This morning’s sermon title, “Something Evil This Way Comes” was inspired by a line from Shakespeare's Macbeth, or “the Scottish play,” as some people call it to try to avoid the curse that is, even now, supposedly associated with the name “Macbeth” because of the terrible deeds that the main character did and because of a string of bad luck that has seemingly befallen actors who have been in the play.

Now, you may not be a superstitious person - but all of us have experienced ill fortune in our lives, whether we call it “evil” or not. The actual quote of the infamous witch in the play foreshadows Macbeth’s evil deeds by saying: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” Macbeth was clearly wicked, killing numerous people, including his closest friend; but I have chosen to use the word “evil” rather than “wicked,” which has the same meaning, because it is a more common usage in today's world.

I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of evil this week as I have heard about the crimes that people have perpetrated on each other in our supposedly civilized country. I have been thinking about the meaning evil this week as I read the newspaper, each day recounting more of the atrocities of war in Afghanistan and attacks by Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. I have been thinking a lot about evil this week as I have prepared to light the candles of the Menorah that I use to commemorate the events of Hanukkah.

You may remember the story of the origin of the Hanukkah ritual of lighting the Menorah for eight days - starting on the 25th. day of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar - this year at sundown today.

According to history and legend, The Greco-Syrian king, Antiocus, tried to impose the Greek religion on the Jews in the second century BCE. He banned their holidays and had his soldiers burn their writings, desecrated their temples, and kill anyone who opposed them. One particular event was the erection of a statue of Zeus in the town of Modin and the decree that all in the town should worship and make sacrifices there. According to legend, an elderly Jewish priest, Mattathias, refused and attacked and killed a Syrian soldier, fleeing to the mountains with his five sons, later known as the Maccabees, or hammers, to plan their retaliation. And they were successful, of course, or we wouldn't be hearing the story today. Fighting with sticks and stones and farming implements, they defeated the more powerful Syrian army. However, when they returned to their temple, they found it in a shambles. And, worst if all, there was only enough oil to keep their seven branched Menorah lighted for one day. Knowing that it would take many days to make the new oil they needed, they, nevertheless, lighted the lamp - which according to legend, miraculously, continued to burn for eight days, commemorated today in a special Hanukkah Menorah with eight branches and an elevated holder for the shammash, or servant candle.

So what does that story tell us about evil? If you had been a Greco-Syrian, you would have thought what the Jews did was evil. But today, many of us see them as heroes who fought for their religious freedom against overwhelming odds. In the modern context, we could place the words of our own president against the rhetoric of Osama Ben Ladin. Our president has said that our country is engaged in "a monumental struggle between good and evil" and that we should make no mistake that "good will win." How different is that from what may well have motivated the terrrorists who overtook the pilots of the planes that attacked the World Trade Center Buildings and the Pentagon on September 11. In the larger context, who is really the evil one? Does God really bless America?

Using abstract definitions that call evil the opposite of good or defining it as “morally bad or wrong, wicked or depraved' or breaking it down into natural or moral evil - natural evil being those phenomena that are “acts of God” and moral evil being those acts perpetrated by humans - have very little to do with the reality of what we experience each day in out lives and the life of the world.

Today, we don’t have the luxury of looking at evil in the abstract. We are faced with its reality with every news broadcast we hear. On September 11, we experienced an expression of evil that attacked the very core of our sense of security. It is a reality that I believe is expressed in the writing of UU minister Robert Walsh in a piece he wrote called “Fault Line,” a title that has heightened meaning for those of us who live in Southern California.

In that piece, Walsh said: "Did you ever think there might be a fault line passing underneath your living room: a place in which your life is lived in meeting and in separating, wondering and telling, unaware that just beneath you is the unseen seam of great plates that strain through time? And that your life, already spilling over the brim, could be invaded, sent off in a new direction, turned aside by forces you were warned about but not prepared for? Shelves could be spilled out, the level floor set at an angle in some seconds’ shaking. You would have to take your losses, do whatever must be done next."

When we decided to move to Southern California, many people asked if we weren't afraid of the earthquakes. And I blithely said “no more than the hurricanes or tornadoes in other parts of our country.” Yet, here we are today with another kind of earthquake - the quaking of our sense of OKness.

