sight of the Lord -- In many books including the Tune Book
Awesome God -- also in many worship books -- including the Rich Mullins worship book
Holy, You Are Still Holy -- widely available in trax form and in worship music book collections of contemporary worship songs
All of these hymns and choruses would be great to use at any point in this week's worship service.
AN ALTERNATIVE CALL TO WORSHIP
LEADER: God said to Job, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
PEOPLE: "WHEN I MADE THE CLOUDS AND WRAPPED THEM LIKE A BLANKET AROUND THE EARTH?
LEADER: "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?
PEOPLE: "DID YOU GIVE THE HORSE HIS STRENGTH?
LEADER: "Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom?
PEOPLE: "DOES THE EAGLE SOAR AT YOUR COMMAND?"
LEADER: Ah, things too wonderful for me to know.
PEOPLE: FOR YOUR WAYS, O GOD, ARE HIGHER THAN MINE.
LEADER: Your thoughts are beyond me.
PEOPLE: GREAT ARE YOU, GOD
LEADER: And greatly to be praised!
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
LEADER: My counselor;
PEOPLE: MY FINANCIAL ADVISOR;
LEADER: My pastor;
PEOPLE: MY SPOUSE;
LEADER: A teacher;
PEOPLE: A HERO;
LEADER: Me and me alone.
PEOPLE: FATHER, FORGIVE ME FOR TRUSTING
LEADER: In everything and everyone, but you.
PEOPLE: FOR THERE IS NO ONE WITH MORE KNOWLEDGE,
LEADER: More power,
PEOPLE: OR MORE LOVE,
LEADER: Than you. Help me,
PEOPLE: HELP US
LEADER: To put all things in your hands.
PEOPLE: IN THE NAME OF OUR SAVOIR JESUS CHRIST. AMEN.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
LEADER: This is the glorious truth: God will never abandon or forsake us. So even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death itself,
PEOPLE: WE NEED NOT FEAR.
LEADER: Even though our sin's just reward is our own death,
PEOPLE: WE NEED NOT FEAR,
LEADER: For our God never
PEOPLE: NEVER!
LEADER: Departs us. This is the good news of the gospel.
PEOPLE: AMEN.
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION OR COLLECTIVE PRAYER
The chorus of the hymn "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus" sung a cappella is a marvelous prayer before scripture and sermon. Sing it twice -- it is beautifully prayerful.
PASTORAL PRAYER
Glorious, almighty God -- as the times become perilous and questions and doubts abound as to the future of so many people on this earth -- as Osamas and Saddams menace us -- as stock markets sink and jobs become less secure -- enable us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on you that beauty and loveliness will never fade from our view, and help us to keep our hearts firmly rooted in you that love and goodness will always be the reality out of which we live. We ask it in the name of the one who embodied faith, hope and love, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A Related Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
Text: "Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour." (1 Peter 5: 7-8)
Object-A big spider or snake. (Something scary that you can get at a pet store, or if not, perhaps some imitation spiders or snakes.)
Good morning, boys and girls. Have you ever been scared? I mean really scared? (let them answer) What scares you the most? (let them answer) Is it a dark room, or a bad dream? Have you ever been frightened by a person? (let them answer)
I brought with me this morning a couple of things that I know scare some people. (bring out your spider) How many of you have ever had a spider, I mean a really big spider, in your house? (let them answer) Spiders, some spiders can be really dangerous if they bite you. They look scary, don't they? (let them answer)
Here is another creature that scares people. (bring out your snake) Snakes scare a lot of people. Have you ever had a snake in your back yard or in the garden? (let them answer) We need to be very careful around snakes. Some snakes are filled with poison and when they bite they cause a lot of problems.
Those are some of the things we can see that are really scary and can be very dangerous. The Bible talks about something else that is very dangerous. Sometimes the Bible calls this dangerous thing the "devil" or "Satan." Other times the Bible talks about "evil" or "your adversary." The writers of the Bible teach us to be careful because the devil or Satan or whatever you want to call it is not only dangerous, but he also tries to make us do wrong. The devil makes bad things look good and good things look bad. The Bible says the devil prowls around like a bad lion looking for people that he can hurt.
Let's see what the devil makes us do. When we are thinking right, we remember that our parents love us, protect us, and help us make right decisions. But sometimes we don't want to do what our parents teach us. We get angry with them. We say bad things to them. We talk about hate and forget how much they love us. When we are like this, we are on the devil's side. Being on the devil's side is really scary.
The Bible teaches us to stay away from the devil. Instead of thinking like the devil, the Bible tells us to depend on God. When we are afraid, we should ask God to stay by us and protect us, and soon we will find a lot of our fear going away. Love chases away fear. Love makes hate melt like a chocolate bar in the hot sun.
