Preaching and Teaching

a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.

August 30, 2009

Text: James 1:17-27

Coming back from vacation in Mexico is a huge culture shock. It isn’t dropping my Spanish and resuming English, although I do get odd looks when I occasionally respond in Spanish to a question. It isn’t the lack of enchiladas and chiles rellenos or exchanging the clean, cool Mexican mountain air for D.C.’s polluted August air.

The shock is the around-the-clock, 24/7, pedal to the metal culture in which we live, move and have our being in D.C. In our efforts to do more than is humanly possible, control what is beyond our control, we ramp up the speed of our daily lives to a ridiculous level. In a short story in The Unknown Errors of Our Lives by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Aunt Seema who is visiting from India, says to her American niece, “Ah, my dear–to believe that you can control everything in your life! How absurdly American!”

Since many of us are coming back from vacations, contrast our regular lives here with our vacation lives elsewhere. On vacation, we decide what we are going to do almost hour by hour rather than weeks in advance. Some of us have no TV so we don’t get sucked into the MSNBC frenzy about whatever they find outrageous. In Mexico, my days are controlled more by the moods of our dogs and cats than the mood of the nation; by torrential rainstorms, rather than torrents of overheated rhetoric; by the rise and fall of the sun rather than the rise and fall of stock markets.

But when we return from vacation, everything changes on a dime. I see it in the face of returning vacationers as we go through U.S. customs. They look at their Blackberries and stress lines re-form on their foreheads.

Shortly after returning, Phyllis and I took a train up to New York to spend two days with our grand kids. As the train pulled into Penn Station, people filled the aisle, wanting to hop off the instant the train stopped moving. When it did stop, there was a delay in our car as a woman with two little kids and numerous bags tried to open the door. It took, oh, about five seconds, for a woman behind me to yell, “You have to press the ‘Push’ button” and then utter loudly, “Idiot.” I thought to myself, “I want to go back to Mexico.”

However, we can’t stay on vacation, can we? We live in this world, not the world of our vacations. Moreover, many of us, me included, love to come back to our jobs and neighborhoods.

So the issue is how do we live sane lives in our crazy 24/7 world. How do we maintain a pro-active rather than totally reactive approach to life?

Our Epistle lesson helps with those questions. James wrote to a group of early Christians, “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.”

Usually in this passage, we concentrate on the verses that follow where James writes a famous imperative “Be doers of the Word not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” However, to be doers of the Word, we need to embrace James’ teaching about the connection between hearing and doing.

For James, the precondition to hearing and doing God’s Word has three components: 1) an eagerness to listen, 2) a slowness to respond verbally and 3) controlling our anger. Unfortunately, a failure to listen, too much talking, a hair trigger temper are barriers to God’s Word are qualities that mark our 24/7 world. We have sped up communication in ways that make it difficult to listen carefully but easy to speak; hard to think in a methodical manner and all too easy to get agitated and angry.

Nothing so marks my 35 years in ministry as the ever more rapid pace of communications. When I entered ministry, we basically used the phone and mail to communicate. In the 1980s, the introduction of the fax machine seemed revolutionary. I remember well our negotiations with the IMF over the move from 19^th and H Streets down here to Virginia Avenue. The lawyers did everything at the last possible moment, exchanging faxes furiously. When I asked why everything took place in the last few minutes, one lawyer replied candidly, “Because, with the fax, we can.”

Email made the world move even faster. A message was no more than sent than it was received anywhere in the world. Instant messaging created global virtual discussions. Twitter is the most recent manifestation of instant communication.

However, let us not blame technology for the frenzied nature of our lives. The problem isn’t the technologies. The problem is what James describes.

We don’t listen carefully. Worse, able to respond instantly, too many of us do. Speaking before we think, responding to something that may never have been said, we set off a string of misunderstandings. It can take hours, days, a lifetime to unravel some of these misunderstandings.

Not just the means of rapid communication, but its availability has changed. The location for our lightning fast communications is no longer confined to particular spaces like an office. It wasn’t that long ago that we had to turn on a computer to check our email or instant message. Now we just turn on our phone. When we do, the anxiety of the workplace and the world get channeled right into our homes.

