I heard a story about a captain of a ship at sea. In the midst of a fog he saw what looked like the lights of another ship heading toward him. He had his signalman blink: “Change your course 10 degrees south.” A reply came back: “Change your course 10 degrees north.” The captain of the ship answered: “I’m a captain. Change your course south.” To which the reply was: “I am a seaman first class. Change your course north.” This last reply infuriated the captain, so he signaled: “Change your course south. I’m on a battleship!” To which the reply came back: “Change your course north. I’m in a lighthouse.”
As we journey sometimes in a sea of darkness, wondering if we’re going in the right direction, let Jesus be our lighthouse, so to speak.
The word of God today carries us back over three thousand years to the 13th century before Jesus (the 1200s) to Moses, a prophet or mouthpiece of God.
God spoke to the Hebrews “in peels of thunder and flashes of lightening,” so says the author of Exodus. Such experiences terrified the Hebrews. And so Moses promises them future prophets, mouthpieces of God, who will be the “voice” of God throughout their triumphs and tragedies. These prophets will have the courage to speak truth and justice, freedom and peace, despite the cost to themselves.
The early Christian community saw in this prophecy Jesus as the end-time prophet, the definitive mouthpiece of God, our way, our truth and our life.
Paul urges the Christian community in Corinth in Greece not to be anxious about their lives but to live a God-centered life every day, because the end-time is near.
In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus enters a synagogue and amazes his listeners with his compelling words and awesome power. Even the demons recognize Jesus as the holy one of God. And here Jesus exorcizes a “crazed” man.
Mark’s Gospel highlights the struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.
In fact, Satan is cited thirty-four times in the New Testament. He is “the tempter,” “the evil one,” “the enemy,” “the adversary,” “the prince of devils.”
And Jesus is forever driving these “devils” or “demons” out of people.
Yes, the kingdom of God ultimately will triumph over the kingdom of Satan, good will conquer evil.
But how understand evil? How understand evil in the form of suffering?
For the Christian, the problem of evil can be best understood in light of the mystery of the dying and rising of Jesus.
Yes, our Christian faith proclaims that hidden in every Good Friday is an Easter hope or joy. Think about it.
Someone in a family, for example, loses a job or is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness or sees a relationship begin to unravel, or has to care for a seriously ill parent or child.
And then this family draws together, supports one another and gradually brings faith, hope and love to their life together as a family.
Yes, the faith, hope and love of a family can transform a tragic Good Friday, so to speak, into an Easter hope.
We sometimes find ourselves stuck in a Good Friday situation – our problems sometimes may seem to overwhelm us.
Our faith challenges us to remember that good ultimately will conquer evil, that love transforms hate, that light shatters darkness.
The life of Jesus did not end in the tragedy of the cross, but in the triumph of the Resurrection.
Hidden within the mystery of suffering is the glory of resurrection, eternal life, a transfigured or transformed, indescribable new life.
As I reflect on evil in light of Mark’s Gospel, I think of a story told by Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize winner and survivor of Hitler's concentration camps.
In one of Wiesel’s works titled “The Night,” he describes how the SS marched all the camp inmates to the parade grounds and there hung a youngster – all because one inmate had escaped and as a warning to the other inmates.
As the youngster hung there dying, Wiesel, a youngster himself, heard a voice behind him say: where is God now?
This is an eternal question: highlighted in the biblical Book of Job, in The Confessions of St. Augustine, in the literature of Fyodor Dostoevsky, and in best sellers like Rabbi Harold Kushner’s “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”
Yes, as we reflect upon the human situation today, brutal violence by ISIS in the Middle East, the denial of basic human rights in some countries, systemic poverty in so many regions of the globe, we realize that the entire planet cries out for God’s grace, God’s healing power.
There is of course no satisfactory answer to the mystery of evil.
At times suffering does result from immoral behavior, from the misuse of freedom. Think, for example, of the tyrants of the 20th century: Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot. These tyrants and so many other tyrants misused their freedom and caused untold suffering. They personified evil.
At other times, suffering, e.g., results from natural disasters like earthquakes and typhoons and tornadoes, from an unfinished, incomplete universe, a universe on the way, a universe in process toward an ultimate goal.
But ultimately, suffering is a mystery. So how respond to this mystery?
We have to remember that God is always near us. God forever seeks to bring us to a fuller life. He will never abandon us. Chisel in your memories the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Can a mother forget her child and, even if she does, I will never forget you.”
Second, if we are suffering, we should avoid negative judgments about ourselves. To say “I really deserve it” is a form of self-hate.
And finally, remember, the mystery of suffering has healing and redemptive power.
Yes, our everyday inescapable suffering, borne with love, can be redemptive; they can bring forth goodness, new life in ourselves and in others. We can say this because the sufferings of Jesus brought forth eternal life, resurrection, for all.
The ultimate evil of course is death. How come to terms with our own dying?
Most of us do not long with St. Paul “to be free from this earthly life so that we can be with the Risen Jesus.”
Many pass through Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s stages of death and dying – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and ultimately acceptance.
There is a darkness about death that even Jesus cried out against. Death seems cruel; it destroys and yet, in the Christian vision, we expect that the Spirit who continually amazes us, will surprise us in the moment of our own dying.
We cannot begin to imagine what life after this earthly life will be like, but we know from St. Paul that “no eye has seen, or ear has heard, no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
And so, as we reflect on the mystery of evil in light of Mark’s Gospel, let us remember that hidden in the sufferings of Jesus on Good Friday was the glory of his resurrection on Easter. And hidden within our own inescapable suffering is the glory of eternal life.
