We have the story of the garden of Eden - where we see Adam and Eve trying to hide from God - trying to hide their sin and their shame behind the trees and bushes - hoping that God will not notice them.
And then we have the story of Jesus - being accused by some scribes from Jerusalem of being possessed by the Devil - by Beelzebub because he is casting demons out of people and healing others, and forgiving sins, and telling still others that is lawful to heal on the Sabbath and perform other good works.
And we have Paul - dear Paul - who in his letter to the Corinthians acknowledges the afflictions of this life - how our outer nature - our flesh - our mortal body - wastes away - and who then asserts in the midst of this that those who believe in Christ do not lose heart because their inner nature is renewed day by day.
We do not lose heart, he writes, for this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen.
A lot of people do not believe in the story of the garden of Eden - they do not believe what it teaches about the power of evil, nor what it has to say about pain and suffering being the result of sin.
Pity them.
Pity them - not because they are somehow less than those who do believe in this story, but because they risk missing the opportunity for their own redemption.
Pity them because they have eyes, but do not see, and ears - but do not hear.
The suffering of this world - at least the vast majority of it - is quiet clearly caused by human beings.
War, poverty, oppression, mass starvation, murder - all these things are within human control and yet we have no control over them.
Millions starve while tons of grain rots in warehouses. Tens of thousands are killed while the nations all round talk peace. Uncounted numbers suffer - though they have done no wrong.
We meet good people - people who really try to do right by their families and friends, and we discover pain and suffering in their lives - children who do not show respect towards them, relatives who cheat them, spouses who betray them.
We see bad people apparently prosper - we see them grow rich on the labours of others, and party on with steak and caviar while their neighbours struggle to simply put bread on the table.
The bible teaches us that there is a power in the world that causes this, the power of evil, and that this power takes a personal form, a real form against which we have no power of our own .
The bible teaches us that we, are under the control of sin and death, and that we cannot change this fact on our own - that we need help.
Some while ago, a friend of mine was talking about his father: he spoke of how, for many years, his father binged out, how his father was a drunkard - a man who when sober was kind and gentle - and when drunk - well he was something else again.
He had no control over himself. And this kind and gentle man brought pain and suffering upon others, or at least the force within him did so - the family had to move - to change homes and communities - almost every year - landlords were cheated; employers disappointed; children neglected; friends - abandoned - or embarrassed or betrayed.
And this continued on - until one day - after taking his children to Sunday School for a period of time, after witnessing the faith of others and what it did for them, he accepted Jesus into his life - he asked God to take control and to guide his actions and save him from his sins - and from the power of sin.
And then things changed - debts still had to be paid, amends still had to be made, mistakes still occurred - but the inner man - the man that God made - was set free to grow and mature..
No more booze, a lot more prayer. And the love and kindness of the man that could be glimpsed before - in the moments of sobriety - became apparent to all - for days, weeks, and finally years on end. The children who were still living at home stopped fearing what would happen next - they began to look forward to being with their father - they began to develop their own faith in God - a faith that still guides them to this day.
This man, this father, this husband, experience a change in control - he went from being in the control of the devil to being in the control of God, and the result was the renewal of his inner nature, and in the end, when his earthly tent was destroyed, the result was a building from God - a house not made with hands - eternal in the heavens..
There is a power in the world - a power that our sinfulness as individuals, and as a human race, has set loose upon the world. The Bible calls this power Satan - or evil - and it is dedicated to deception, and to destruction, and to death.
But there is another power also loose in the world, the power of God, and it is a greater power than the power of Satan, indeed it vanquishes Satan and all his minions, and in the end, as the Revelation of John teaches us, and as Christ himself teaches, it vanquishes death itself.
That is what today's gospel lesson is about when Jesus turns to those who accuse him of casting out demons by the Prince of Demons and says to them
How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.... truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin..
Someone I know in the New Territories loves birds and spends a few moments in his garden every morning feeding them. He says that doves eat more than other birds and because they have such voracious appetites they will soon eat right out of your hand.
One morning he decided to play a little game with a particular dove that had been a regular for several months. He held out his hand with seed in it and when the dove approached and was just about to peck out a few seeds, he closed his hand, hiding the seed.
The bird stopped, cocked his head in disbelief, and then retreated a few feet. He then reopened his hand and the bird boldly approached a second time. Again the hand clamped shut just before the bird could reach the food. The bird again retreated. Several more times my friend repeated the little ritual and the dove reacted in the same disappointed way.
Finally, after about the sixth or seventh time, the dove flew off. My friend never saw that particular bird again; it never returned.
We can chase the Spirit of God away, We can deny it access to our lives, We can refuse to believe, to hope, and to obey.
We can please ourselves - rather than seeking to please God, much as my friend in the New Territories sought to satisfy his curiosity - rather than the bird that trusted him.
When we do - when we refuse to trust and believe. When we refuse to see what is round us or to acknowledge the forces that underlay all human affairs, we remain in the control of the evil one, we remain under the control of sin and death, and our inner nature - with our outer nature - decays - we remain unforgiven - despite the cross - despite the resurrection..
On the 6th of this month we celebrate the Anniversary of the D-Day Landing in Normandy. Rather - we remember it - many of us with a great sense of immediacy, with a great sense of pain, a great sense of loss.
This event would not have had to occur if people had looked more carefully at the world around them - if they had understood earlier the evil that was, and is, in the world.
Back in 1938, after Austria had been taken over by the Germans, after Czechoslovakia had been invaded, after Crystal Naught - the night of broken glass, Prime Minister Chamberlain of the United Kingdom proclaimed that Hitler was a rather pleasant person, a person who really wanted peace - one that the allies could bargain with in good faith.
It simply wasn't so - nor is so all the assertion that psychologists and teachers and counsellors make about how the problems of this world will be cured when all people are fed and clothed and educated properly.
The German people in 1918 - and again in 1939 - were among the best fed, the best clothed, and the best educated in the world - and look at what happened..
And look at the people in the United kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc - according to the latest United Nations Report they are amongst the best countries in the world in which to live in terms of food, clothing, shelter, education, health, and human rights - yet are the people of those countries free of hatred and of senseless violence?
Sometimes you got to hear the bad news if you are to really understand the good news.
The bad news is this - we as human beings are sinful, and not only are we sinful - our wills are not completely our own, we are under the influence of an evil that is greater than we are as individuals, an evil which is greater than that of ignorance and of poverty, indeed we in thrall to an evil that is so strong that it even thrives in the midst of education and in the midst of wealth.
The good news is this - that God seeks us - that God wants us - and that we can place ourselves under the control of God and enter into the kind of world and help build the kind of world that God planned for us from the very beginning.
We do it by faith - by trust - by belief - and by walking in the ways of God, the way revealed to us by Christ Jesus our Lord..
The experience of Paul - which he writes of in today's epistle reading is that when we come to faith, when we come to believe in Jesus Christ and in his message a great and wonderful thing happens - we are made new creatures - day by day, bit by bit, and we begin to share in the victory of Christ over sin and death, over the evil one, until at last we inherit an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all measure, as did my friend's father; as do millions of others each and every day.
Look not simply at the things that seen, but look at the things which are unseen - the things that are eternal - and open your hands - and leave them open - so that the Holy Spirit may land upon you, and remain with you, and give you life in this world and in the next. Amen
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