Our son is a professional freelance photographer. As such, he works out of his home several hours north of New York City. In the past, he had to live in New York City so he could get his film to professional labs, meet with the art directors of magazines, etc. He is now able to live in the country because of the communication systems we have developed as well as advances in digital photography.

However, their country living comes at a price, a huge price. He never has much time to himself, even at home with his family. The phone rings or an email is received and he needs to check it. It could be business. He can’t afford to miss the call. It might be from an art director who needs a photo that day.

I performed a wedding on the West Coast a number of years ago for some dear friends. The bride, groom and everybody in the wedding party are lobbyists here in D.C. As we came out of the rehearsal dinner at about 11:00 p.m. Pacific time, they all pulled out their phones and started talking. I said to one, “How is this possible? It is 2:00 a.m. on the east coast.” One fellow responded, “Trust me, it is possible and it is necessary.” Incredibly, people on the other end of the line answered.

So a large part of the reactivity that dominates our lives is rooted in the communication systems we have in our homes, handbags and pockets. They ring and we react. The people speaking to us on those phones or in the emails ask questions and we feel compelled to respond with answers. Such a dynamic gives us the feeling that we have little control over our lives.

The easy thing to say is, “Don’t check your emails. Turn off your phone.” But sometimes that isn’t very realistic. When you plug back in, you are overwhelmed.

People ask me why I check my emails while I’m on vacation. It is simple. If I waited to check them until I got back to work, I would have, literally, thousands of emails waiting. It is easier to take a few minutes each morning and answer the urgent ones. And frankly, responding to email sitting on my patio overlooking the Mexican mountains doesn’t feel much like work.

But by doing so, I place myself back in the world of reactivity. My feelings and thoughts are controlled by something outside me. So while many of us may not be able to unplug, we need to find ways to change our mind set when plugged in.

Again, let us consider James’ advice, since it sounds as though it is written directly to a group of plugged in Washingtonians. James says we take control of our lives by listening. Carefully. Intently.

I often observe the problems with listening when I have a couple in my office who are having problems. It is amazing to hear what one person heard the other person say. I mean, sometimes it is nowhere close.

Sometimes we don’t even hear what we are saying! The great psychologist Carl Rogers experienced this as a therapist. In response, he developed what, at the time, was a revolutionary style of therapy. He simply repeated what a person was saying to him.

In one famous filmed session, the patient muttered softly, “I’m feeling depressed.” Rogers responded, “So you’re feeling depressed.” Irritated, the patient said, “What makes you think that? I’m not depressed.” Rogers said, “You just said you are feeling depressed.” The patient wondered, “I did?”

While this style of therapy can be very effective, I have often thought it is more cost effective to go to Radio Shack and buy a tape recorder rather than pay someone $175 per hour to repeat what you are saying. I also get very irritated when some novice who has read a few articles by Rogers tries to force a group to employ this technique when discussing a controversial issue. Nonetheless, in the hands of a skilled professional such as Rogers, it works.

James’ point is simple and straightforward: taking control of our lives and behavior begins with listening: listening to our families, our work colleagues, strangers, people with opposing ideas, medical professionals, and, yes, listening to ourselves. If we don’t hear correctly, our response, by definition, will be off the mark.

Furthermore, says James, as we listen, we can’t jump to respond. Too many of us are still those kids in elementary school desperately wanting the teacher to call on them to answer a question (I plead guilty.). We need to wait, think, and reflect before we speak. If we do, we won’t be driving home wondering, “Why in God’s name did I say THAT?”

Finally, listening well and responding thoughtfully rather than rapidly dramatically reduces the anger within and around us. This could be the church’s most important contribution to the health care debate. We need to ask people to listen to one another, control their responses, and reject the urge to interject anger into the discussion.

The anger on display in these town hall meetings is the result of people not listening to one another. Instead people are lecturing one another. Differences of opinion are inevitable and legitimate. All the more reason to listen and speak carefully.

The communication systems we have developed create the means to do exactly the opposite of what James proposes. Not being able to see the face of the person with whom we are communicating, it is easy to mis-hear what is being written in an email or text message. We can only have their literal words with no help from their tone of voice and facial expressions. Adding to the danger of a miscommunication, being able to respond instantaneously, it is easy to respond before we think. Both of these realities can lead to anger on the rise.

