Don’t we all want to know what is going on behind the scenes of things? Where would investigative reporting be if none of us cared about the unseen forces that bring about events? We want explanations.

Wouldn’t you like to know what got into the seemingly mild-mannered Tennessee wife and mother who killed her minister husband last week with a shotgun? I know I would like to know!

And how has George Mason done it? Making the Final Four, I mean?

We want to know why we went to war in Iraq. Was it the desire to see democracy flourish in that part of the world and defeat terrorists before they land again on our doorstep, or were oil interests directing the shots?

At an even more basic level, wouldn’t you like to know what it is inside of you and me that makes us war against ourselves? Why is it so hard to do the right thing sometimes? Why do we keep doing the things that only cause us and the people we love more pain? We suspect that there is a ruler of this world at work in us and among us, constantly trying to make us his slave.

The great Greek playwright, Euripides, was unique among the ancients for showing the shadow side of war—especially how it affected women. Lake Highlands High School competed this week in One Act, and they presented an abridged version of Euripides’s Women of Troy. You may remember the mythic tale of Troy, how the Greeks destroyed it when the Spartans wheeled their gift horse into the city gates. When night fell, the belly of the enormous wooden structure opened, and the Greek soldiers emerged with swords flailing. The cause of this slaughter and the downfall of Troy could be traced to Helen, the fairest woman of that mythic time, who possessed, in the immortal words of Christopher Marlowe, the face that launched a thousand ships. (Did I mention that Jillian Mason played the role of Helen? Typecasting, don’t you know?!) At the denouement of the play, Helen is brought to judgment. Her Spartan husband, Menelaus, has retrieved her. He has killed her Trojan lover, Paris, who had seduced her or stolen her to be his own. Helen’s defense is that she is not responsible for her actions, that Menelaus can justly blame only the gods. Paris was forced to choose which among three goddesses was the most beautiful. Pallas offered him the military defeat of the Greeks in exchange for his vote. Hera offered him the rule of all Europe. But Aphrodite won the contest by describing Helen’s beauty and promising that she could be his. Did Helen act freely in going with him and leaving her husband, or was she driven by the malignant force of the goddess of love?

Jesus understood that the world was bewitched by a Power that confused truth and lies, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, in order to capture the hearts of every last child of God. The usurper had to be unseated from his false throne. He had to be shown to be the fraud he was. He had to be driven out of power and defeated once and for all. Now is the judgment of this world, Jesus says. Now the ruler of this world will be driven out.

Jesus has done just that. He has driven out the devil and released the world from the grip of spiritual slavery. Jesus knew what was going on behind the scenes of history. He understood the stakes for the souls of men and women. And he won the victory in the most surprising way possible.

We like to say that his blood shed on the cross won that victory. And that would be true. But what was it about that blood-shedding that won the day for the world and gives us reason to call him Lord and Savior?

The story of Wayne Barton might help us to see. In the late ’80s, police officer Barton knew something had to be done. People had lost faith in the police because they would not even respond to cries for help when violence touched their Boca Raton, Florida, community. Neighborhoods were run-down. Illegal activity was rampant in the streets. Conditions were declining, along with any civic pride. Barton decided they needed an old-fashioned clean-up. He organized 190 volunteers to pick up trash in parks, remove abandoned cars, pull weeds in front of unkempt houses, and paint over all graffiti. He even threw a free picnic for everyone who helped and served up barbeque.

Next he began to arrest the drug dealers and troublemakers of the community. The problem was that some of them were the sons and daughters and relatives of the very people helping him clean things up. When it was their kids and their kind being taken in, they turned on Officer Barton. But he held his ground. One man was arrested for trying to kill him. He was taunted on sidewalks and even had to read a stop sign that had been spray-painted with the words, KILL WAYNE BARTON. Clearly, the forces of evil would not go quietly. But Wayne felt a call from God, a sense of mission. He rightly believed that if he stayed at it, eventually people would be drawn to the good.

The turning point came at a community meeting when people were demanding that he be driven out of the area. Tension was high until one woman, a Miss Jackson, stood to speak: I can now go to my mailbox and don’t have to sleep on the floor because I am worried about a stray bullet hitting me in the head. Until this man came into the community, there was no peace.

