rich’s blog

This is the second of three introductory messages that served as the beginning to a message series re: what Christianity has to say about all sorts of interesting things: drugs, sex, rock & roll.  

 

Introduction:

So.  Last week we began a new series that’s concerned with what Christianity–the church, Jesus, us, you know–can speak into a whole slew of situations and problems that are going on in the world, things that the world–and all of us–really actually care a lot about.  Of course, the goal of all this isn’t simply to be informed, to know some good things, but to be positioned for transformation into people, and a church body, that looks and acts more like Jesus.  

 

We talked about the gospel–what is is, a little bit of what it isn’t–because it’s so foundational to how we, as new creations, as Christians, “little Christs”–engage with everything.  If you missed that message and want to hear it, let me know.  

 

And last week’s message, was the first of three messages that we’ll be touching back to again and again, that will serve as informative frames for the discussions we have in the future, both here on Sunday in many of our small groups.  

 

Today, we’re going to explore Jesus & Ethics; where they meet, if it matters for us at all.  I think it does, and I’ll explain why.  But as we progress today, I want us to try something:  Want to try something?  (We’re like, as long as I don’t have to stand up…ha!)  I want us to try to really–and this is a balancing act, I know–but to really think about how the things I might mention this morning relate to us, you know?  Is that how I operate?  Really?

It’s my hope that at the end of today we will be convinced that we are all ethical people–that would be nice, right–that Jesus had a particular “ethic,” a particular pattern of moral engagement with life around him.  And I hope that we’ll be convinced that we are supposed to take up a particular sort of ethic as our own.  

 

Too, I forgot to ask you last week: invite people along in this.  I think it’s interesting; I don’t think I’m the only one.  But please do invite others into these things, alright? If 1 out of ten of us brought someone else-christian or not-yet-Christian–along in this it would make for some really amazing conversations.

 

Hey: let’s pray.

 

Prayer:

Jesus. Still our souls, now.  Release us from any exhaustion, any bitterness and wounds in our hearts.  We love you; increase our love.  Receive this message as an offering; thank you for it.  Protect us from any misinformation I might give; and transform us, Lord into people like you.  In your name, Jesus: Amen.

 

Defining, Choosing, Acting: 

So we should start with a pretty reasonable question, I think, which is, “What are ethics?”  Reasonable question; especially because the answer is a little confusing.  Ethics as a word, is sometimes used synonymously with morals, right?  We might say the guys got no ethics, or the guy’s got no morals.  And we mean more or less the same thing: he doesn’t distinguish between right and wrong, and if he does, he doesn’t seem to see “right” in quite the same way we do.  

 

Morals are concerned with right and wrong; ethics as a thing you can study in grad school, is a field concerned with how people first define “right and wrong” and after that, choose between the two by taking some sort of action, usually (or, not acting). 

 

Then what’s an “ethic?”

An ethic–singular–is a person or a group’s system of defining and choosing between right and wrong.  And everyone has one.  They are easy to generalize about, you know.  You’ll hear conversation about the “Judeo Christian Ethic” of America, which implies this sort of sense that society’s ethics are sourced in the Bible.  Okay; but what part of the Bible?  And why? And how do people live out a Judeo-Christian ethic in practice?  It looks a lot more like America’s ethic leans a little more toward an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” than it does “if someone asks you for something, give it to them,” right?  

 

I share all this because ethics is complicated; developing a consistent ethic takes work and time. Do we see why? All sorts of questions come up: where does our personal or group “ethic” come from?  What’s it’s source?  How do we define wrong or right or good or bad?  And once we’ve thought about some of those things, how do we live out our “ethic?” 

 

But that’s alright friends because we’ll answer all these questions and more on…

 

Today’s Special!

Actually, we won’t.  We will talk about some of them, though.  But first, let’s remember that at least for this morning, an ethic is a person or a group’s system of defining and choosing between right and wrong, good and bad. 