However, as I said earlier, let’s not blame the communication systems. Used correctly, they are a blessing. No, let’s take control of the communication systems rather than letting them control us.

We can start by re-reading the communications we receive. Graders of our denomination’s ordination exams say that the single biggest cause for failing grades is a failure to answer the question. Individuals taking the exam literally don’t read what is being asked of them. They answer a question that wasn’t asked.

After thinking about what has been said to us, let us think about a response before sending one. Email programs have a place to store drafts. We should use it more often.

If we are angered by a message, let’s not respond at all initially. Instead, let us calm down; be the one to break the self-fueling phenomenon anger is.

One of the reasons I love Scripture is the way it speaks directly to our situation, no matter how much science, technology, evolution or anything else changes our situation. In this morning’s passage, James scores a direct hit on our 21^st century society. As the pace of our lives gets jacked up in the post-labor day frenzy, as we stare into our blackberries, pdas and computers, may we listen well, speak carefully and reject the invitation to join the angry masses.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you have given us the gift of hearing and speaking. Too often, we do it poorly. As a result, we do things that create problems. Help us to become good listeners and speakers that we might also become doers of your Word. All this we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
August 23, 2009

Text: I Kings 8:28-30,41-43

This summer the magazine Christian Century printed a satirical divinity school application for liberals. Asking the applicants for more information about their church identity, it listed the following choices for the liberal applicant: 1) spiritual-not-religious, 2) worship the goddess within, 3) old line liberal, 4) evangelical because I like the music and their gym, 5) Episcopalian.

The satire speaks to the reality that many progressives have drifted rather far away from some of the church’s traditional spiritual disciplines. Many of us don’t pray as much as we should. We don’t practice the spiritual art of silence as much as we could. We don’t read Scripture as regularly as would be helpful.

Most frustrating to me, despite their unwillingness to do what needs to be done to have a solid religious life, many progressives have the chutzpah to complain that their spiritual lives are less than fulfilling. “Something is missing,” they say in a perplexed voice. This would be like an athlete showing up at training camp, having never worked out in the off-season, and complaining, “Why is everyone else doing so much better than me?”

That being said, an occasional failure to connect with God is not something unique to progressives. It is a universal experience among the faithful. It happens to the saints. Famous Christians ranging from Dr. King to Mother Teresa have talked about their moments of spiritual confusion and doubt. The great mystics all describe moments of feeling as though they were lost in the desert, unable to find their way to God. Even Jesus felt as though God abandoned him.

We can’t read Scripture for too many pages without running into someone who is complaining about God not being there for him or her. Job is one of the most famous examples. But many are the biblical characters who ask God, “Where are you? How could you give me up to my enemies?”

Sometimes our sense of spiritual isolation occurs when we are going through a personal crisis. We have a major health problem and wonder why God would let it happen. We lose our job and can’t figure out why God wouldn’t save us from the boss who laid us off. A relationship disintegrates and we question whether God cares.

But the place where our sense of aloneness can become most acute is when we pray. For each of the crises I just cited drive us to our knees. Once there, we pray feverishly. If nothing happens, we begin to wonder, “To whom am I praying? Is anyone there?”

A plea that God hear and respond to our prayers was present in this morning’s Old Testament lesson. We heard Solomon say to God, “Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.” He then asked God to do the same for foreigners when they came to Israel seeking God. The wise King knew that if a people’s prayers are not heard in heaven, the people will grow frustrated and turn away from God.

With most of us, if we don’t get some kind of response to our prayers, we begin to think God isn’t listening. In prayer, some of us want to experience the feeling that God is listening. In our interactions with humans, we can feel when someone really cares or doesn’t care. If we don’t get that feeling from God, we are crushed.

Some of us want to experience an outcome to our prayers. We pray for our health to be restored, a new job to appear, a relationship to come back together. If nothing happens in response to our prayers, we begin to question whether God cares. At its extreme, we begin to question whether God even exists.

The darkest moment of my life was when my first marriage fell apart twenty five years ago. Feeling rejected by my wife, I desperately needed to feel loved and affirmed by God. And so I prayed. And I prayed. And I prayed some more.