So the next time you see something scary like a big spider or a snake or anything that makes you feel kind of funny, I want you to remember that this is the way the devil is to people. The devil is an ugly thing and causes ugly things to happen. Stay away from bad things and invite God to come into your life.
It is all right to be afraid; we should be afraid of things that can hurt us. But when we see scary things, we want to remember that we need God and all of his love to protect us and get rid of our fears.
The Immediate Word, October 20, 2002, issue.
Copyright 2002 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
It's no surprise that the Beltway sniper is now at the top of every national newscast, which means that the people in your pews are thinking about the shooter and perhaps feeling some fear. So for this week's installment of The Immediate Word we've asked TIW team member George Murphy, pastor of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Akron, Ohio, to write on the topic of "What's Really Scary." The approach of Halloween makes this topic even more timely. Note that George has provided several annotations that suggest additional ideas.
We've also included team comments, a perspective on Halloween by Carlos Wilton, related illustrations, worship resources by Chuck Cammarata, and a related children's sermon by Wesley Runk.
What's Really Scary Is ...
By George L. Murphy
Romans 8:31-391
I'm bothered by the way Halloween is celebrated today. No, I'm not upset by the fact that it's an ancient pagan holiday, and I'm not very worried about kids being seduced to worship Satan. Years ago in our country, Halloween was a time for children to dress up and play pranks, with pumpkins, black cats, and ghosts saying, "Boo!" as standard decorations. Nobody thought of it as a threat. Now there's a house down the street "decorated" with tombstones and corpses hanging from trees. And I can't help thinking that gory displays like this are being put up all over the country at the same time that real bodies of a serial sniper2 are being buried in real graves.
Some Christians think that Halloween is a satanic plot and are scared by the occult aspects of the day -- the idea that demons, ghouls, and sorcerers roam the world. That may be frightening, but in a perverse way it's also reassuring because it enables us to downplay the evil that comes from human hearts and minds. It's not really our fault -- the excuse that Eve gave when she said, "The serpent tricked me, and I ate." In more modern idiom, "The devil made me do it."
But the devil didn't pull the trigger of the killer's rifle. That was done by a human being disturbingly like you and me. Devils don't abduct and kill children. People do that. What's really scary is ... that human beings are capable of calculated but senseless evil.3 And the Halloween displays we see today,4 as well as slasher films and some video games and material on the Internet, show how desensitized we've become to violence and bloody death.
I am not suggesting that all references to the demonic should simply be dropped, for they can play a useful role even if they're not taken as literal descriptions. The myth5 of a fall of evil angels before the creation of the world and the image of a cosmic battle between God and Satan can remind us that evil is a profound mystery with cosmic scope.6 It goes much deeper than particular bad things that individual people do.
The gospel stories of the temptation of Christ and the language of 1 Peter 5:8 about the devil prowling about like a roaring lion "looking for someone to devour" should be taken seriously. They remind us that the world is a morally dangerous place. Perhaps I can say that I've been tempted by Satan or one of his thugs: C.S. Lewis developed that theme brilliantly in The Screwtape Letters. But if I commit any given sin, it's because I finally was willing to commit it and did so, not because the devil forced me to.
We are capable of the same basic sin that the old stories attribute to Satan, the desire to put ourselves in the place of God.7 The tarot card that may have been left by the sniper with the message "I am God" is a chilling reminder of what the desire to be Number One can lead to.8 To be God means to have the final say for life or death. The difference is that the real God desires life for creatures while God wannabes have no true creative power and can only destroy.9 Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).
And the message of the gospel is that God's intention for life is finally greater than any destructive force. The powers of evil have been defeated by Christ through his death and resurrection. The letter to the Colossians (2:15) uses mythic language, speaking of Christ disarming the "principalities and powers" and making a public example of them, triumphing over them in the cross. And because of this Paul can rejoice that nothing -- including angels and principalities -- can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans8:38-39). If we are going to speak of demons at all, we should think of them as being in something like the present situation of the Taliban -- still able to do some damage but their power to rule broken.
Christians are called to proclaim, in word and deed, this victory of the cross over the powers of evil. Whether or not we want to use the image of the demonic to express that truth is not the most important point.10 We are called to be the instruments by which Christ's victory is put into effect among human beings, and our struggle is primarily with the evil of which people -- including ourselves -- are capable.11
Part of our struggle must be a willingness to name evil -- to say, for example, that violence against innocent people is wicked. Perhaps in some cases we will recognize that such actions are the result of genuine mental illness. We would then have to speak about them as a form of "natural evil" (like the suffering caused by diseases or storms) that a person couldn't help rather than "moral evil" that is freely chosen. But if we can't say that murder, rape, and torture are evil then we have lost our own moral compass.