 

Assumptions:

Now I’m just going to assume some things, because; It’s what I do.  Hopefully what can happen when you assume won’t.  I’m going to assume that for Christians the Bible will be a source of ethics, somehow.  Okay?  Is that reasonable.  Good.  And I’m going to remind us all that the Bible derives it’s authority from its testimony to God’s work through Jesus. And finally, I’ll just take it for granted that we believe that because of the person we’ve trusted and committed ourselves too, we think that having an “ethic” matters–that we should be on the side of “right” instead “wrong,” and live accordingly. 

 

Some Typical Answers: (cf. Fedler, 2006, 6ff.)

So how do people figure out what is right and wrong?  Basic ethical question, right?  How do we figure it out.  How do we make the choices we do about what we consider right, and what we consider wrong?  Now, I learned these in school; this is stuff I was taught; you can find them in a number of the books in my office; nothing I’m presenting here is clever or new.  This is drawn particularly from some lecture material I was presented and this book.  Okay? I can only apologize that right now it’s so informational; but again, we’re supposed to be thinking about ourselves right now. 

 

So.  Three typical ways.  And this is convenient, because we’re talking about “right” and “wrong” morally, right?  And these things are oriented toward.  And if we were to take a sampling, we’d find that each one of us leans toward these in various situations or just all the time.  

 

Rule Ethics:

This understanding of ethics answer the question “What ought I do?”  What am I supposed to do?  They are oriented toward duty, toward what someone or something says somewhere “this is how you should behave.”  And this framework is oriented toward “actions,” right, obeying or disobeying the rules? What’s “good” in this framework, is obedience.  

 

So think for a second about the ten commandments:  “thou shalt not”–you will never do, x, y, or z.  Those are rules for living, right?  And we as people depend on rules, sometimes; we ask “what should I do?” and we go to some source of information that says: you should do x. 

 

Think of being a child: when you’re a kid, your whole ethic is a rule ethic, and you aren’t making those rules up yourself, either.  Why should I do it” Because someone somewhere is saying “because I said so!”  

Oh well then it must be right and good and just, mom, thanks for clearing that up.  I guess I won’t pee into the bathtub anymore. Do we get the idea. Rule ethics. 

 

There are also what I’m going to call result or “ends ethics.”

 

Result/Ends Ethics:

“Ends Ethics” focus on the results of our actions.  What are the results?  If we are directed by an “end ethic” we tend to determine whether something is right or wrong by it’s end result.  This does pose a few problems, because for most of what we do, we can only see the immediate consequences it may have, right?  The immediate result?  Sex feels great, let’s do it!  That’s shiny, let’s buy it! 

 

A major problem with ends ethics is that we are sinners, and we by and large think (if we think at all) of “right” and “good” as “right and good for me, now!” 

We often just don’t consider deeply enough the consequences, or end results, of our actions.  And it takes a lot of mental work for us to live our lives by an ends ethic, because you are going to be thinking about every single possibility that the result of your actions might have.  It’s good work, if you can get it: most of us run away from it, and why not, because that’s a big, crippling task.

 

But if you think of the phrase “You can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs,” you’ve got a great snapshot of ends ethics: what matters is the omelet, the result, not the eggs you crack on the way.  

Economists love this one, right, so do stock holders: Because if what’s “good” is the growth of the economy, then it doesn’t matter if people are in debt up to their eyeballs as long as our economy is growing and they are purchasing!  If the only way to make a big profit on our mutual funds and 401ks is to pay a burmese girl six cents an hour for an 80 hr work week, so we can retire comfortably, then let’s do it.  

 

Because again, what’s “good” so often ends up as “what’s good for me” and we simply don’t think about the full consequences or ends of our actions.

 

How to cause a fight: Step one

And so we can see how easy it is to get into a fight about something where there’s strong feelings about “right” and “wrong.”  If you’re an “ends ethics” person, talking about the invasion of Iraq, or environmental issues, or your mutual fund, or buying anything with someone who is a “rules ethics” person, perspectives are going to differ. 

