At the adult class this morning John Riker continues his thoughtful consideration of the problem of evil. If God is both omnipotent and good, how are we to understand or explain the existence of evil? That’s the problem. And all of us are eagerly awaiting the solution, because while the earth God created rotates wondrously on its axis, the evening news reminds us every day that it spins still unfinished and unperfected. Despite being made by God, creation displays some uneven seams and ragged edges, especially since the creation includes people, who have a way of going their own ways, not conforming to the original pattern of the Creator.

It is into this imperfect and unfinished world, into the world of people, into a world that has its dark side, into the world of sin and poverty and blindness and injustice and oppression, into this world of bad news, that Jesus comes to bring good news to the poor and release for the captive and sight for the blind.

To be sure, the arrival of Jesus does not bring an explanation for the existence of evil. Instead, Jesus’ arrival is a response, God’s own response, to the world as it is and to the fact of evil: A proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favor, and an announcement of good news for the poor, release for the captive, and sight for the blind.

It is only in a world that is not perfect, of course, that the arrival of Jesus makes sense. What meaning would Jesus have in a world that was perfect? Good news to the poor would make no sense if The New York Times and CNN and the doctor’s office never brought bad news. Proclaiming release for the captive and sight for the blind and freedom for the oppressed would be meaningless in a world that was not afflicted. It’s only in light of creation’s ragged edges, only in light of the fact of creation’s imperfection, that the good news brought by Jesus has any meaning. It’s only with our awareness of “the bondage of our sins” that it makes sense to pray, as we did earlier this morning, that God will “set us free and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made know to us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.” As Jesus says, it’s not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick.

An offer of redemption is meaningless to a people who are not in bondage. So it’s into the world where the existence of evil and death is a fact that Jesus brings his message of meaning and hope – good news for the poor and healing for the sick and freedom for those in bondage – and comes to show the fishermen, Peter and James and John, how to make a huge catch of fish, and then tells them that from now on he will show them how to catch people, how to be “fishers of men,” how to heal the fallen creation with the good news of redemption and life for a world that is dying.

What does it mean to be a “fisher of men,” or a “catcher of people” as the Revised English Bible has it? What does it mean to be an evangelist, a sharer of good news in a world of bad news? 

One day when I was a boy I went fishing with my grandfather. The only thing I really remember about that day, apart from the enjoyment of just being with my grandfather, was his asking me at one point, “Dayle, do you want to fish or talk? If you talk too much, you’ll scare the fish away.”

William Faulkner, who wrote millions of words to produce dozens of novels, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, described himself as “a failed poet,” because he had to use so many words to convey his meaning, while the genius of poetry is to fish for meaning with as few words as possible.

As we noted a couple of weeks ago, the English word “poet” comes from the Greek word poiein, which means “to create.” God the Creator is God the Poet. And Jesus, the One who creates good news in a world of bad news, is the Poet of the place of very few words, the Poet of the Cross. Which is why St. Francis’ restatement of Jesus’ poetry makes sense: “Proclaim the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”

Like Faulkner, and unlike Jesus and Francis, preachers are failed poets, but being a “fisher of men,” a “catcher of people,” a creator of good news, means telling it simply. It means telling it the way Jesus told it, using words if necessary. 

Evangelism is the passing on of the good news of God that Paul tells us about this morning, the passing on of the tradition that we have received – that Christ died for love; that even with the ragged edges of creation such as they are, Christ loves the world so much that he persists in sharing with the world the tremendous loving mercy of God, even to the point of dying for us to drive the truth home. It means sharing the good news that Jesus was buried and then raised by God on the third day, and that even though he, Paul, was unworthy of Jesus’ love because of his persecution of those who followed Jesus, and that even though we, like Paul, are unworthy because of our timid response to that love, the risen Christ nonetheless took Paul for who he was and for what he was, just as he took Peter for who and what he was, and just as he takes us for who we are and what we are, and shares God’s love with us as well, and then sends us to share that love with the world, using words only if necessary.

If we seriously intend to follow Jesus, all Christians, including Episcopalians, are evangelicals. I refuse to allow a certain wing of the Christian Church to hijack that wonderful word. Because evangelism, the sharing of the good news of God in a world of bad news, is what Jesus himself came to do.