We must be able to do that without imagining in a self-righteous way that we are fundamentally different from people like the serial sniper. To do that would be the same kind of mistake as blaming all evil on the devil. The doctrine of original sin means, at a minimum, that we share in a common human predicament, and that we avoid evil only because of the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Continued repentance and acceptance of God's forgiveness must be part of our struggle. We should also pray for the repentance of manifest evildoers, even as we do what we can to protect the innocent from them.
Christians are called to fight against all forms of evil. In the liturgy of Holy Baptism in The Book of Common Prayer (p. 302), the person who wishes to be baptized is asked to renounce "Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God," "the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God," and "all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God," and then to accept, trust and promise to follow Christ as Lord. The Christian church called attention to this ongoing struggle of Christians when it placed the Feast of All Saints on November first. The night when the pagans thought that evil spirits roamed the world became All Hallows' Eve, and the imagined activities of demons were placed in the context of God's saving work and the faithfulness of God's people.
What is really scary is ... the evil that human beings like ourselves are able to imagine and commit. We ought to be honest enough to admit the fear that we have in a world in which people are gunned down without reason and without mercy, and should sympathize with the anxiety of our fellow citizens. But we should also hear and trust the message of God's victory over chaos and hatred, share it with those who are enslaved by fear, and take courage to resist those who would destroy God's creatures.
We can join in the struggle against evil with the assurance that God is with us in the battle. The resurrection of Christ and the forgiveness of sins mean that evil does not have the last word.
Notes
1 While several biblical passages are cited here, I have not made this an exposition or application of a specific text, though Romans 8:31-39 is suggested. The preacher who wants to develop a textual sermon might also reflect on Colossians 2:8-15, to which reference is made in the material here. Galatians 4:8-11 (we are no longer enslaved to the "elemental spirits") is also relevant.
2 "Sniper" is the word that the media have used consistently in this case and we probably can't get rid of it. But it's unfortunate that this term, which suggests a heroic military figure, is being used to describe a murderer. Preachers may want to use some other word, such as "shooter" or "killer," but should not resort to mere name calling.
3 Some violence makes a certain kind of sense and can be understood as an aspect of struggle for survival in the natural world. But a great deal of human violence is on a scale well beyond that needed to get food, breeding opportunities, and physical comfort. Many animals kill but humans are the only ones who seem to kill just for the sake of killing. We carry out greater violence than can be accounted for by a concept like natural selection.
4 I would include here also some "haunted houses." Maybe they're harmless fun, but the very fact that they are "fun" is worth some reflection.
5 Preachers need to be careful about the use of words like "myth" in sermons because they may be understood to mean simply "fairy tale" or "lie." It is best to try to present ideas like this in an educational setting, where there is opportunity for explanation and discussion, before they are used homiletically.
6 Biblical passages about the activity of demonic beings are an example of the kind of thing that Bultmann's program of "demythologizing" was intended to deal with. This does not mean that such passages are simply to be thrown out. Even if one does not think that there are literal demons of the traditional sort, it is necessary to try to understand what aspects of our contemporary worldview correspond to the demonic elements in the worldviews of the biblical writers. One attempt in this direction is George L. Murphy, "Toward a Theology of Technological War," dialog 26, 48, 1988.
7 Isaiah 14:12-15 might be thought of in this connection. It is one of the classic texts that have been used to speak of the revolt and fall of Satan or "Lucifer." But this is actually a piece of pagan Canaanite mythology that was used as "broken myth" by the biblical writer to speak of the fall of the king of Babylon. It was a mistake to "remythologize" it and apply it to the fall of Satan. On this see Brevard S. Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament (Alec R. Allenson, Naperville, IL, 1960), 67-70.
8 At the time of writing it is not certain -- and some experts doubt -- that this card was in fact left by the sniper.
9 In the Christian tradition, the devil cannot be seen as a kind of "evil God," a mirror image of the true God, and cannot really create anything. An element of truth expressed by the image of the revolt and fall of Satan is that if we are to speak of devils, we must think of them as creatures of God. They are good as far as their bare existence is concerned, but their wills oppose that of God. Goethe called the devil "the spirit who always denies" (der Geist der stets verneint).
It is also worth noting that the concept of fallen angelic powers is not the only way to speak of the demonic. Karl Barth, e.g. (in Church Dogmatics III.3, 289-362), preferred to speak of evil as the nothingness that God has not chosen.
10 Whether or not imagery of the demonic will he helpful in a sermon will depend to a considerable extent on the congregation. In any case the existence of a personal devil should not be made to seem a condition for the truth of the gospel, as if it were an article of faith. Neither the Apostles' nor the Nicene Creed mentions Satan.