 

Think about Robin Hood: The “ends ethic” person says it’s good to give to the poor; Robin Hood is a hero! The “rules ethic” person says it’s bad to steal, and Merry Robin is a lousy thief. 

 

Neither person realizes that they are operating with different ethical frameworks, and never do the work it takes to examine their ethical beliefs, and so they both just decide to consider the other person a fool or a problem.  

 

Ever been there?  I’ve been both people; and part of the problem is that many of us don’t have a unified ethic; we bounce between ends ethics in one area of our lives, and rules ethics in another.  This gets messy, right? 

 

But I will show you a more excellent way.  

 

Virtue Ethics:

There’s another sort of ethic we can have that can inform the ways we define and choose between what’s right and what’s wrong. This is called “Virtue ethics.”  Remember Rule Ethics asks “What should I do, How am I supposed to behave.”  Ends Ethics, asks what might be the result of my actions here, and is it “good” or “right?”  Virtue ethics asks “How ought I be?”  How should I be–regardless of the ends, regardless of the rules: how should I be?  

 

“How should I be?”

Rule ethics directs us to focus on the actions themselves, right?  Is this right or wrong?  Well, if the rule says do it, and I do it, then it’s right.  How do I behave in line with some “should.”  Pastors love to mention how we are “shoulding” all over ourselves, because it lets them feel like they cussed at church.   Ends ethics directs us to think about the consequences and end results of our actions, and so our actions–the things we do–become “good” or “right” depending on if the consequences are good or right. 

 

Virtue ethics asks us to focus not on the consequences–though they are important–not on the actions–though those are important: but on the actor: the person acting. On you.  Virtue ethics calls for the development of a consistently “good” character, a consistently “right” way of living in the world.  And character is more than “actions”–it is all the emotions we have and the things we think and all that stuff that makes up a person, right?  How should I be?  No matter what moral quandary the world tosses at me, no matter what rules are there to help me make decisions: how should I be, all the time, regardless of the situation at hand?  

 

So what, hippie? 

So what, right? Well before we cash out here, let me quote some Bible, okay?

 

Some Bible: 

Let me just read some things, okay? ”…if anyone is in Christ that one is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come…” (2 cor 5:17)  “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20)  Or a few verses later in chapter 3 (v26-27) “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God, you all are children of God.  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” or this: “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were death through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved) and raised us upw ith him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4-10) or again, later in that same letter: “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through decietful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (4:22/24) or “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (5:1-2a).  We could look at Colossians where Paul reminds us that we have been “buried with Jesus” in baptism, “raised with him through faith in the working of God,” “made alive together with” him.  he writes that “If then you have been raised with Christ”–assuming we have–”seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right of God…For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”  This Glory is the same sort of Glory Paul talks about in 2 corinthians three that we are being changed into; a Christ’s own glory. 

 

People of God, saints-in-process, these were almost picked at random.  Think of that passage that was read to us today– “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to your faith.  Test yourselves.  Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?–unless indeed you fail to meet the test.” Jesus tells us in the passage from John that we will realize that Jesus is in God, and that we are in Jesus, that Jesus is in us, through the Holy Spirit.  And he goes on, of course, to say that if we love him, we will obey his commands; and later he shares his command is to love one another, as he’s been loving us, as God loves him.

 

The “So What:” 

The “so what” is that the good news we talked about last week, our faith in God’s work, in Jesus’ trustworthiness, belief in everything he did on our behalf, explicitly requires a basic thing of us–that we are to become like Jesus.  We are not supposed to have just any sort of character; we are not supposed to live in just any sort of way, or “be” just anybody:  We are supposed to be people who are just like Jesus, from the shallowest, most surface thing, to the depths of our souls.  We are supposed to not simply live with a virtue ethic, but a virtue ethic that is based entire on Jesus, his character, his virtue, his life.

 

Rules aren’t bad…they just aren’t good enough.

