LUKE 13:31-35

31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

32 And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.

33 Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’

34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!

35 Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

Blondi.  Her name was Blondi.  That was the name that Adolph Hitler gave to his dog. Blondi was a German Shepherd and by all accounts the German dictator loved his dog.  He was an evil, evil man but he loved his dog. That just goes to show you that mom was right.  If you try hard enough you can find some good in everyone.   I still wouldn’t want to be him when the time comes to stand before the judgment throne but he did love his dog.  So, maybe he was only 99.999% evil.

Yes, it’s true. If you look hard enough you can find some good in everyone.  It’s like the minister who was asked by a mother to do a funeral for her son.  Unfortunately, the son was an unrepentant sinner and an absolute scoundrel.  That’s why the mother told the minister that she would donate $1,000 to the church if he did the funeral.  “But,” she said, “there’s one condition. You have to tell everyone that he was a saint.”  Now the church really needed the money so the minister agreed.  When the time came to deliver the eulogy the minster stood up and said, “Sisters and brothers, the man that you see before you was a drunk and a cheat, a womanizer and a thief, but compared to his brothers he was a saint.”

If you look try enough you can find some good in everyone. Just look at the Pharisees.

I know. The Pharisees are the bad guys in the gospels.  They’re the ones who were always out to get Jesus.   You see that from one end of the gospels to the other.  Let me share with you a few examples.

Let’s start with Mark 8:11. “The Pharisees came and began to argue with him.” 

Or how about Luke 6:7.  “…the Pharisees watched him…so that they might find a reason to accuse him.”

Or here’s an even better one. Matthew 12:14, “…the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.”

The Pharisees were also the ones who hauled Jesus before the high priest and then lied to Pilate to make sure that he would be crucified.  The Pharisees were the bad guys but if that’s true then how do you explain what happened when the Pharisees found out what Herod was going to do to Jesus.  According to Luke the Pharisees went to Jesus and said, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

How about that? The Pharisees saved his life.  That means that the Pharisees weren’t all bad.  If you want to put it in theological terms it means that no one is a total saint and no one is a total sinner.

Unfortunately, a lot of people you see on television and a lot of the people you hear on the radio and a lot of people you see each and every day haven’t gotten that message. Unfortunately, what you see these days is a lot people screaming at each other and shouting at each other.  You see people calling each other names and in some cases throwing punches at each other.  You see it in the halls of Congress.  You see it at school committee meetings.  You see it anytime the Red Sox and Yankees play a baseball game.  You even see it in Little League games.  Did you hear about the letter that the YMCA out in Southbridge sent to parents last week?  In the letter the parents were told that they’re not welcome to attend their children’s final basketball game.  Why?  Because the parents were being obnoxious.  They were screaming at the kids, the referees and each other.

These days it’s simple. You’re either a saint or a sinner.  The people who agree with you are the saints. They’re the good guys. The people who disagree with you are the sinners. They’re the bad guys and there’s nothing good about them. 

You can see that in a story that is told about the Congregational minister Henry Ward Beecher.  Rev. Beecher was a vocal opponent of slavery back in the days leading up to the Civil War.  Not everyone shared his theological views on that important issue however.  So, Rev. Beecher was surprised when he entered the pulpit one Sunday morning and found a piece of paper with the word “Fool” written on it.  According to the story Rev. Beecher took it in stride.  He chuckled as he held the piece of paper up to the congregation and said, “I have known of many an instance where a man wrote a letter and forgot to sign his name.  But this is the only instance I’ve known where a man signed his name and forgot to write the letter.”

It’s one thing to disagree with someone.  It’s another thing to demonize someone because he or she disagrees with you. Are you listening Pat Robertson?  Are you listening Rush Limbaugh?  Are you listening John Stewart?  Are you listen Anne Clouthier? Are you listening conservatives and liberals?  Are you listening pro-choice and pro-life advocates? 

Terrible things happen when you demonize someone.  You end up with people who wave signs that show a president with a Hitler moustache doing a Nazi salute.  You end up with people who shoot abortion doctors. You end up with people who fly planes into IRS buildings or the World Trade Center for that matter.

By the way this is a big reason why I have never watched a single episode of the television reality show “Survivor.”  I decided early on that I didn’t want to get hooked on a show where people spread lies about each other and stab each other in the back to win a prize.  If that’s what reality is today then stop the world because I want to get off.

Actually, that’s not what God wants us to do.  God wants us to change the world and the best way to do that is to remember that it’s God’s job to decide who’s a saint and who’s a sinner.  It’s our job to look for the good in each other; even the people who disagree with us. 

All this is why I value the covenantal faith that we share.  At the heart of our Congregational faith is the belief that people can have honest differences of opinion and still be equally sincere in their desire to follow Jesus Christ.   So, you can believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six days and I can believe that God created the heavens and the earth through the process of evolution.  That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or I’m a bad person.  I can believe that the death penalty is wrong because God is the only one who can end a human life.  You can believe that some sins are so evil that justice requires us to apply the death penalty. That doesn’t mean that I’m a saint and you’re a sinner.  It doesn’t mean that I’m a sinner and you’re a saint.

To tell you the truth, we’d all be a lot better off if we were more like the little girl who surprised her Sunday School teacher one morning.  The Sunday School teacher read the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats to the children.  Then she asked them a question.  “Children,” the teacher said. “If all the good sheep were white and all the bad sheep were black what color would you be?”  The little girl thought about it, then raised her hand and said, “Striped.”

It’s really simple. There’s some bad in the best of us and there’s some good in the worst of us.  There are some saints out there who aint and there are some sinners out there who are winners. So, when you disagree with someone you have a choice.  You can demonize the person who disagrees with you.  Or you can look for the good in the person who disagrees with you.  When you do that you’ll find that it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes

February 28, 2010