11 Ephesians 6:12 notwithstanding, few Christians are called to be exorcists or to be otherwise in spiritual combat directly with demonic forces. Those who are should be in our prayers. But for most, this mythological language should remind us that -- as I noted earlier -- evil is something more profound and mysterious that a mere collection of bad human actions.
Team Comments
Chuck Cammarata responds: I think we very much need some balance in this piece. Scripture teaches that the principalities and powers are in fact real and that they do have an impact on us, but we are still responsible for our actions. Satan may tempt and push and tug at me, but I decide what actions to take and not to take. The devil may not have made me do it, but he may have influenced me to do it.
The material implies that the biblical passages on the fall of angels from heaven -- and maybe even the idea that there are demons and angels -- as well as the reality of Satan are all mythic. For many this will be offensive. Sometimes there is a need to be offensive -- the gospel itself can be offensive -- but we need not be offensive in this case. We can change some of the language; for instance: "The myth of the fall of evil angels" could read something like, "Whether we see the story of the fall of evil angels from heaven as myth or actual event -- the point of the story in scripture is that evil is all around us. Instead of saying, "The imagined activities of demons," we might simply say, "In instituting the Holy Day All Hallows' Eve, the church placed demonic activity -- or the reality of evil -- in the context of God's saving work."
The point of this sermon is that evil is not the last word, and we need not take on the issue of the reality of the demonic in order to speak to that point. If we want to take on this issue, I think we need spend more time on it and deal with text like "our conflict is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities and the powers -- with the rulers of this present darkness." We need at least to acknowledge that the idea that the demonic might be real, that it is not just a pre-modern unsophisticated position but one that many educated people still hold to. People including the great intellectual C.S. Lewis made it a centerpiece of his theology.
I guess in the end I just think that we either need to deal with this in a serious way or disarm the potentially offensive nature of the topic by making it clearer than the current article does -- that whatever position we may take on this issue, we do need to deal with our own responsibility for the spread of evil in our culture.
Lastly, for me this piece does not answer the question that we posed when engaging the topic. The question was, I thought, what makes this sniper so scary? I don't think the sermon answers that question. For me the answer has to do with the concerns about the randomness of life and the fragility of life that the sniper has exposed. To deal with that we need reminded not only that God has overcome evil, but that God is sovereign -- in charge in some cosmic sense -- even when it doesn't seem that way here in the temporal world in which we all live. Where is God in this? -- that's the aching human question. Why is this allowed? That's the fearful refrain of those who feel an absence of the divine presence. How do we Christians explain this if we affirm that God is in control? That's why I used Job material in the Call to Worship. I feel like this article gets sidetracked into stuff that is not central. To a certain degree it misses the point.
Wes Runk responds: I must agree with Chuck. However, I am of the opinion that this point of view rather than hurting feelings should be the option that many are looking for. I personally believe that Satan, the demonic, evil, fallen angels, whatever we choose to call it, is a very active force in this world and is involved in creating the chaos and fear that we live in. We may not want to see it exercised in the life of one person but I tend to believe it is part of the whole terror that we are living in. I recall once that someone told me that there is not as much in a story when there are many involved, such as the disaster of a mine cave in or even the group of terrorists who committed 9/11. But when the story involves one person, like a child caught in a well or in this case, a sniper, the story becomes a national headline, hard to escape.
The sniper has achieved one of his goals and that is to be feared and to be known by many. He declares himself God after killing several people. Every day he seeks to increase his hold over people, causing more fear and a sense of helplessness among the people who live within the area. There may be copycats out there thinking that this is their way to go. They will not shoot from college bell towers or walk into cafes and school grounds packed with dynamite but rather attack in the manner of the sniper. With each happening, just like the hostage takers, the shooter will increase the level of fear among people. All the urging of mayors, presidents, and clergy will not quiet the emotional fear of mothers and fathers across the USA. People will be drawn to their TV sets to see some quickly written drama, to the newsstands to read some pulp fiction and to the nightly news for the latest outbreak of sniper terror.
Did you know that Friday night's football games and many other events were cancelled? The area is paralyzed in fear. The fear is magnified by the finding of the card. This is not simply a person angry over the loss of his job (post office scares and other office scares), or a rejected lover filled with some hate, but a person who wants the attention of being able to take life in a random way. This is not a person attracted to young men or women. This is not the abductor of children. This is a beast roaming about the area trying to create fear and is being totally successful.
People in our area of rural Ohio are asking the question of when will it visit us. Not the same coward as in Washington, but some other strange person who sees the attention this is getting and does not need a specific anger to go out and gain the notoriety that comes with it.