Rules are good:  Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law, he says–end all the rules–he came, he tells us, to fulfill them: to show people a way of life that actually fulfills the law; and by fulfilling it, he models for us a way of life that he sums up.   And he, we know, is the “image of the invisible God,” a person who has seen him has “seen the father,” the Bible says.  And the father loves, and God is love.  

 

The Ten Commandments are great!  They are good!  Good rules.  Except that over and over in Matthew we see Jesus revisiting “Don’t kill,” and telling us if we insult someone, or get angry with someone, we’re just as bad.   He takes “don’t commit adultery” and turns it into “don’t check somebody out.”  Jesus takes the rules, the law, and says that his followers need to live lives that are not just outward shows of obedience, but lives that are saturated with a “right” and “good” character.  He takes the rules, oriented toward outward action, and says, look, obeying rules is fine; but it’s not enough: what’s enough is to “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself”  What’s enough, is to live like me: to become like me. (not me. Jesus. You know that. ) 

 

Consequences are important; but just not the most important thing

And the consequences of our actions do matter: not just personally, but they matter for the whole church.  We are rarely told when we decide to join ourselves to Jesus, and receive all the benefits of salvation that go with it, that once we join with a church, our sins–the secret ones we don’t tell anyone about–that they’ll affect the family we become a part of.  We aren’t told, hey, rich, by the way, your joys become my joys, your sorrows become my sorrows, and when you sin, it affects me, man.  We’re joined in a body, you know, and I you’re failures hurt me, and mine hurt you.

 

And really, everything about society tells us to think about ourselves and whether we’ll experience some positive pleasure from an action, and to not think about the long term effects of anything we do; and if there’s a sin our faith needs to confess of, its short-sightedness, which we excuse because Jesus is coming back.  He is, he is:  Lord come!  

 

But our goal is not to get what we can get out of life because Jesus might come back this afternoon: our call is to live until he comes back, just as he would live, no matter the situations we find ourselves in.  Our goal is not to achieve some great end result; our goal is to be like Jesus in every situation. To become like Jesus: and although that may look incredibly ineffective sometimes, it will look like faith: and when the Son of Man returns, he will find it.  And it is simply a miraculous convenience that much of the time, when we live our lives like Jesus, the effects–the end results, or consequences of our actions–they look pretty good, too.  Not always, but sometimes.  

 

Sometimes someone looks just like Jesus; and they die, seemingly unproductive, and seemingly uneffective, but with the character of Christ coursing through their soul.  

 

Consequences are important: they just aren’t more important than becoming and living like Jesus. 

 

Problems:

But if we take seriously this Biblical call to be like Jesus, we are not going to look like a typical church looks, or act like typical Christians act.  We are going to cause problems for ourselves.  It’s an ominous statement; we could talk more about it, but it’s true. 

 

Tips!

Has anyone in here ever been a server in a restaurant?  I haven’t.  Then you want some tips, right?  Listen.  We have got to be a church that creatively does what we can to imagine together what it means to live like Jesus in our situations: at work, in school, when we are buying things, when we are sharing our faith, when we are singing to God, or opening our Bibles or anything:  This isn’t a question of “What Would Jesus Do?”  It’s asking ourselves, “How did Jesus live while he was on the earth.”  And then daydreaming–or strategically planning for potentials, if that’s your thing–about how we can figure out ways to live like Jesus in our situations.  

 

It’s a lot easier to say, “Gimme the rules!”  And then just follow them Isn’t it?  It’s a little more difficult to say: will the end result of this be “good” somehow?”  Because there are so many things to figure out–good when? Now?  In 2018? Whose good-mine, yours, a Burmese slave girl’s? It gets tricky.  But it’s immensely more difficult to ask ourselves, “what do I have to do to become like Jesus in any situation.”  Any situation.  

 

To focus our concern on developing a character like Jesus, today, right now, in our cars on the way home, with our time later this afternoon, in the mornings when we are in traffic.  It’s just more difficult.  