But the evangelism of Jesus is not the theological or ecclesiastical imperialism we see a lot of in our day – an insistence that others must cross every “T” in the Creed the way we cross them because that’s the way we think they should be crossed. It is bad news, not good news, to proclaim a God who insists that one must say he believes something regardless of whether he himself has experienced it. That would be a “bad news” god, not the “Good News” God.

The Good News is that Christ loves even those who don’t believe in him, even those who persecute him, like Paul. The Good News is that Christ loves even those who deny him, like Peter, and even those who betray him, like Judas, and even those who do not live as Jesus lived, like us. The Good News is that Paul and Peter and Judas and you and I can, by the grace of God, experience that love in our own lives and can, even now, be redeemed – remade, refashioned into the loving persons God created us to be!

Jesus made “fishers of men” out of Peter and James and John and Paul, not through propositions or reason or creeds, but through example, through his life and his death. Jesus made “fishers of men” out of Peter and James and John and Paul not with religious agendas, but by attraction of personality. “Catching people,” for Jesus, was not a matter of throwing out a net to corral or control or manipulate people. People were “caught” by the way Jesus lived in the Spirit of God’s original creation – by the way he brought meaning to a world bereft of it, by the way he walked the way of the Cross when he could have taken another way, by the way he brought health to those who were sick and hope to those in despair and fellowship and love to those who had been fed a lot of bad news that suggested that they did not count with God. Jesus made disciples by the way he lived and the way he died.

So what does this mean for you and me in a world where the existence of evil and death is not in question? Given the fact of evil, how shall we live? How might we be “fishers of men” or “catchers of people” for the healing of the creation? In exactly the same way that Jesus did it. By living as Jesus lived, by being creators of the good news of God’s love for a fallen world, not just talkers about it. By living lives of reconciliation and peace regardless of circumstance, lives which both attract others to God and delight the heart of God. 

The question “Why does evil exist in a world created by a God who is good?” begs for an answer based upon reason. It expresses a logical dilemma that hopes for a rational solution. It is the first and great question of the theological and philosophical quest.

And the second question is like unto it: “How are we to live in a world where evil exits?” And even in the absence of a satisfactory logical answer to the first question, the second question persists and insists upon a response. And this is what Pastor Maclean is getting at in the movie version of “A River Runs Through It,” when he acknowledges that he never fully understood his younger son Paul, or why Paul was led, finally, to die in a fight in an alley. But of this, he adds, we can be sure – that even if we often don’t understand, if we don’t understand even those who are closest to us, ”we can still love them, and we can love them completely, without complete understanding.”

That, I think, is the response of Jesus, the response which Jesus came to show us is both possible and redemptive. It is Jesus’ response to the world as it is, regardless of circumstance, his response to a world full of pain and sin, and even of evil. And it is the response we ourselves are to use as “catchers of people,” because it is the response of God himself, the response that offers meaning to a world that may at times seem to be without meaning.

And the good news is even greater than some Christians allow themselves to believe. Because the fact is that you don’t have to be a Christian to offer Jesus’ response, just a poet, a creator of healing, a bearer of hope and encouragement and faith to the weak, a creator of good news. Like Gandhi, for example. 

Mohandas Gandhi did not profess the Creed of the Church. He was a Hindu who rejected Christianity because he saw how poorly the good news of Jesus was shared by Christians in the South Africa of his youth. So he returned to India and there proclaimed and walked the way of peace in India during the days of her struggle for independence. And you’ll remember how, late in Gandhi’s life, bitter civil war broke out among fellow Indians once they became independent of Britain, much like the civil war that rages in Iraq in our own day. Only the civil war in Gandhi’s day was between fellow Indians, between Hindu and Muslim, a conflict that broke Gandhi’s heart. And so, distressed by the continuing strife, Gandhi began a fast, determined not to eat until the fighting among his brothers and sisters, Hindu and Muslim, ended.

And in the movie “Gandhi,” there is a most remarkable scene. Weeks into his fast, Gandhi was so weak he could hardly lift himself from his pallet when a fellow Hindu, who was afraid the great and beloved man would die, burst into Gandhi’s room. In tears the man begged Gandhi not to die, to give up his fast. 