It is that “earthquake” that seems to have brought many people back to church, including this one, on September 16 and has kept many people, including many of you, continuing to look for answers here and elsewhere. And Bible sales are up!

I was interested, however, in a recent study out of a research group in Ventura, the Barna Research Group, that is now reporting that attendance in many mainline protestant and Catholic churches, after a short upswing, has remained about the same as it was last year at this same time and that people are much less convinced today that there is an absolute moral truth that is operating in all situations. Further, when asked about the source of their moral judgements most said that they gained their guidance regarding moral decisions from their feelings and the lessons and values they remember from their parents rather than some more absolute authority. And belief in Satan as the source of evil is way down!

George Barna, who directed the study, explained that, "after the attack, millions of nominally churched or generally irreligious Americans were desperately seeking something that would restore stability and a sense of meaning to life. Fortunately, many of them turned to the church. Unfortunately, few of them experienced anything that was sufficiently life-changing to capture their attention and their allegiance. They tended to appreciate the moments of comfort they received, but were unaware of anything sufficiently unique or beneficial as to redesign their lifestyle to integrate a deeper level of spiritual involvement.";

So what are we to do? I was amazed on our trip to Turkey this past summer to find “evil eyes” such as this one (show evil eye) hanging in cars and shop windows all over Istanbul. We even had one in the van that took us around for the three days we were there. And it must have worked since we made it back to the airport and home safely. Now, I don’t think that most people in this predominately Islamic country really believe that these symbols will protect them from evil, but they were, and are, a recognition that there are evils in the world that we must acknowledge - something that we may have forgotten before September 11.

What I have come to realize in recent days is the power of Unitarian Universalism to help us through these difficult times. Most of us never did believe that there was an absolute value that governed all of our actions or that the Bible was the only source of truth. We believe that there are always new ways of looking at things and that we don’t have the only corner on truth. For most of us Satan is not an anthropomorphic being who causes evil. And saying that “the devil made me do it” has never been an option for me. Our belief in “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” and “justice equity and compassion in human relations” says that we do not “demonize” others as evil and take away their, and our, civil liberties. And we deplore hate crimes against those who happen to look like an enemy because they may not be like us.

For me, evil is acting from the belief that we have all the answers and that all others are wrong. When we do that we may become the very people that we oppose. As Christopher Dawson wrote in The Judgement of the Nations (1942)

“As soon as men (and, I would add, women) decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.” We cannot control the evil that others do. We can only work to be sure that we do not become the people we oppose.

And the power of Unitarian Universalism for me is that we are open to new revelations of the truth and that we pledge to support our sisters and brothers, whatever their religious beliefs may be, as long as they don’t attempt to take away our rights to practice religion as we choose. It was that belief that led many of us to break the fast of Ramadan with our brothers and sisters at the Islamic Center on Saturday a week ago and that will lead us to continue that interfaith effort with them and those of other religious groups. It was that belief that led our Unitarian Universalist President to say at a recent worship service: "I believe that we are called to stand on the side of love. Love strains to know the other, not shut the other out. Love opens its eyes to a larger vision, struggling not for victory, but for justice. May these sheltering walls be strong, to keep hate out and hold love in."

Macbeth was an evil person who believed that his interests were the only ones that mattered and that he could act on those beliefs with impunity. The Greco-Syrians were evil when they refused to allow the Jews to practice their religious beliefs freely. And I light the Hanukkah candles each year, but especially this one, to remind myself that there is hope in the world if we remember that each person should be free to find his or her own path in life and to act on it in the world. - the same awareness that leads us to light our Unitarian Universalist chalice, a symbol that was originally created by the Unitarian Service Committee to guide oppressed people out of Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe prior to and during World War II.

I would like to close today's sermon with the conclusion of the piece by Robert Walsh that I quoted earlier.

"When the great plates slip and the earth shivers and the flaw is seen to lie in what you trusted most, look not to more solidity, to weighty slabs of concrete poured or strength of cantilevered beam to save the fractured order. Trust more the tensile strands of love that bend and stretch to hold you in the web of life that's often torn but always healing. There's your strength. The shifting plates, the restive earth, your room, your precious life, they all proceed from love, the ground on which we walk together."

I invite you to join me, and all people of faith, in that walk together.