 

Here’s the Rub (I have no idea where I got this phrase…): 

But look: you do not have time to be in a church that is not challenging you and helping you to become like Jesus, from your shallowest expression of compassion–say, thoughtfully and caringly holding the door for a person you like–to your deepest life choices: what career path should I follow or should I leave the one I’m in?  Should I move somewhere or commit to living here forever? How should I claim my time, and what should I do with it after I’ve done so?  

 

I don’t have the time to be a part of a church where people won’t ask me, Rich, “Are you becoming more like Jesus?”  This is the only thing we’ve got, people of God.  And all this isn’t to say, go find a church that does this; it’s to say, be a church with me, that will do this. 

 

There are clubs you can go join that are going to offer you a lot more fun, and will be a lot more entertaining than a group of Christians can be.  But there is no other place in the world that offers us the chance to become a new kind of human.  Every one of us should be asking all the time: How am I becoming more like Jesus?  What do I need to do to become more like Jesus?  How can I help my church to be a place where we can become more like Jesus?  How would Jesus live in a Capitalist American Society?  What would Jesus buy or not buy at the store, and why?  What would Jesus think about contemporary understandings of sex, and gender, and cash?  How should we engage with them?  

 

How should we be?  We should be like Jesus, and we should engage with things as he might have engaged with them?  

 

Resources:

We have resources: the Bible, the community of faith, the Holy Spirit–these things help us in our quest to be people, and a group of people who are becoming more like Jesus, who are “ethical” in a way no other group of people can be.  We’ll talk about them next week: but for now, listen: please.  I know you’ll forget this sermon.  I might.  

 

I could die today:

These things matter to me, you know.  I don’t preach to get paid.  I could die today, tomorrow: and you’d never hear me tell you about the church and the spirit and the Bible and all those resources that we have to live ethically, as Jesus lived.  Would you remember the call of today: become like Jesus.  Rules are fine, think about the consequences of your actions–if we don’t, we’re acting like a short-sighted fool.  But become like Jesus.  Become like Jesus, become like Jesus.  Smoky Row.  Each of you.  Practice for 3 minutes a day: Ask yourself, how would Jesus live in this moment: his thoughts, his feelings, his heart, his potential choices and potential decisions.  Ask yourself: how would Jesus live in this life situation: these pains, these trials, these worries, these moral quandaries.  How would Jesus’ engage with this task that I have to engage with right now: this chore, this time on the internet, this time in this store. 

 

People who say that the Christian life is easy, or boring, or just uninteresting, haven’t really engaged, or are wounded with deep, deep wounds. You want a challenge: become a new sort of human being, like Jesus was a new sort of human being. (cf. somewhere: fedler?)  You want to be ethical: take up Jesus’ life as your own, and become a little Jesus, a Christian–which was originally a slur that meant “little Christ.” And Jesus’ life was characterized by one consistent virtue, that stained every single action he had, decision he made, notion he thought, emotion he controlled.  It was this: love.   

 

Read with me.  

 

Love: 

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13 NIV)

 

To become like Jesus means we become love embodied, all the time.

 

A Seven Minute Window:

We’re done.  And we have seven good minutes for these things we’ve looked at to not disappear out of our heads forever–until maybe, if we’re bored to death, we listen to them online.  What ethic do you roll with?  A Rules Ethic?  An Ends Ethic?  They aren’t bad; they’re just not big enough, and they answer the wrong questions.  Will we choose to live ethically as Christians, with the ethical call of our faith in front of us all the time, which is a call to become like Jesus always, all the time, in any situation, no matter the potential cost, no matter the potential shame, no matter where we find ourselves in seven minutes or seventy-seven minutes. How should we be?  We should be like Jesus.  

 

Prayer:

 

Father.  Our prayer is simple.  Make us more like Jesus.  Help us to become more like Jesus.  Wake us up to the many moments that make up our lives; and when we notice ourselves, come to ourselves, help us to ask how you would live in those moments.  Make us more like Jesus.  Protect us from the evil one; clothe us in your Spirit of wisdom and power.  Remind us that you are for us.  We come before you with your own son’s name on our souls, and ask you to hear our prayers.  Amen.