Are we surprised that we are in this situation? Have we not bred violence on a daily basis in our media? Have we not stood back and glamorized outlaws in our movies and television shows? This Halloween, we adults will don the masks of Jeffery Dahmer, Jack the Ripper, and other violent people and entertain ourselves in fashions that we can only pray that we will avoid in our normal daily lives.
Last night in a discussion with friends, they spoke of a world out of balance. For several weeks we hear only of child abductions, then it is the capture of terrorists, which only exposes more fears since the terrorists were co-workers in the factories and offices in America. Meanwhile another talks of campus rapes growing and now the cowardly acts of a man gone crazy with the aspirations of being God. It makes people afraid to be a part of any community.
Is there any other answer for the church than to simply minister to the families of those harmed and keep people from thinking that God has left this world to let us fight it out on our own?
Charles Aaron responds: In some ways, the sniper seems like almost pure evil. At the time of this writing, he is nameless and faceless to us, a part of the unknown, a mystery. He seems to have no remorse or conscience. He is not moved by the horrific grief he causes others. He takes a perverse pride in his power. In all of those ways, he reminds us of the demonic. Examples of evil, of the demonic (however one understands that term) are so prevalent: murders, cruelty, terrorists, hate crimes, and now a cowardly sniper. What we want is a clear view of goodness, a straight on sighting of God's work in the world. What we get instead is an indirect glimpse of God. We see the after-effects of God's work: a church that reaches out to victims, people helping strangers, etc. The view of God's work never seems as unmistakable as the evil. Just as Moses saw only God's "back" (NRSV, from Exodus 33:23 part of the OT lesson for October 20), so we see only the results of God's providence and presence. We have to look hard to see goodness, and even then we get only a reflection. We have to hold on to those glimpses of God, and use them to nourish our faith, so that we don't give in to despair.
Carter Shelley responds: While there are endless items one could explore, the scariest thing for my husband would be bankruptcy. For me, at age 5, it was Godzilla movies I never even saw, but my older brother described them to me in chilling detail and that kept me awake nights for weeks.
The scariest thing about the sniper is the emotionless precision of it all. He/she seems straight out of The Day of the Jackal: hard to catch because he's a pro. The scariest kind of evil is that which operates without passion or feeling. That's why sociopaths and psychopaths are so dangerous. They are incapable of feeling another's pain. God defeats evil on the cross, because God feels the pain.
I will be very surprised if the sniper does NOT turn out to be yet another terrorist strategy.
All Saints' Day offers a nice antidote to Halloween's downside and also to those things which scare us most. Those who've gone before us offer great role models of courage and faith in the face of many different kinds of evil.
Carlos Wilton responds: I think a stronger beginning would be to mention something about the sniper scare (which you only refer to in a couple of offhand remarks later on in the paper). Beginning with some mention of what's been in the headlines would immediately engage the readers.
I know you're writing for preachers here and aren't providing a fully-developed sermon, but there are some homiletical pitfalls related to using the word "mythic" to refer to a biblical text. Many people in the pews have never read Bultmann or Joseph Campbell, both of whom work hard to reclaim the concept of "myth" as having positive value. Many of our people, though, have no understanding of the fine nuance of meaning that differentiates "mythic" from "mythical," and may jump to the conclusion that you're dissing the Bible. (I know whereof I speak; I'll never forget the Sunday I mentioned "the Genesis creation myth" in my sermon, without further explanation, and got some unexpected reactions on Monday from some of my parishioners!)
Thank you particularly for the footnotes, which provide a number of different options for preaching.
A Perspective on Halloween
How Halloween Has Changed
By Carlos Wilton
Our contemporary Halloween traditions may have begun as a way of psychologically dealing with the horrors of death and the grave, but they've developed into something very different.
One way of dealing with anything we dread is to boldly confront it. That's the original meaning of the skeletons and ghosts of Halloween. A couple hundred years ago, death seemed all-pervasive, unexpectedly snatching people of all ages by means of war, disease, and starvation. One way of confronting the very real dread of death was to display images of the thing most feared -- in much the same way as we inoculate people against epidemic disease by injecting them with a tiny amount of the deadly microbe. "See, we're not afraid of you!" is the original message of Halloween fright symbols. The fact that they were displayed on the eve of All Saints' Day, the church's great celebration of eternal life, was all the more significant.
Those who live in the eastern United States or who travel to Europe can see graphic evidence of this confrontation tactic, carved into old gravestones. It's surprising how frequently 18th-century gravestones display images of skulls, hourglasses, scythes, and other harsh reminders of the inevitability of death. In one sense, these messages were a reminder to the living that death could come at any time, and to get their spiritual house in order. Yet in another sense, as the Christian community gathered in those graveyards in years gone by, they saw these symbols as speaking for them. The gravestone imagery shouted in death's face: "See, we're not afraid of you!"
