Fifteen years ago, I was on a tour of Robben Island in South Africa, the prison where Nelson Mandela was jailed for most of his 27 years in captivity. The tour guide was a former prisoner who had been locked up for writing a letter to his local newspaper questioning the legality of apartheid. He said that everyone jailed on Robben Island was a political prisoner, incarcerated for what was deemed to be treasonous activity.
In spite of the remoteness of the prison, the miserable conditions, and the gross injustice that was visited on Mandela, our tour guide, and countless others who were locked away, often indefinitely and invariably on fabricated charges, there was, he said, great solidarity among the prisoners. Messages from the outside occasionally found their way in, which provided much needed hope. Letters from Mandela got out as well.
That hope reached a crescendo about a year before the prison was shut down. Our guide said that the prisoners somehow knew that they had won. That apartheid was soon to be defeated. Justice, however fragile, would emerge. He said that the prisoners could tell that the prison guards knew it as well. And with his claim of powerful hope – even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary – I came away with a life-giving insight: evil cannot be sustained.
Evil can reign for a long time. 254 years of slavery in this country; and systemic racism for a lot longer than that. Over four years of atrocities in Ukraine, decades of evil in Sudan, genocide in Gaza and elsewhere over the centuries. And now a “war of choice” in Iran. A long, cruel march of evil.
For me, and for many Christians who this week are liturgically remembering the last days of Jesus’ life, called Holy Week, evil is depicted, and literally embodied, in the crucifixion. Jesus nailed to the cross and hung out to die.
In the icon which accompanies this post, two of Jesus’ followers are depicted with heads down, suggesting that their hearts were broken. The implication is clear: for them, as Jesus dies, love dies as well. Hope is gone. Love is mocked. Love is tortured. Love is murdered.
And yet. This is where faith comes in – and it doesn’t necessarily need to be Christian faith. Faith that love cannot be killed. Faith that love never ends. In faith, Christians claim that love lifted Jesus into new life. A resurrection.
While many may not be able to make the claim that Jesus came alive again after having been brutally crucified, most of us can remember and recognize moments when someone lost hope, felt abandoned by love – and were lifted back into life by care, compassion, empathy – by love. It doesn’t always work, but it happens enough so that we invest ourselves in providing succor and support for people who are reeling from the purveyors of evil.
And there are purveyors of evil – many of them in positions of unchallenged power. Unlike most of us who avoid evil, are afraid of evil – and are disoriented by evil, these purveyors seem comfortable with evil. They feed on it. They dispense evil without shame or remorse. Yet after saying this, it is very important to say – unequivocally — that these purveyors of evil are not evil in and of themselves. Part of the commitment to engage in the weapon of love is to insist that no one is inherently evil. No one. People may do evil things, but they are not inherently evil. Ironically, and perversely, the purveyors want to convince us otherwise – that there are whole swatches of people who are evil and therefore need to be discarded, dismissed or destroyed. Love will not allow that.
There are those who say – and think – that love is a fanciful emotion that may make the heart feel good, but ultimately doesn’t have the capacity to alter the world’s landscape. Think again. Demonstrations and actions of love were on daily display during the recent ICE siege in Minneapolis. A relatively term has been coined: neighboring. Neighboring, which was carried out by thousands of Minneapolitans, was – and is – a much-needed demonstration of love. It was powerful. It was active. It demonstrated the power of love which stood up to the evil – yes, the evil, of agents who routinely denied the dignity and rights of individuals, and whose fatal interventions against Renee Good and Alex Pretti were immediately described as legitimate responses to the evil of terrorism. The evil was not sustained. The continuous waves of love, of neighboring, drove the evil away.
Love is a gift that has been bestowed on us. Love never ends. Love can confront evil – and if it doesn’t disable it, love can make it retreat to surface yet again somewhere else. We need to be ready to respond with love. Exercise its power. Invest in hope. Fight with love.
