Advent 3, Year B | Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; I Thessalonians 5:16-24
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
December 17, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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On the first Sunday of Advent we talked about where exactly the Bible tells us we can expect to find God—in “the least of these,” as Jesus describes the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, and the captive. On top of that, we discover God in the loving actions we share with one another. Last week we discussed the expansive concept of what the Bible actually means when it talks about “sin,” how it extends far beyond an individual’s actions or thoughts to include misfortune, failure, and very nearly anything negative that happens in life. Repentance, therefore, isn’t simply someone admitting to doing wrong and choosing not to repeat the action. Repentance is inherently interpersonal and social. It leads to change not only in me but in us—in our relationships, attitudes, and behaviors toward those around us.
This week we’re going to take a quick dive into the nature of good and evil.
We see both of these terms frequently throughout the New Testament. From Matthew through III John, variations on the word “good” appear more than 250 times in our English translation.[1] Of those, the vast majority come from two different root words: “agathos”[2] and “kalos.”[3] Many treat the terms as synonyms, and they do share some overlap in meaning. However, each one approaches our concept of “good” from very different angles.
Kalos is a kind of “good” that lies along the lines of beauty or moral virtue. Agathos, which scholars believe to be the root behind agape—the kind of love turned into real-world action that Jesus and the apostles urge us to offer one another; the kind of love where we find and embody God—approaches the concept of goodness from the angle of being useful or skillful. So it’s more likely someone would have described a painting as kalos while a shovel or other practical tool would probably be considered agathos. An ornate silver pitcher would be both beautiful and useful. One would expect a judge to be kalos, particularly in the moral sense, while if you wanted to praise a soldier, you would describe them as agathos—skillful or brave.
Each of those terms had their own antonyms as well. The antithesis of kalos was described as kakos,[4]—something ugly, sickly, or morally lacking (it contains a little bit of the idea of “disgust”)—while poneros[5] sat more or less opposite agathos, being more along the lines of describing something useless, distressing, or oppressive (it’s essentially something that adds or becomes a burden). Fully understanding these terms isn’t essential to comprehending the Bible’s meaning, but recognizing which term the author was using can give us a little bit of insight into what they may have been trying to communicate.
Take our Epistle reading today. Paul tells the Thessalonians to “hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.”[6] It’s easy for us to read that as “be a good person; don’t do bad things,” a statement which is perfectly sensible and certainly fits with the overall tone of the Bible. However, reaching into our newfound knowledge of good and evil, we discover the apostle is giving us a little bit of a surprise; he’s contrasting the more divergent of the terms: kalos and poneros. That suggests Paul is indeed referring to the kind of moral good we would expect to hear about in the New Testament; however, his idea of “evil” isn’t a sort of generic badness or generalized negative behavior. Paul is setting virtue against oppression, a sentiment which fits remarkably well with our setting of Advent.
This morning we heard Isaiah announce the theme Jesus claims in the Gospel of Luke:[7] “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[8] With the Virgin Mary we chanted, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”[9]
Advent is a call to undo oppression—and not simply oppression but everything the Bible would call “sin,” all the trials and struggles life imposes on people. For those society has beaten down, Advent is an opportunity to reclaim the dignity inherent to them as true children of God. For those of us who may have forcibly imposed our will on others or inherited certain advantages from generations past, Advent is a time to recognize the mountains and hills on which we stand. Taking note of the differences that divide us from our siblings, we take this opportunity to share or lay aside any benefits or assets that might have been used for exclusion. Noting the Image of God in all those around us, we can begin to use what we’ve received to start filling in the valleys, to empower our fellow siblings.
Be sure you’re hearing me correctly on this. I’m not talking about playing into some sort of narrative about a class war or calling for some sort of imposed redistribution of wealth. Tactics of force and fear are the tools of Empire, not the Kingdom of Heaven. God’s Reign works more like how Isaiah described it this morning—“For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness…to spring up before all the nations.”[10] It isn’t that the valleys rise to swallow the hills or some bulldozer flattens the hills to bury the valleys.
What happens is that as we become more rooted in our security as citizens of Christ’s Kingdom, righteousness—which is simply aligning ourselves with the ways of our generous and loving God—naturally begins to take form. As we begin to recognize God in each of the people we encounter, as we connect and grow in our relationships and start to draw out the kalos aspects in one another, we each begin to make the choice to work together—to turn love from a feeling into an action, something genuinely agathos. In doing so, we discover ourselves already leveling the terrain, making the rough places plain and smoothing the Way of the Lord—essentially undoing sin in all its expansive forms, both kakos and poneros. By doing so we ultimately refashion our Earthly Realm, but not only for the benefit and flourishing of one another. We prepare, from the depths of our being to the dust along the roadside, for the arrival of our beloved and longed-for King.
[1] I was really surprised that—despite the stereotype of being the final battle between good and evil—the word “good” doesn’t show up in Revelation at all! | All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] ἀγαθός | 121 appearances
[3] καλός | 140 appearances
[4] κακός | 118 appearances
[5] πονηρός | 95 appearances
[6] I Thessalonians 5:21b-22
[7] Luke 4:16-21
[8] Isaiah 61:1-2a
[9] Luke 1:46-47, 51-53
[10] Isaiah 61:11