Now, the situation is very different. Death is no longer part of our everyday experience -- and even in those infrequent circumstances when death does intrude, our society does its best to deny it. Yet the Halloween death-images persist. As our children have learned about those death-images, they've come to see them not as symbols of dread, but as sources of amusement.
A number of years ago, I read an article citing some research that had been done, focusing on children in the United States and in Hungary. The researchers showed the children images of death -- skulls, skeletons, gravestones, and the like -- and asked them what they thought of them. The Hungarian children, who had heard from their parents terrible firsthand accounts of the Second World War, reacted with dread. The American children, shielded from any real awareness of death (and remembering good times spent trick-or-treating), saw them as sources of fun.
Nowhere, perhaps, is this shift from dread to amusement more evident than in an event that took place the evening of Friday, October 11th in the Six Flags Great Adventure theme park, Jackson, New Jersey. The theme-park operators have discovered that one way to stretch out their season is to market the weekends in October as "Fright Fest," adding a Halloween theme to their rides and attractions. As incredible as it may sound, each year a certain number of couples choose to get married or to renew their vows during Fright Fest. This year the mass ceremony included 30 couples (10 of whom were actually getting married, not just renewing vows). Most of these showed up in costume, to exchange their vows before local mayor Michael L. Broderick of Jackson Township. Our local newspaper described it this way:
"Broderick, who also officiated at last year's mass wedding, was accompanied by 'best man' Count Dracula (as played by John Carol) and 'maid of honor' Evil-Lynn (Nikki Lauren). The wedding was hosted by the Phantom of the Opera (Vincent Mazella).
'Don't they look great?' asked Kristen Siebeneicher, the theme park's public relations manager....
Though the ceremony was meant to be a fun time, Siebeneicher said park officials would never compromise the dignity of matrimony. 'The vows are traditional, and we play the wedding march,' she said. 'But it's the couples and the way they are dressed that makes this unique.'"
[Asbury Park Press, 10/14/02, p. B4]
Some of us may disagree about the "not compromising the dignity of matrimony" part, but the mere existence of such a practice illustrates how relaxed our society has become with imagery of death.
Related Illustrations
On the subject of the sniper attacks, an account from Thomas Lynch's book, The Undertaking, may be of some use. Lynch has the rare distinction of being both an undertaker (he uses that word with pride to describe himself) and an acclaimed poet. The meditations on life and death in this book are superb.
This mediation, titled, "Faith Is The Only Cure For Fear: Stephanie, Killed By A Falling Gravestone," is about a girl who was killed by a bizarre accident, when a vandal dropped a tombstone from a highway overpass and it shattered the windshield of the family car. It's about as random a death as that suffered by the unfortunate victims of the sniper.
Lynch begins, "Faith is, as far as I know, the only cure for fear -- the sense that someone is in charge here, is checking the ID's and watching the borders. Faith is what my mother said: letting go and letting God -- a leap into the unknown where we are not in control but always welcome."
Then, after narrating the tragic event that took Stephanie's life, Lynch says that trying to make sense of it "sometimes it seems like multiple choice." Was it a) the hand of God, b) not the hand of God because he doesn't intervene to counteract the laws of nature (like gravity while the stone was falling), c) the Devil, d) none of these things, or e) all of them.
Lynch concludes that none of the answers satisfy, "The alibi changes every day." But he says that the answers that faith does not require belong to Stephanie's grieving parents. When Lynch took them to the cemetery to buy a grave, her mother pointed to a statue of the Risen Christ, indicating that she wanted her daughter buried "at the right hand of Jesus," beneath the outstretched granite right arm of the statue.
(Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking [New York: Penguin, 1997], 54-57.)
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Nintendo, which built its fortune by offering happy games such as Mario Bros. for children, has been branded a good guy in the video gaming industry. But with markets shrinking, Nintendo is now courting teens and adults, offering gory games with titles like "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem," which includes bleeding walls and "bone thieves" that can enter a human body and take over. The challenge the company is working on is how to market their new violent games without harming its reputation among parents as a game platform they can trust for their children. As one step they are planning to use the videogame industry's rating system, labeling some games "M" for "mature." (from The Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2002, B1)
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In Moby Dick, Melville speaks of the prudence of the Pequod's first mate, Mr. Starbuck:
"'I will have no man in my boat," says Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage is that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward."(chapter 26)
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Three preachers sat discussing the best positions for prayer while a telephone repairman worked nearby.
"Kneeling is definitely best," claimed one.
"No," another contended. "I get the best results standing with my hands outstretched to heaven."
"You're both wrong," the third insisted. "The most effective prayer position is lying prostrate, face down on the floor."
The repairman could contain himself no longer. "Hey, fellas," he interrupted, "the best prayin' I ever did was hangin' upside down from a telephone pole."
