“Overcome evil with good”
It is a strong statement about the power and nature of the good and a strong indictment of a form of false or incomplete justice that belongs to revenge. Revenge is about our wanting to get back at someone who has wronged or hurt us as we think or imagine. But if we are honest with ourselves it means recognizing that we do not simply want to get back, to do just as it has been done to us. No. What we really want is to annihilate or humiliate the other; to “nuke them till they glow,” as I recall some dyed in the wool theological liberals at Harvard saying at the time of the Iranians taking American hostages. Justice as getting ahead not getting even.
Paul suggests that is not the way to go. It is our way but not God’s way, quoting first, Deuteronomy on vengeance, and, then, Proverbs, about feeding and giving drink to your enemy. But what exactly is meant in saying that in so doing “thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head?” How is that good and just. It sounds more than a wee bit vindictive. But is it? Might it not rather suggest the conviction of conscience in countering evil with good and thus awakening that sense of the greater power of the good in the other, the enemy? It transcends the false and limited forms of human justice. The injunction at the beginning of the Epistle reading from Romans to “be not wise in [our] own conceits,” our own thinking, is complemented by the concluding injunction to “be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Such injunctions are far more than the chorus of empty platitudes that dominate our contemporary culture. Be kind, be nice, be good, be happy – all true but what do they mean? What does it mean to say to your children that you just want them to be happy without giving them any idea of what happiness is? That is to leave them alone and empty in themselves as if happiness is merely subjective. Aristotle, who uses the word eudaimonia, usually translated as happiness in his Nicomachean Ethics, means by it something far removed from our modern assumptions. It is a life of virtue lived in accord with reason; something substantial and more than simply something emotional and personal. As such the great traditions of ethical philosophy or theology provide us with something more and greater that shape and inform our lives in what is ultimately good even in the face of “our infirmities, and in all our dangers and necessities,” as the Collect wisely says. The good is the mercy of God who speaks to the truth of our desires and gathers us to himself, seeking our good and our wholeness; ultimately the healing of soul and body.
Thus the Epistle is illustrated by the Gospel. Jesus comes down from the mountain, the mountain which is the setting for the Sermon on the Mount. He comes down to where we are, we might say, to address the infirmities, dangers and necessities of human lives. The hard lesson for our contemporary world, it seems, is about facing the radical incompleteness and brokenness of our humanity without which we cannot look for restoration and healing. Jesus comes down and encounters a leper from within Israel and then a Roman centurion from outside Israel. Both seek something from Jesus. Both recognize a need or necessity either for themselves, in the case of the Leper, or for another, the servant, in the case of the Centurion. More importantly, they recognize something divine in Jesus which shapes their request and prayer.
The Gospel is an epiphany of the healing mercies of Christ. It follows upon the first miracle which Jesus did, as John told us last Sunday, in Cana of Galilee, and shows healing as belonging to the restoration of our humanity to wholeness. The emphasis in the story is the universality of the goodness of God who seeks the healing of all. It is not restricted to the people of Israel. The story highlights the marvel of the Centurion’s insight into the nature of divine goodness; his insight into the divinity of Christ. “God spake and it was done,” Genesis teaches. The Centurion intuits that divine power in Jesus. He does not need to make a house call. “Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” Such is the healing for our souls, an awakening to the power and nature of the mercy and goodness of God. What he seeks for our humanity is shown in these healing miracles. It is nothing less than the restoration of ourselves to who we are in God.
It happens through our active engagement with God in the recognition of our lack or need. This challenges all of the pretenses to our claims to self-sufficiency, not by negating human agency and accountability but by opening us out to the goodness of life as given by God upon which all that we think and do ultimately depends. The healing miracles are in a way nothing more than a way of recalling us to the truth of our humanity in God; in short, to the miracle of life itself. Our good and our happiness are not found in ourselves. That is the modern illusion about the autonomous self. Instead Jesus gathers our desires into his will and purpose for the good of our humanity. The healings illustrate the very meaning of the overcoming of evil with good, a good which is not found in ourselves but in our being found in God.
The Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes, the blessednesses. It is about something more than the usual senses of happiness both ancient and modern. Aristotle actually uses the word makarios, meaning blessedness, a few times in his Ethics, and always by reference to the idea of something divine, something which is similar to the life of the Gods. To be sure, he suggests that life is too high for us. What we have here is Jesus coming down from the mountain of the Beatitudes to speak to us and to bring us what belongs to our highest good as found in his mercy and goodness. His goodness is life, the essential life of God in whom alone we find our healing and wholeness.
“Lord, if you will you can make me clean,” the Leper says to Jesus who simply responds, saying “I will; be thou clean,” and then directs him to the priests in Israel in compliance with the teachings of Moses. It is a healing within the constraints and practices of Israel and not a repudiation of them. The Centurion comes to him in Capernaum and simply states the problem: “Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.” Jesus responds, “saying, I will come and heal him.” In both cases he signals the will to heal. It is the motion of God’s goodwill towards us.
Yet the centurion grasps the deeper meaning and universality of God’s goodness. It is not confined to the limits of time and space or to cultures and societies but is grounded in the will and mind of God. “Speak the word only,” he says, recalling us to creation itself and to redemption as the fulfilling and restoration of the purpose of our being. Our sense of wonder at the healing miracles – miracles are wonders, after all – is complemented beautifully by Jesus’s wonder at the words of the Centurion. Miracle speaks to miracle and awakens in us the beauty and wonder of God’s goodness which alone overcomes evil with good. It is given to live in us. “In him was life and the life was the light of men,” John tells us in the great Christmas Gospel. The stories of the Epiphany make that truth manifest for us and in us. They recall us to the goodness of God, to the miracle of life itself which is always the overcoming of evil with good.
“Overcome evil with good”
Fr. David Curry
Epiphany 3, January 26th, 2025
Christ Church