The man then confessed to Gandhi that he was in torment. He was in hell, he said, because one of his Muslim neighbors had killed a Hindu, and he had retaliated by grabbing a Muslim child, a little boy, and had killed the boy by smashing his head against a wall. Gandhi, grieving, thought for a moment. Then, with difficulty, he lifted himself slightly from his cot and whispered, “I know a way out of hell. Find an orphan, a young boy whose parents have been killed in the fighting, and take him into your home as your own son. Only, be sure to rear him as a Muslim.” Proclaim the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.

Or like Robert McCahill, a Roman Catholic priest who does profess the Creed of the Church. Father McCahill is the only Roman Catholic in the Muslim town of Kishorganj in Bangladesh. He lives by himself in a hut on the edge of town.

The law in this Muslim town forbids any proselytizing, forbids any Christian preaching, any fishing for men or catching of people for Jesus. Father McCahill cannot even offer a mass. All he is allowed to do in Kishorganj is to live there.

So he does. And he lives by spending his days serving his Muslim friends and neighbors. He gives food to the destitute. He provides the sick with medicines, and when they need it he helps them get to a hospital. He has become a familiar figure in Kishorganj, going to the homes of those too sick to come to him.

Father McCahill is also a regular at a small restaurant in town. The owners are used to seeing him invite beggars who are on the street outside to come in and join him at his table to share a meal. What they can’t figure out is why this foreigner and Christian priest, who cannot offer a mass or talk about Jesus, pours their tea for them as if he were their hired servant.

Father McCahill cannot talk about Jesus, and when someone asks, he responds with a few words only. He tells the seeker what St. James wrote in his epistle, that “in the eyes of God, true religion is helping those in need.” 

And that makes sense to his Muslim friends, who have heard the same thing in the Koran. And maybe, too, that’s why, as Father McCahill walks the streets of Kishorganj, he is greeted as bhai Bob, brother Bob. Preach the good news at all times. If necessary, use words.

Or like Golda, who, as a young girl, lived in Germany during World War II. Golda’s father, mother, brother, and sister all died in the Nazi’s gas chamber at Maidenak. Golda, too, was on her way to the ovens, but because she was the last one in line that day, the guards could not squeeze her in. So they pulled her out and slammed the door shut. She was the only survivor.

When Maidenak was liberated, all Golda wanted was somehow, some way, to avenge the death of her family. “But it struck me,” she said, “that I would then be no better than Hitler himself.” So Golda went to work in a hospital for children in the town of Maidenak. To purge her bitterness toward the German people, Golda, a Jew, utters the most well known of Jewish prayers: “Father, forgive them.” She chose to remain in the town where her family had been gassed in order to nurse German children, most of them victims of the war like herself. She decided she would remain in Maidenak until she had completely forgiven Hitler. “When I do that,” she says, “then I am allowed to leave.” Proclaim the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.

Like Jesus himself. There once was a missionary who was shipwrecked at sea, and, half dead from injury and exposure, he was washed up on the shore at the edge of a remote village. He was taken in by the villagers and nursed back to health. For the next twenty years, he lived in the village. During that time, he preached no sermons, he sang no hymns. He neither read the Bible nor taught it to anyone. He made no personal claim of faith.

But when the villagers became sick, he nursed them, often long into the night, just as they had cared for him. When people were hungry, he shared his own food with them. When they were lonely, he was available to talk and listen. A well educated man, he spent much time tutoring the uneducated.

After twenty years had passed, other missionaries came from the sea to the village and began talking to the villagers about a man named Jesus. And the villagers said, “Oh, we know him. He has been living here for twenty years. Would you like to meet him? We’ll take you to him?”

Preach the Gospel at all times. But why would it ever be necessary to use words?

Because, like Peter and Paul, you and I, all of us, are failed poets, unworthy. So words are permitted, if necessary. But the good news is that, by the grace of God, we, too, have been redeemed. By the grace of God, we have been commissioned as evangelists, creators of good news, and sent to assist with the healing of the creation as ambassadors of reconciliation and peace, using means that delight the heart of God.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.