Others found their voice and began to give similar testimonies. The tide turned. And today people take pride in their neighborhood again. They look out for one another. They call the community hotline when trouble brews. They are building things. They have a place for children to play again. Life has returned from fear.

Jesus walked into the neighborhood of humanity without a gun in his belt. Armed only with love and the courage to overcome evil with good, he did not flinch when the forces of death threatened. And because he didn’t, he unarmed death and the devil forever. He stripped the ruler of the world of the power he claimed over our souls. He drove him right out of the neighborhood, so to speak. No tanks, no weapons, no bully tactics: just the complete and utter confidence in God that love would be stronger than hate.

And once the bully was shown to be the fraud he was, once he proved that it is possible to live without all the compromises we think we must make to look out only for our own interests, people were free to respond to God’s call and live together freely again.

So the driving out of the devil makes possible the drawing up of all people to Christ. When I am lifted up, Jesus says, I will draw all people to myself. It seems astonishing that he should claim such a thing, that the very symbol of death—the cross—should be such a place of glory that has the power to draw us all to him.

But isn’t that just what happened in the wilderness with Moses? When the serpents were biting the children of Israel and the poison was filling their veins, God told Moses to put a serpent on a stake and raise it up before the people. When they looked upon it, they were healed. The thing they thought would kill them became the thing that saved them. The caduceus has henceforth been the symbol of the healing arts. Go figure.

But isn’t that a thought that ought to light up our imaginations? From his position as the crucified one, Jesus is even now drawing all people to himself. If anyone comes to God, it is not because that person takes the initiative and propels himself or herself into God’s presence. No one gets to the Father, Jesus says, except through him. Unless he draws us, is what he means. And he is drawing us. All of us. You are being drawn today to Christ by the power of his crucifixion. The person at your elbow this morning is being drawn to Christ. Democrats and Republicans; Americans and Asians and Arabs; those who know the name of Christ and those who don’t:—all of us are being drawn up to him by the power of his love. No one is unaffected. Dare I say it, even Osama bin Laden is being drawn up by the power of Christ.

Now, that does not mean that everyone Christ draws up becomes united to Christ. Think of it as a powerful magnet. We are all of us like iron filings that are drawn to Christ. Nothing in the unseen world, no power working against us can succeed in being “deadening lead” between Christ and us. Nothing outside of us, and no outside agent working inside of us, can keep us from being united to Christ. But as inane and illogical as this may seem, we can put something between ourselves and him if we so choose, because Christ will never force himself upon us against our will. What he means by this drawing-up power is that we do not stand in a negative position before God. We don’t even stand in a neutral position before God. We have a positive relationship before God because Christ stands before God for us.

I was talking this week with my friend, Dr. Hisashi Nikaidoh. He is a Japanese-born pediatric thoracic surgeon at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas. We serve together on the pastoral care advisory board of the hospital. I asked him last week about his conversion to Christ. He told me about how Christ had been at work in his family all the way back to the time when his grandfather visited Europe after the First World War. He was impressed by how the whole continent seemed at that time to be ordered by the principles of Christianity. Eventually he sought out Christians in rural Japan and ordered his whole family baptized. His mother married a man from a long line of Buddhist priests, and he forbade her to go to church. But after the Second World War, American missionaries were bringing Japanese-language Bibles with them to share Christ with their former enemies. (By the way, who else does that?) Sashi was eager for any book he could get his hands on. He read the Bible through as a ten-year old boy, albeit without comprehension. Some years ago here in Dallas, he was taking his daughter to a Lutheran Church school, where a fine Bible teacher invited him to sit in on his class. He did so for some time, until the man asked him if he wished to join the church. Sashi put off the matter time after time, and finally the man asked him this: Do you believe God exists? Yes. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God who died for your sins? Yes. Then what stands between you and Christ?

Dr. Nikaidoh told the man he needed more time. But as he was driving down Maple Avenue later that day, turning that question over and over in his mind, he realized the answer: My ego, he said. It is my pride that stands between me and Christ. The tears began to flow ,and at last he removed the deadening lead and let Christ draw him unto himself.

Listen, only you can get in the way of union with Christ. Christ has removed every impediment, every power that would keep you from his heart. Now, does anything still stand between you and Christ? If so, let it go and let yourself be drawn up into his love.