Vanquishing the Big Bad (a Steve Orr scripture reflection)

There has always been a “Big Bad.” 

 

It’s been with us for so long, we’ve woven it into our stories. And in those stories, there have always been heroes to fight it. Knights to battle the dragons. Dark Knights to defeat the criminals. But it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her “Scooby Gang” of vampire-stakers who first named it the “Big Bad.” In their stories, it was never just the monsters they fought each week. It was something truly world-shattering. 

 

So, what is the "Big Bad"?

 

• It’s knowing that those you thought were your friends now seek to harm you, that your family shuns you, that no one stands with you. 
• It’s facing inescapable death when there is no longer any water.
• It’s the realization that you and your child are not going to survive.
• It’s drowning when the mighty waters rise above you.
• It’s the sure knowledge that no knight, whatever his or her stripe, can save you from what is to come.
• It’s there in the moment you realize all is lost, the moment when clarity shows you there really is no escape.

 

The Big Bad is front and center in this week’s Bible passages. In Genesis, we find Hagar expecting death in the desert—for herself and for her baby—when her water runs out. We find the Psalmist fearing the exact opposite end: too much water. 

 

As the Psalmist realizes, it is now the day of our trouble. We need to call on the Lord. If the prophet Jeremiah tries to withhold the message of God, it becomes like "a burning fire shut up in my bones," a fire he cannot hold in. That message, the one so hot no one can contain it, is that God continues to care about us, cares enough to "deliver the life of the needy from the hands of the evildoers."

 

Death has been the Big Bad for so long—the biggest, the truly-inescapable fate—for as long as recorded history. But that time has ended.

In time, Jeremiah’s bone-burning message took human form as the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And it was His sacrifice that turned death—once an inescapable prison—into a mere way-station. 

 

That’s why, in the day of our troubles—facing our own world-shattering Big Bad—we can confidently call on the Lord. We can know—in our very bones—the Big Bad can never overcome the Biggest Good.

 

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PHOTO: Steve Orr (Antioch Historic Cemetery, Tolar, Texas)

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DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast continues to meet Friday mornings at 8:00 on Zoom* and in Waco at Our Breakfast Place. Please join us for an hour that will leave you energized and ready for the coming week.

 

Blessings,

Steve

 

*Zoom link (Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89947678414

 

SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK

 

Find them here:

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=17134&z=p&d=61

 

Print them from here:

https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Ax_Proper7.pdf

 

Genesis 21:8-21

Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17

Jeremiah 20:7-13

Psalm 69:7-10, (11-15), 16-18

Romans 6:1b-11

Matthew 10:24-39

Proper 7 (12) (June 21, 2026)