I didn’t really pray for a particular outcome. I simply prayed for a sense that God would be with me and that I would be with God as I walked through this particular manifestation of the valley of the shadow of death. In my case, I got the feeling I needed. It sustained me like nothing else.

But many people do not get the response they need in such times of personal crisis. They utter their prayers and nothing seems to happen. They don’t feel any connection to the divine. They don’t experience any positive changes in their lives. They don’t even get the kind of echo we get when yelling into a canyon. Nothing. The walls of the cosmos absorb their words and nothing bounces back.

As a pastor, I can’t tell these frustrated folks simply to pray harder. I mean, what does that mean? Pray harder? Should they work up a sweat praying? Should they collapse in exhaustion when they finish? Pray regularly, yes. Pray harder? That concept has always puzzled me.

However, I do tell people to keep praying, no matter what response they are getting. For one thing I know for certain, if we stop praying, the odds are extremely high that our relationship with God will deteriorate. Prayer is conversation with God. If we aren’t in the conversation with God, we probably aren’t going to feel anything emanating from God.

All of this raises a fascinating question: if we decide God isn’t listening, what determines that conclusion? On what grounds, using what criteria do we decide God isn’t listening?

After all, I don’t know anyone who received a verbal response from God. So whatever changes from 1) the prayers to which we think God is listening to 2) the prayers to which we decide God isn’t listening, that change occurs within us, not in God. Because in both cases, we don’t hear anything verbally from God.

I think our conclusion that God isn’t listening is rooted in our personal insecurity, low self-esteem. We don’t think we are worthy of God’s love and attention. “Why would God bother to listen to me?” we wonder. “There are wars, famine and plagues out there—big time problems. What does God care about me losing a job?”

Jesus was keenly aware of our low self-esteem. If Jesus was confident that we believe God cares about us individually, he wouldn’t have spent so much of his energy preaching and teaching that God does, in fact, care. He could have spent more time talking about ethics, discipleship or other important faith issues.

Instead, in the same way parents have to reassure their children that they are loved, Jesus kept reassuring us, over and over again, that God loves us. So Jesus felt compelled to remind us that God is concerned about every hair on our head; that God’s concern about the birds of the air and lilies of the field should make us realize how deeply God cares about us; that God will leave the ninety-nine sheep to find one lost sheep. “Trust me,” Jesus insisted, “God cares.”

Self-esteem is one of those circular issues. The more we have of it, the more self-esteem we feel. The less we have of it, the more we reject any suggestion that we are worthy.

If we want a healthy prayer life, we have to believe that God loves us and is listening. It is a critical act/leap of faith. If we believe God loves us, we will believe God is listening, even when there is no tangible evidence to that effect. If we don’t believe God loves us, we won’t believe God is listening.

Maybe I have never really doubted that God is listening to my prayers because I grew up in Wisconsin. There were a lot of Scandinavian folks out there. Many of these good folks kind of defined the word “nonverbal.” They didn’t really have much to say. They also didn’t give many visual clues as to what they were thinking as they listened to you.

So when talking to them, it was sometimes an act of faith to believe they were listening to me. However, months later, they might say, “I remember you telling me such and such.” So it is with God.

No, I’m not saying God is Scandinavian. But I don’t think God is a big talker. I think God is the all-time greatest listener. And the wonderful things about good listeners is that they really don’t have to say anything, do they? Just by listening empathetically, intently, they provide us with something no words can supply.

Ultimately, most of us realize that no one can solve our problems. Only we can solve them. We also realize we may not be able to solve them. Sometimes we are in an unresolvable jam. But knowing that someone cares, that someone is listening to us as we bemoan the fix in which we find ourselves, that is a feeling that we all want and need. All we need from God is to know God is paying attention.

I’ve long thought that there should be a class in seminary entitled “Just Shut Up.” In it, the professor could teach the pastors-to-be that they don’t need to provide answers to all the questions people will pose to them. They don’t have to solve all the problems people will describe. But they do have to shut up and listen. Carefully. Intently.

For listening is what people need from us as pastors. It was what we need from people we love. It is what we need from God. We need to know someone is listening.

How many of us feel truly listened to in this world? Too few. Most of us go through crises where we think we are ignored, dissed and tuned out.