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A sergeant in a parachute regiment took part in several night-time exercises. Once, he was seated next to a lieutenant fresh from Jump School. The young officer was quiet and looked a bit pale, so the sergeant struck up a conversation. "Scared, Lieutenant?" he asked.
"No, just a bit apprehensive," the lieutenant replied.
"What's the difference?"
The lieutenant answered, "The difference is I'm scared with a university education."
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Not long before his own death, Henri Nouwen put it:
We are afraid of a lot of things -- most of all, we are afraid of death. This fear takes away our freedom. But when we can reach beyond our fears to the One who loves us with a love that was there before we were born, and will be there after we die, then nothing will be able to take away our freedom." (Our Greatest Gift, 1-7).
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Death is not an enemy; living in constant fear of it is.
-- Norman Cousins
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Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, co-pastor with her husband of First Presbyterian Church in Pitman, New Jersey, wrote a hymn in response to the Columbine shootings. The hymn has since been included in a book of new hymns from Geneva Press, and is included here with permission. Carolyn's other hymns may be viewed on her church's website, www.firstpresby.org.
A Prayer for Our Children
Tune: "Ah, Holy Jesus" Herzliebster Jesu 11.11.11.5 by Johann Cruger, 1640
Text: Copyright (c) 1998 Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved. 305 South Broadway, Pitman, NJ 08071 Email: Bruce.Gillette@ecunet.org. Permission is given for free one-time use of this hymn. Geneva Press is publishing it in a forthcoming book titled Gifts of Love: New Hymns for Today's Worship by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. Gillettes would appreciate a copy of your worship bulletin.
God, we have heard it, sounding in the silence:
News of the children lost to this world's violence.
Children of promise! Then without a warning,
Loved ones are mourning.
Jesus, you came to bear our human sorrow;
You came to give us hope for each tomorrow.
You are our life, Lord -- God's own love revealing.
We need your healing!
Heal us from giving weapons any glory;
Help us, O Prince of Peace, to hear your story;
Help us resist the evil all around here;
May love abound here!
By your own Spirit, give your church a clear voice;
In this world's violence, help us make a new choice.
Help us to witness to the joy your peace brings,
Until your world sings!
Reproduced from GIFTS OF LOVE. (c) 2000 Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. Used by
permission of Geneva Press.
Worship Resources
By Chuck Cammarata
CALL TO WORSHIP
This reading could also be used elsewhere in the service as a dramatic reading or as a responsive reading. If you choose to use it as a dramatic reading, an alternative call to worship is provided below.
READER #1 -- I said, "Lord, why are innocent people being shot in schools and parking lots in Maryland?"
READER #2 -- I cried out, "Papa, hopelessness and hatred in the Holy Land. When will it end?"
READER #3 -- I asked, "Children starving in Malawi while we have abundance. Righteous God, where is justice for the children?"
READER #4 -- I listened to one who had been tortured by an evil tyrant in Iraq and wondered, "How long, O Lord, must we suffer a world filled with Hitlers, Stalins, Husseins, and the like?"
ALL 4 READERS: HOW LONG, O LORD?
READER #1 -- And then I heard a quiet voice say,
READER #2 -- "My child, where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
READER #3 -- "When I made the clouds and wrapped them like a blanket around the earth?
READER #4 -- "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?
READER #1 -- "Do you give the horse his strength or clothe his neck with a flowing mane?
READER #2 -- "Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom?
READER #3 -- "Does the eagle soar at your command and build his nest on high?"
READER #4 -- Then I realized, that I spoke of things I did not understand,
READER #1 -- Things too wonderful for me to know.
READER #2 -- For your ways, O God, are higher than mine.
READER #3 -- Your thoughts are beyond me.
READER #4 -- But I do know this,
READER #1 -- That you are God.
READER #2 -- Awesome in power,
READER #3 -- Unending in love,
READER #4 -- And I am yours.
READER #1 -- And these things I know are enough. AMEN.
The above reading could be followed with a hymn or song affirming God's faithfulness
HYMNS
Great Is Thy Faithfulness
To God Be The Glory
Our God Our Help In Ages Past
CHORUSES
God of Wonders -- from the "City on a Hill" worship CD & book
Humble Thyself in the Sight of the Lord -- In many books including the Tune Book
Awesome God -- also in many worship books -- including the Rich Mullins worship book
Holy, You Are Still Holy -- widely available in trax form and in worship music book collections of contemporary worship songs
All of these hymns and choruses would be great to use at any point in this week's worship service.
AN ALTERNATIVE CALL TO WORSHIP
LEADER: God said to Job, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
PEOPLE: "WHEN I MADE THE CLOUDS AND WRAPPED THEM LIKE A BLANKET AROUND THE EARTH?
