In the 1950s, back my quiet little Wisconsin hometown, elementary school for the most part was great. I remember with much fondness some very caring and skilled teachers. I remember warm spring mornings and beautiful fall afternoons on the school playground, out for recess, playing games, returning inside to classrooms that were suddenly scented with the lingering scent of fresh air and sweat. I hold fond memories of everything except---except for the Iverson brothers (that wasn't their real name, but I don't want to get in trouble so I just made up their names). Bigger than everyone else their age and mean and tough and willing to beat up anyone they felt like, the Iverson brothers were the feared bullies of the schoolyard, ruling there and on the streets to and from the school, by fear and intimidation. You didn't want to get the Iversons unhappy. That was just basic knowledge. But sometimes that knowledge got personal.

It happened for me on an October afternoon when I was about ten years old. The Iverson brothers had a sister. That particular day for some reason-I cannot imagine what I was thinking of then-I decided that I needed to talk to her about the rotten way she was treating a friend of mine. Big mistake. That afternoon, walking home from school, I heard the terrible voices of the Iverson boys right behind me. "Hey, Mullen. What do you think you were doing talking to our sister?" Hands grabbed me and then I was pinned against a tree. Their mean faces stuck right in mine and (to put it politely) they questioned both my ancestry and my masculinity. And even though my mouth turned to cotton and I feared my pants were about to do the opposite, I never talked so fast in my life. It worked. I didn't get beat up-but the intimidation left its mark on the rest of my life. It was forever after clear to me, in a very personal way, that this world was a venue of intimidation and violence.

Now of course my little scenario was nothing compared to evil and violence that devastated the Jews in Germany or African-Americans and Native Americans in the United States. Still, it was like a crack in the cosmic egg. The Fall of humanity I learned about in Sunday School was suddenly more than theory. It was real, schoolyard real. I had experienced it first hand. I knew it. And I still know it. And so do you.

We could hope and pray that the little ones we baptized this morning will never have to meet or deal with people like the Iverson brothers. But they will. The day will come when it will dawn on them that there is cruelty and terrible violence in the world. And they will question God-like we do, if we're honest.

Is God really in charge? Everyday, somewhere, more shootings, abuse, atrocities, and terror. Is this world of fear, violence, and intimidation the final equation, the ultimate definer of existence? It can certainly seem so. Yet, in his first letter to the early Christians St. John answered no when he wrote: Every child of God can defeat the world, and our faith (in Jesus Christ) is what gives us this victory. 1 John 5:4-5 Defeat the world? But it usually seems more like the world defeats us!

The world, as John sees it, is clearly is a problem. Walter Wink, a Christian thinker who's dedicated his life to learning about power and violence in human existence writes, "The Greek term 'world' (kosmos) in the New Testament usually refers not to the physical universe but to the interlocking network of Powers-political, economic, cultural, ideological [and demonic!]-that turned their backs on God and God's creation and have idolatrously set themselves up in defiance of God. I call this total world system of oppression and violence the Domination System." The Christian Century, April 27, 1994, p. 443

The Domination System. That a great way to say what John meant by "the world". You know the power of the Domination System if your heart starts pounding when you see the Highway Patrol car in your rearview mirror and the colored lights are flashing. If you work and have a tough boss and job quotas, you know about the Domination System. And you know about it if you've had to deal with powerful government regulatory agencies. And certainly America showed her Dominating power when we bombed Iraq. It was about Saddam Hussein, but what about the families living in Baghdad? Don't you suppose they felt terror and intimation as the bombs reigned down on their neighborhood? Hey, it's just business, some would argue.

But Jesus, please note, challenges Domination System. He insisted that the world we live in, dominated by government, bad religion, injustice, and violent people is not the only one. Intersecting with what most people think is the real world of the kingdom of God he said, and his mission was to be a sign of it in the world. And the response of the world, of that Domination System? The death penalty is what he deserves, traitor that he is to the way things are. Kill him! Nail him to a tree. At that point, it looked like the Domination System won. The Domination System always thinks it's winning when really its losing.

The world, as John saw it, is what we today often called the dog eat dog world, or to use another animal metaphor, "the rat race." A famous preacher tells of visiting a very rich man in his big downtown office. From the windows the city skyline stretched out below. Magnificent view, but the successful CEO looked tired, old, and defeated. Here at 50, his marriage was over, his children alienated from him, his health in jeopardy. "But you have achieved a great deal in your business. You're at the top of your company," said the preacher in a lame attempt to give comfort. "True," the executive agreed, "but even though you win the rat race, you are still a rat." (as quoted in Pulpit Resource, Vol 28, No. 2, page 40)

You see, rats like the Iverson brothers, or powerful and cruel leaders, know only the Domination System. They don't see anything else, don't believe any other way of life is possible, even when it clear that it is so destructive. And so, even when they win, they remain rats.

As for us, if we believe in Jesus and the Kingdom of God, we're not rats! No, through our baptism, we are children of God. We have the faith that overcomes the intimidating, rat race world. We see that the Iverson brothers types try to dominate, but Jesus liberates. The Domination System tries to stare us down, but we lift up our eyes to God.

"But God," the famed Christian author Dorothy Sayers wrote, "did not abolish the fact of evil. He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion: he rose from the dead." In other words, evil is real, but God is more real! Believing that, every child of God can defeat the world. Let us therefore teach our children well. Amen.