I think we project that experience right onto God. When we don’t get a response from God, we say, “See, this is the last straw. The world isn’t listening. My life is a mess. Now God isn’t listening either.”

How can I stand up here and proclaim with certainty that God is listening to us? Let me answer that question with another question, remembering Jesus primary metaphor for God was that of parent: do good parents ignore their children? The answer is obviously “no.”

Children are insecure and don’t always understand they are loved by mom and dad. As a result, children sometimes test their parents, test their parent’s love. One of the tests can be to ask the parents for something. In effect, they are praying to their parents.

If the parents don’t respond, the child may assume the parents don’t care or don’t listen to him or her. However, nothing is further from the truth. The parents may, for any one of many reasons, choose not to do what their child wants them to do. For example, they may not respond because the child, not them, needs to solve the problem. They realize they will cripple their child’s development if they do everything the child asks. They encourage their child to find his or her own way in the world.

But not responding doesn’t mean the parents aren’t listening. Good parents listen. And by listening, they love.

I think this is what is happening sometimes as we pray. We create a test for God. We challenge God to show us that we are loved. If God doesn’t pass the test, we walk away disgruntled and disillusioned.

There is a concept in Scripture that I just love. It is stated in numerous places simply and concisely, “Do not test your God.” We need to stop testing God as to whether or not God is listening and trust that God is listening. Such trust is at the heart of a good relationship with God.

Just as a child needs to learn to trust her parent’s love rather than her own insecurity, so we need to trust God’s love rather than our insecurity. Just as a child needs to learn to solve or learn to live with his or her problems, so we need to solve and learn to live with our problems. Just as a good parent stands by and supports a child in trouble, so God stands by us when we are in trouble.

These fundamental truths are why Solomon prayed for God to hear his prayers, as well as those of Israel and even foreigners. He knew that if his people had a sense that God is listening to them, everything in life will be manageable. Without such a trust, things fall apart.

So let us not lose heart in our prayer life. On the contrary, let us pray when we wake up in the morning, thanking God for the gift of a new day. Let us pray during the day that we will make faithful decisions. Let us pray at night, confessing the ways we have deviated from God’s way.

As we do so, trust that God is listening to and loving us. This is the Good News Jesus taught us. It is the Good News we teach to our children.

Let us pray: Gracious God, forgive us our insecurity. Help us to grow a trust in you that believes in your presence even when we can’t feel or experience it. May our prayer life be at the center of our lives and our relationship with you. Amen.

a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
August 16, 2009

Text: I Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14

As some of you know, in the summer, I used to teach ceramics in Mexico for a month. Specifically, I taught throwing on the wheel. I gave it up because I didn’t have enough time for our cactus garden, reading, friends and the class.

At times, teaching was frustrating because San Miguel is a tourist destination. I had a goodly number of students who were more interested in smoking pot than throwing pots, hanging out in the clubs rather than hanging out by the kiln. Despite not fully applying themselves to learning the wheel, they got frustrated when they didn’t catch onto the craft. But it is pretty hard to throw good pots when the inside of your head is banging from margaritas the previous night. In fact, it is pretty hard to do much of anything with a margarita hangover.

But the students taught me a lot. In particular, I learned how to identify real students from wanna-be students. When pots came out of the kiln after going through a glaze firing, the wanna-be students would look at a bad result, say “That is ugly” and toss it in the trash. The real students would look at a bad result and ask, “John, why did this happen? Why didn’t it turn out the way I intended?”

The real students wanted to figure out how to be better potters. They realized the only way to improve was to learn from their mistakes. As we discussed why things went wrong, I could see lights going on in their minds. More importantly, I saw better results come out of the next firing.

A similar approach is necessary in many things other than ceramics. Learning isn’t about getting the correct results the first time. It is more about learning from bad results.

The effort to improve and expand the scope of our health care for all citizens has been marked by some mistakes in judgement and flawed strategies. Our national leaders today need not be discouraged by their mistakes to date. They need to learn from them.

It isn’t too late to get this right. On the contrary, it is early. If we learn from our mistakes, the final product will be an improved product. Will our leaders have the wisdom to persist until they find the right solution or will they be intimidated by the violent rhetoric and scare tactics of those who oppose health care for all?