LEADER: "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?
PEOPLE: "DID YOU GIVE THE HORSE HIS STRENGTH?
LEADER: "Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom?
PEOPLE: "DOES THE EAGLE SOAR AT YOUR COMMAND?"
LEADER: Ah, things too wonderful for me to know.
PEOPLE: FOR YOUR WAYS, O GOD, ARE HIGHER THAN MINE.
LEADER: Your thoughts are beyond me.
PEOPLE: GREAT ARE YOU, GOD
LEADER: And greatly to be praised!
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
LEADER: My counselor;
PEOPLE: MY FINANCIAL ADVISOR;
LEADER: My pastor;
PEOPLE: MY SPOUSE;
LEADER: A teacher;
PEOPLE: A HERO;
LEADER: Me and me alone.
PEOPLE: FATHER, FORGIVE ME FOR TRUSTING
LEADER: In everything and everyone, but you.
PEOPLE: FOR THERE IS NO ONE WITH MORE KNOWLEDGE,
LEADER: More power,
PEOPLE: OR MORE LOVE,
LEADER: Than you. Help me,
PEOPLE: HELP US
LEADER: To put all things in your hands.
PEOPLE: IN THE NAME OF OUR SAVOIR JESUS CHRIST. AMEN.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
LEADER: This is the glorious truth: God will never abandon or forsake us. So even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death itself,
PEOPLE: WE NEED NOT FEAR.
LEADER: Even though our sin's just reward is our own death,
PEOPLE: WE NEED NOT FEAR,
LEADER: For our God never
PEOPLE: NEVER!
LEADER: Departs us. This is the good news of the gospel.
PEOPLE: AMEN.
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION OR COLLECTIVE PRAYER
The chorus of the hymn "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus" sung a cappella is a marvelous prayer before scripture and sermon. Sing it twice -- it is beautifully prayerful.
PASTORAL PRAYER
Glorious, almighty God -- as the times become perilous and questions and doubts abound as to the future of so many people on this earth -- as Osamas and Saddams menace us -- as stock markets sink and jobs become less secure -- enable us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on you that beauty and loveliness will never fade from our view, and help us to keep our hearts firmly rooted in you that love and goodness will always be the reality out of which we live. We ask it in the name of the one who embodied faith, hope and love, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A Related Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
Text: "Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour." (1 Peter 5: 7-8)
Object-A big spider or snake. (Something scary that you can get at a pet store, or if not, perhaps some imitation spiders or snakes.)
Good morning, boys and girls. Have you ever been scared? I mean really scared? (let them answer) What scares you the most? (let them answer) Is it a dark room, or a bad dream? Have you ever been frightened by a person? (let them answer)
I brought with me this morning a couple of things that I know scare some people. (bring out your spider) How many of you have ever had a spider, I mean a really big spider, in your house? (let them answer) Spiders, some spiders can be really dangerous if they bite you. They look scary, don't they? (let them answer)
Here is another creature that scares people. (bring out your snake) Snakes scare a lot of people. Have you ever had a snake in your back yard or in the garden? (let them answer) We need to be very careful around snakes. Some snakes are filled with poison and when they bite they cause a lot of problems.
Those are some of the things we can see that are really scary and can be very dangerous. The Bible talks about something else that is very dangerous. Sometimes the Bible calls this dangerous thing the "devil" or "Satan." Other times the Bible talks about "evil" or "your adversary." The writers of the Bible teach us to be careful because the devil or Satan or whatever you want to call it is not only dangerous, but he also tries to make us do wrong. The devil makes bad things look good and good things look bad. The Bible says the devil prowls around like a bad lion looking for people that he can hurt.
Let's see what the devil makes us do. When we are thinking right, we remember that our parents love us, protect us, and help us make right decisions. But sometimes we don't want to do what our parents teach us. We get angry with them. We say bad things to them. We talk about hate and forget how much they love us. When we are like this, we are on the devil's side. Being on the devil's side is really scary.
The Bible teaches us to stay away from the devil. Instead of thinking like the devil, the Bible tells us to depend on God. When we are afraid, we should ask God to stay by us and protect us, and soon we will find a lot of our fear going away. Love chases away fear. Love makes hate melt like a chocolate bar in the hot sun.
So the next time you see something scary like a big spider or a snake or anything that makes you feel kind of funny, I want you to remember that this is the way the devil is to people. The devil is an ugly thing and causes ugly things to happen. Stay away from bad things and invite God to come into your life.
It is all right to be afraid; we should be afraid of things that can hurt us. But when we see scary things, we want to remember that we need God and all of his love to protect us and get rid of our fears.
The Immediate Word, October 20, 2002, issue.
Copyright 2002 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
