Playing the Villain

Jason Armold

An Unlikely Advent • Sermon • Submitted 5 months ago • Presented 5 months ago

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Everyone Loves a Villain

What does the Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Harry Potter series all have in common? Well, actually, they have several things in common. They have all been made into successful movies, they were all first best-selling books, and they were all written by authors who happen to be Christian and contain Christian themes—yes, even Harry Potter!

But another thing they have in common is the fight between good and evil and memorable villains. What is it about a villain that we like? Why do people go out of their way to dress up as villains for Halloween—even to the donning of red horns and a red pitchfork?

Well, one of the things about a villain is that they help us understand ourselves. Take for instance the great King Herod from the Christmas story. He’s a character we love to hate. In order to protect his power he stops at nothing—not even the murder of children—to protect his throne against one who was born King of the Jews. He even tries to wrangle the wise men into his scheme to help him find this one—purportedly so he too can worship him—but we all know different.

But the truth is, if we think about it, there just might be a little Herod in all of us. Now, some of you might be offended by this, and I get that. I sincerely doubt any of you are out there killing children or doing anything even close to that level of savagery. But don’t we all do things that are calculated to make us look good, to protect our position, power, and prestige. Not even pastors are immune, I assure you.

Another thing about villains that helps us in our lives is to work out our priorities. So often, villains have a backstory in which they were hurt, tormented, made to feel less than. They have suffered and now they wish to pay that suffering forward on to others. Behind almost every villain is a childhood of suffering that made them a bully. A bully then grew into an adult who matured into a villain. But there for the grace of God go we. For I do not know many people who have not suffered at the hands of others and I myself know the temptation to dish it out on those who can’t handle it. Being bullied has a way of making one try to justify, excuse, or otherwise wash their hands of their own behavior.

But what then is the difference between a villain on the one hand and a hero on the other. Because if you look at the literature written about heroes in stories you find that their backstories can be fairly similar to that of villains. Often, like in Harry Potter, there is some childhood trauma that must be dealt with. There is a path of healing and strengthening that must occur lest the would-be hero go down the dark path. Remember Star Wars when the Emperor tells Luke Skywalker—another hero with a past—to “choose the hate—let it grow in you.”

Good and Evil in the Gospel

So, let’s talk about the Gospel story we all know from Scripture. Does it too talk about heroes and villains. Well, not quite in the same way, but it does talk quite a bit about the triumph of Good over Evil, would you not agree.

In the Old Testament, most of the evil is represented by two entities: Either a foreign king like Pharaoh or a foreign god like Baal. These are the bad guys of the Old Testament. And they do two things: either they persecute God’s people Israel, or they draw God’s people away from proper worship of the LORD to other gods.

And this brings us to the epic battle between the gods in our first Scripture today. Elijah on the one hand representing God and on the other side of the ring the prophets of Baal representing idolatry and the bad king Ahab and his idolatrous wife Jezebel. If you were in Bible Study Wednesday you’ll remember we talked about that name.

In this passage good triumphs over evil because Baal simply isn’t real. Baal was a human-made constructed deity that allowed people to indulge their passions in the name of their lusts. Worship of Baal centered around fertility rites including sacred prostitution and sacrifice. All in the hopes that the crops would come up and the children would come. But our God? God promises Israel all of those things simply for keeping the commandments.

But I would be remiss if I stopped at the Old Testament’s view of evil. By the time of the New Testament with further revelation, many Jews began understanding the forces of evil being able to interact with the world by means of possession and oppression. The demons were how this happened to most folks and the power behind all of those demons was this figure “HaSatan,” the accuser or the adversary. And Jesus acknowledged this force as a key player in the world, as a kind of summing up of all the bad things that humans can do to each other: Murder, violence, hatred, malice, rage, oppression, and injustice of all kinds all find their origins in human hearts but find strong support in the face of the Evil One.

But we know, as both Jesus and Revelation tells us, that Satan’s days are numbered. That he has ultimately been defeated on the Cross by Jesus and that his power will eventually be stripped and he and his minions will be destroyed.

We Have Work to Do

But in the meantime, until Jesus comes again, you and I and the church at large have some work to do. First and foremost, we have to turn inwards and attempt at all costs to root out the Herod that lives in all of us. The person that would hold on to power, position, possessions, and prestige by any force necessary. The Kingdom of God is simply not about these things, in fact is about their opposite. The Kingdom is marked out by humility, sharing, giving more honor to others, and not jockeying for position.

And then once we’ve dealt with our own inner Herods, our own inner villains, we must work to see the work of other villains thwarted in our broader society. We must be at work undoing oppression, cancelling injustice, working towards a more just and bright future, not just for people that look like us, think like us, believe like us—but for all people.

Only then can we be co-creators of justice. Only then can we truly sing Love Has Come—and mean it. Because as John writes, “Perfect love casts out all fear” including the fear of losing our power, our position, our influence, our “stuff”, or even our reputation. Love is the only power in the world that can destroy evil. And this Advent we light the candle of love knowing that Love came in a stable some two millennia ago and defeated the powers of evil not with a sword, or a magic wand, or some other tool of violence but with his own self-giving love to the point of death. Amazing Love, how can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me? Amen.