Our Old Testament lesson this morning speaks to the kind of pragmatic discernment process needed for health care reform and so many other choices in our lives. The passage tells of Solomon dreaming of a conversation with God. In the dream, Solomon gives thanks for being selected to be the new king. But the ruler also expresses anxiety about governing such a large group of people, especially since he was only twenty years old.

The new King showed wisdom for one so young. Solomon asked God for nothing but the ability to discern between good and evil. God, impressed that Solomon did not ask for riches or death to Israel’s enemies, was pleased.

However, in the dream, God doesn’t grant Solomon the ability to discern good from evil. Instead he gives him the ability to “discern what is right.” This is a very nuanced and easy-to-miss response by God. For as we are learning in this health care debate, discerning what is right or wrong can be very different from the issue of good and evil.

Some would cast this legislative battle as a struggle between good and evil. As they do so, they polarize and demonize. But usually in life, the issue isn’t what is good and evil. The issue is what is right or wrong, what is best, what is better than nothing.

War is never good. But adherents of the just war theory contend it is sometimes the right thing to do. Betraying someone may not rise to the level of evil. But it is never the right thing to do. Cheating on a test doesn’t pass the evil litmus test. But it is wrong.

So instead of granting Solomon his wish to discern between good and evil, God rephrases David’s request, saying he has asked for the ability to discern what is right; a request God is eager to grant. As I understand God’s response, God is claiming the judgment of good from evil as God’s territory. However, the ability to discern what is right, what is consistent with God’s will, is our responsibility.

When people think they have the ability to discern good and evil, they feel empowered to murder a physician at an abortion clinic. After all, they are battling evil. A nation can justify torturing people in the name of combating evil. People can do unjust things in pursuit of a liberal cause because they are working for a profound good. So framing things in the context of good and evil is dangerous. We can legitimize things we clearly know are wrong.

If I correctly understand God’s response to Solomon’s request, God has no expectation that we humans will ever clear the murky waters of what is good and what is evil. But God has every expectation that we will figure out what is right.

Using God’s gift of discernment, Solomon became famous for his pragmatic yet value-based decision making. In his decision regarding the parentage of a baby, Solomon gave us a classic case study of the difference between discerning the right versus labeling good and evil. Two mothers came to Solomon with a baby, each claiming to be the mother. Solomon famously suggested dividing the child in half with a sword.

The true mother gave up her claim on the child, not wanting her baby to die. Solomon immediately acknowledged this woman as the legitimate mother. However, he didn’t label one woman good and the other evil. He searched for the right thing to do and figured out a process to discern it.

As a congregation this year, we had to go through a challenging process of discernment. With our endowment fund no longer able to supply as much money for the budget as it has done in the past, we had to make some cuts. Gratefully, no one framed the debate in terms of good and evil. Instead, it was framed in the context of discerning how we can best keep this ministry faithful and growing. We weren’t looking for the perfect thing to do. We were looking for the right thing to do.

As a result, no one felt as though they were being labeled good or evil for supporting or opposing a particular option. Rather, we were supporting or opposing viable options. The group would decide what was right.

When couples are breaking up, one of my roles is to keep their exchanges from escalating to the level of charges of good and evil, which can easily and quickly happen. When a relationship begins to fall apart, people do some bad things. But it doesn’t help the situation to label the person doing them as evil.

What is the difference in good and evil versus right and wrong? For me, a key lies in the fact that even the toughest theologians in the early church didn’t talk about original evil. They talked about original sin.

In my mind, evil has an ontological element to it. It feels like an essential part of a person’s or group’s being. Doing bad things, however, feels more like original sin. We make terrible mistakes because we are human, mistakes God is willing to forgive.

I’m not suggesting evil doesn’t exist. The holocaust was evil. Abu Ghraib was evil. The rape of millions of women today in central Africa is evil.

But the way we combat evil is not by seeking to be zealous defenders of the good. Indeed, some of the worst crimes in history have been committed by individuals who were utterly and totally convinced they were good. Consumed by their own sense of self-righteousness, they quickly began to consume others in God’s name.

We combat evil by discerning and doing the right thing, always recognizing we may be wrong. We simultaneously acknowledge 1) the need to uphold the right and 2) our own flawed moral character.

