The good place

Psalm 107: 1-9 (The Message)
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
March 14, 2021

I’ve recently come back to a television show that I had started but not finished. It’s called “The Good Place”. It’s witty, smart, and engaging with good performances. My biggest critique is that so far it’s pretty White and straight. If you haven’t seen it, I’m about to ruin the first two seasons for you. It’s about four humans of dubious character who’ve died and gone to the Good Place by mistake. They are welcomed by Michael, the architect of their neighborhood in the Good Place, who is assisted by Janet, a non-binary artificial being who knows everything and can grant any wish. Wanting to stay in the Good Place, they endeavor to change their behavior with the help of one of their group who is a moral philosopher. And he’s Black. It’s the overused trope of the Black savior friend in a slightly secondary role who has a hard time getting people to listen to him. But I’m beginning to wonder if it’s being used on purpose: to get us to think about our moral and ethical behavior, especially in regard to race and gender.



Is that what it takes for the Good Place to be a good place—everyone on their best moral and ethical behavior? Imagine what that would look like:



Everyone drives the posted speed limit, uses their turn signals, passes on the left.

Everyone pays their just share of taxes.

Everyone trusts the science, wears a mask, washes their hands, and remains physically distant in a pandemic because it’s the right thing to do.

Everyone tells the truth.

Everyone is patient, generous, and kind.

Everyone is courageous, compassionate, and empathetic.

Everyone is respectful of others and themselves.

Everyone takes only what they need and shares with others.

Everyone treats the earth like a member of the family.

No one abuses power or people. No one oppresses anyone.

No one uses violence to solve problems or conflict.

No one loses a loved to violence or drugs.

No one lives in a food desert. No one goes to bed hungry. No one has to beg.

No one works and is still impoverished. No one has crushing debt.

No one is judged or devalued by their skin color, their ethnicity, their sexuality, their gender expression or gender identity, by their disability, their mental health, their body or their brain.

No one is without support or community.

Sounds like a utopia, doesn’t it? Which means it probably wouldn’t work. And neither did the Good Place. It was too perfect. You couldn’t even swear in the Good Place; people used words like “fork” and “bullshirt” instead. Which meant it didn’t take long for the Good Place to get under the skin of these four human beings of dubious character. It turned out that the Good Place was actually an experimental version of the Bad Place. Michael, the architect of the Good Place/actually the Bad Place, designed it that way, to be so perfect as to be subtly tortuous to those who would spend eternity there.

Incredibly enough, consciously and unconsciously, we human beings have designed this world to be subtly tortuous to downright oppressive for millions, if not billions of its inhabitants. “The system isn’t broken; it was built that way.” And even though we probably wouldn’t call this life the Bad Place, for many people it is a bad place, an unhealthy place, a sad place, a painful place, and we’ve known it to be true in our own lives. Everyone knows what it means to feel pain.



This is who God gathers together in Psalm 107. God gathers those who have been oppressed, those in desert wastes, those who live in the shadow of death, the imprisoned and incarcerated, those living under the power of sin, those suffering from illness, hunger and thirst, and those in peril on the sea. All who are in pain cry out to God in desperation, at the end of their rope, when they finally hit bottom. God hears their cries, frees them from their oppression, and sets them on the road to a good place to live, the direct route, the obvious way, a level path, accessible to all.

There are times I think we know what we have to do, we know the way to the Good Place to live, but we want to see footsteps in front of us; we want the way not only made clear, but we want someone to show us the way, to make the path ahead of us. But then I think of those whose way led them across the Edmund Pettis bridge, whose way led them in rainbow colors on the streets of Greenwich Village and San Francisco and Uganda and Russia, whose way led them in Black Lives Matter protests, whose way to the Good Place, the justice place, the freedom place, led them on the direct route through pain, suffering, and sacrifice. And the way was made by those who went before them, in the words of poet Ellen Bass, all of us “lashed to the human line”.



The way of the cross is not unique to Jesus. It is the way that empire has always used to control lives that serve the self-interest of the dominant class. And we are part of the dominant class. We don’t like the word ‘repent’ and yet it means ‘to turn around’; in effect, to go the way that leads to the Good Place to live, the justice place, the place of wholeness, shalom, for everyone.

This past year of pandemic and lockdown has revealed just how deep the wounds of inequality, of crucifixion go through this nation and how resistant we are to change, to abolish empire, militarism, capitalism. If the Good Place is justice and freedom, the Bad Place is empire. All too often the way we have designed this world deadens and destroys life rather than awakens us to appreciate it. And yet there is also so much beauty and joy to be had, the need for connection and curiosity, the desire and wonder of knowing and of being known.



Which is what these four human beings discover while trying to wheedle their way out of not going to the actual Bad Place. The Good Place is each other, all of us, our flaws, our imperfections, as well as our capacity to learn and grow and love beyond ourselves. The Good Place is a journey that is complicated, messy, and often frustrating and painful. The Good Place is when any of us do the most human thing: when we “attempt something futile with tons of unearned confidence and fail spectacularly” and then try again. The Good Place is where we come alive to all of what it means to live, especially when we live not only for ourselves but for the wholeness of everyone. The Good Place is solidarity and transformation. The Good Place is love and mercy and grace, with skin on it.



Benediction

Go forth into the world in peace.
Be of good courage.
Hold fast to that which is good
and render to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted;
support the weak; help the afflicted.
Honor all people.
Love and serve God,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The grace of our Savior Jesus Christ be with us all. Amen.