My friend Peter
Gomes used to say that an excess of virtue is worse than an excess of vice
because there are no constraints on virtue.
An excess of
virtue is worse than an excess of vice because there are no restraints on
virtue. When I first head Peter say that I was taken aback. How could virtue be
worse than vice? Surely we all needed and wanted to become more and more virtuous.
Now, however, I
think that he was on to something. So much mischief can be done by those who
THINK they are virtuous and are determined to make us just as virtuous as they
are.
I served on the board
of examining chaplains in the Diocese of Alabama. That means that once or twice
a year two other priests and I sat down with candidates for ordination and talked
with them about their academic preparation for the priesthood. One year we met
with a young man about to be ordained to the transitional diaconate. We liked
him and gave him our blessing but he had written an exceptionally bad essay
about the Puritan movement in 17th century England. He wrote that
King Charles I tried to reintroduce Roman Catholicism – WRONG! That Charles had
been exiled – WRONG. Charles had been executed. And that Alexander Cromwell had
stepped in and led England – WRONG. It was Oliver Cromwell, not Alexander.
It reminded me
of the man who was speaking to a civic group. The person introducing him said
that he had made a million dollars in the oil business in Texas. The man got up
to speak and said that his introduction had only been partly correct: he was
from Idaho, not Texas. He was in the potato business, not oil. And he had not
made a million dollars; he had lost a million dollars.
But what
happened to poor King Charles I is a good illustration of the point that an
excess of virtue is worse than an excess of vice. The English Puritans believed
that the Church of England was insufficiently reformed and that Charles was impeding
reform. So they rose in revolt and Charles lost his head.
During the
French Revolution, the revolutionary leader Maximilian Robespierre argued that
the revolution was sustained by the virtue of its citizens. Thus, to be
insufficiently virtuous was to be an enemy of the revolution. Robespierre
launched the Reign of Terror, a period in which guillotines were set up in
every town square in France and thousands of ordinary citizens were executed.
One of the last to be executed was Robespierre himself when his fellow
revolutionary leaders realized that no one could be virtuous enough to satisfy
Robespierre and they themselves might be his next victims.
The story is
told that on the eve of the Russian Revolution two Bolsheviks were meeting. One
said to the other, “Comrade, when the revolution comes you will have all the
peaches you can eat.” The other Bolshevik replied, “But comrade, I don’t like
peaches.” After a pause, the first one replied, “When the Revolution comes, not
only will you eat peaches but you will also LIKE them.”
What does all
this have to do with the Sunday of the Passion or Palm Sunday? Surely, on this
day and in the story of Jesus’ suffering and death there are good guys and bad
guys, white hats and black hats. Jesus is good and Pilate and the religious
leaders who put him to death are bad. And that’s the problem. Jesus was not put
to death by bad people doing bad things. He was put to death by good people who
were doing their best, by people who were doing their duty as well as they
could understand it and were able to do it.
When the Jewish
leaders looked at Jesus they saw a dangerously deluded man, a man who believed
he was the Messiah, God’s anointed, the one sent by God to bring in an age of
peace and overthrow the Roman oppressors. Jesus might even believe he was God’s
son. Clearly, he must be a blasphemer and heretic and the punishment for that
was death.
Pilate looked at
Jesus and saw a potential revolutionary. The words that the crowd shouted
reinforced Pilate’s convictions. “Hosanna to the son of David.” The son of
David would be a king as David had been a king. Pilate’s only choice was to
execute Jesus on the charge of treason.
One of the most
important messages of this day and the week that follows is that sometimes when
we think we are at our best, we are actually at our worst.
It is usually
easy to recognize evil. Hitler was evil. Stalin was evil. But 150 years ago this
country was in the midst of a terrible civil war that began when seven states
seceded from the Union. They claimed to be motivated by high ideals: Freedom
honor, perpetuation of their culture, and so on. But at the heart of their
culture was the institution of slavery, the buying and selling of human beings,
the trafficking in human beings as property.
In 1963, seven
Birmingham religious leaders, including the Episcopal bishop of Alabama –
Charles Carpenter- and his assistant – George Murray -wrote an open letter to
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., urging him not to lead a series of demonstrations
during Holy Week intended to end the segregation of public accommodations in
Birmingham. Years ago I met and talked with one of the signers of that letter,
Rabbi Milton Grafman of Temple Emanu-El. Rabbi Grafman came and talked to my
students and gave a perfectly reasonable explanation of why he urged Dr. King
not to demonstrate.
One of King’s
demands was that the down town department stores hire black sales clerks. Many
of the owners of those stores were members of Temple Emanu-El. Grafman
explained that if they had hired black sales clerks, the insurance companies
would have cancelled their insurance for fear that the KKK would have fire
bombed their stores.
After Grafman
had talked to my students and left, I asked them who had been right: Dr. King
or Rabbi Grafman. They were all white middle class kids and they all said that
King had been right and Grafman had been wrong. If King had waited, they said,
segregation would have continued.
They were right.
Sometimes the right thing, the conventional thing, the thing that we have
always done, is absolutely the wrong thing.
The religious
leaders who executed Jesus did the expected thing, the conventional thing, the
thing that their moral and religious training taught them to do, and they
executed the Son of God. Pilate did exactly what he had to do under Roman law
and he has been vilified from that day to this for putting to death not just an
innocent man but a man who embodied innocence and goodness.
Palm Sunday and
Holy Week remind us that all too often it is when we are at our best that we do
the worst things. This week and its events remind us that we are saved by grace
because our good works are never good enough. Too often we choose the status
quo, the conventionally good thing over the unexpected better thing. Too often
our ideas of right and wrong are shaped by our self interest. They are a
product of a social system that exists to preserve and protect our economic and
political well being.
An excess of
virtue is more dangerous than an excess of vice because there are no restraints
on virtue. This day and this week we are invited to walk the way of the Cross
with Jesus. To put our self interest to death, perhaps even to put to death our
conventional ideas of virtue, and to begin to see through our own blindness and
prejudice.
When Christ was
lifted on the cross,
His arms
stretched out above
Through every
culture, every birth,
To draw an
answering love.
Still east and
west his love extends
And always near
or far,
He calls and
claims us as his friends
And loves us as
we are.
Where
generation, class, or race
divide us to our
shame
He sees not
labels but a face
A person, and a
name.
Thus freely
loved, though fully known,
May I in Christ
be free
To welcome and
accept his own
As Christ
accepted me.