I guess where I am going with this is the historically documented fact that approaching issues as a matter of good and evil generates a sense of spiritual arrogance. We start to think we are good and “they” are evil.

In contrast, approaching matters from an issue of right and wrong can breed humility. We understand we are in a discernment process. We understand we may get it wrong. We understand we need the help of God to get it right.

This epistemological arrogance, the sense that we are good and “they” are evil, has been tearing this country apart for decades. On issues ranging from abortion to homosexuality to child rearing, people have been quick to label their position good and those of a different mindset as evil. It has to stop. It really does. And only you and I can stop it.

I don’t consider as evil those who oppose the participation of LGBT Christians in the church’s leadership. I consider them to be wrong. I think this may be why I have retained some strong, positive relationships with those on the other side of this issue from me. When I talk with them about this subject, we are having a debate, not a moment of judgement.

One of the most profound insights of the Presbyterian tradition is the commitment to discerning right and wrong collectively, communally. We don’t think one individual, say Solomon, is most likely to get things right. We think a group of individuals, say a Congress, debating and finally agreeing with one another is more likely to get it right.

Of course, there are stark exceptions to our rule. During the days of slavery and then segregation, there were individuals who understood just how wrong, indeed how evil, those two institutions were. The community, the collective judgement got it wrong. But on the whole, our discernment of right from wrong should take place in a community setting. In that setting, individuals can convince the community it is wrong.

This is why I don’t understand people who run away from a debate over homosexuality, war, health care or any other pressing issue. If we don’t figure this out together, it will continue to divide us. Leaving a nation as some did during the Vietnam War, leaving a church as people have done for two thousand years, leaving a family as some do every day, solves nothing but the immediate stress created by argument. And it only resolves that stress temporarily.

In the early part of the twentieth century, there was a huge debate over the authority of Scripture. Sound familiar? J. Gresham Machen was a biblical scholar whose Greek Grammar textbook is still used in many seminaries today. However, in the dictionary, there should be a photo of Machen next to the definition of contentious because he was the living incarnation of contentiousness.

Ultimately, Machen split from the Presbyterian Church, left his job teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary and went to the Dakotas where he set up a church where people would believe the correct doctrine. Supposedly, by the time he died, he created and left three other congregations because people just wouldn’t accept his definitions of what was good and evil.

Calvin was right. We need to stand our ground and debate one another about the things that matter in life. Eventually, most of us will come to a consensus. The Machens of life will walk away disgusted. But the rest of us will walk away together and head for the Promised Land.

If we don’t panic as some are urging us to do, if we don’t turn things into a matter of good and evil as ex-governor Palin and ex-congressman Gingrich are doing, that is what will happen with the health care debate. We will reach a provisional consensus and move onto the other pressing issues we need to resolve.

The same is true in our personal lives. Discerning right from wrong is at the heart of a faithful life. We won’t do it by running away from issues. We will discern right from wrong by hanging in there and thrashing through the issues until we figure it out—in our families, at work and everywhere else we live, move and have our being.

May we, like David, have the wisdom to turn to God and ask for this gift of discernment.

Let us pray: Gracious God, give us the gift of discernment, individually and collectively, so that we might make faithful decisions—choosing right from wrong. As we do so, may others see the power of this gift and seek it themselves. All this we pray in the name of One who shows us the Way, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
August 2, 2009

Text: II Samuel 11:26-12:13a

This is a sermon I hate to write. It is a sermon we all hate to hear.

The Good News: Our God is good. Our God is full of forgiving grace and extends it to us if we but ask.

The Bad New: God cannot undo what we have done.

When I was younger, I thought one part of the Ten Commandments was especially unfair. In it, God says that those who worship idols will be punished for four generations. Why would God punish people who didn’t themselves commit the sin of worshiping idols?

It was only as I have watched history and individual lives unfold that I have come to understand the passage. It isn’t so much that God punishes four generations of a family as it is that the family punishes itself.

A couple of examples are in order. We know that when physical spouse abuse takes place in one generation of a family, it dramatically increases the likelihood it will take place in subsequent generations of that family. When we pollute the planet, more than four generations pay the price for our sins.

So it isn’t that God holds a grudge. In order for God to grant us free will, there are certain things that come with it. We freely create. We also must freely deal with the consequences of our creations—good and bad.

Therefore, the reverberations of our sins do not end when we are forgiven. They do not end when we die. They can reverberate for generations.

This was the bad news David heard from Nathan. By raping Bathsheba and killing her husband Uriah, David unleashed the furies—on them, himself, his family and nation.

Nathan’s method of delivering the bad news was incredibly clever. He told a story about a man who had everything he needed and contrasted him with a very poor man. The rich man took from the poor man the little he had. David’s sense of justice was triggered. Thinking Nathan’s characters to be real, David thundered, “This rich man deserves to die and must restore the poor man’s property fourfold.”

“Game. Set. Match.” said Nathan. “You are the man.” Nathan went on to prophesy that the specter of violence would haunt David’s remaining days as earth.

I have an image of David’s face as the meaning of Nathan’s words sank into his heart. No longer the mighty warrior, no longer the poet laureate, no longer the heart throb, David’s face was ashen, his countenance crestfallen, his body slumped from its usual ramrod posture. He looked at Nathan and said, “I have sinned against God.” To which Nathan must have thought to himself, “Ya think?”

But say what you will about David’s late-to-the-party realization of his sinfulness, he did confess his sins. Many are those who simply refuse to admit their mistakes. They cling fiercely to the notion that someone or something else made them do what they did. Not David. He accepted responsibility for his actions.

As a result, David allowed God’s forgiveness to restore his soul. It didn’t happen overnight. But over a period of time, David felt the cleansing, restoring grace of God move him away from his sins of the past. He allowed God to reorient him for the work that lie ahead.

After last week’s sermon, I got a number of requests to delve a little deeper into this particular aspect of the spiritual journey. It is obvious that many of us have trouble accepting God’s forgiveness. We cling to our self-damnation and the damnation others thrust upon us as though they were essential to our identity, as though we can’t live without them.

Therein lies a key to the guilt puzzle. When we do something wrong, too often, we decide that our bad deeds are who we are. I am the person who does things wrong. I no longer view myself as created in the image of God, as a child of God. I see myself as created in the image of some flawed, sinful reality. As we do this, we turn ourselves into spiritual orphans.

Bible study is important for a lot of reasons. But none is more important than the spiritual case studies we find there. We read about people who allow God’s grace to cleanse and reform them. We read about people who couldn’t/wouldn’t allow God to heal them of their guilt.

Judas comes to mind. There was absolutely no need for him to commit suicide. While he was more proactive in his betrayal of Jesus than the other disciples, certainly none of the others covered themselves with glory during Jesus’ arrest, trial and execution. I have no doubt that if Judas had asked for forgiveness, God would have extended it.

Would the other disciples have forgiven him? Who knows? Ultimately, who cares? If others forgive us, it is icing on the cake. What we need is a sure and certain knowledge that God has forgiven us. With that relationship restored, we can sort through the ruins and rebuild our lives.

In contrast to Judas’ refusal to allow God’s forgiveness to give him a fresh start, we can think of many of the characters Jesus encountered in his ministry, some of whom became leaders in the early church. They were folks who made colossal mistakes in their lives. They came to believe their mistakes/their sins were who they were. They believed they were women and men who were incapable of doing good, unable to remain faithful.

However, when they encountered Jesus, when they accepted his offer of God’s unconditional love, they changed—radically, substantively, redemptively. They saw themselves in a new light—God’s light.

So for many of us, accepting God’s forgiveness involves changing our self-image—radically, fundamentally. We need to accept that, at our core, we are not sinners. We are children of God. We have to see our sinful acts not as our essence but as a contradiction of our essence. As we do so, we will not live in fear of God but in pursuit of God.

To all those who are struggling with guilt, I can only say, give it up. Turn it over to God. Let God do what we cannot do—forgive us.

But, but this new, reborn person who suddenly, amazingly feels good about herself will still have to deal with the consequences of her or his actions. We are a new person but we live in the same old world. And the old world doesn’t really care whether or not we feel forgiven. Henry Louis Gates and Officer Crowley may choose to forgive one another for things said and done. However, the damage done by that arrest continues to ripple through our society. The Israelis and Palestinians could forgive each other tomorrow. But they would still have to figure out a way to live with each other. A husband and wife who are estranged can forgive each other. But they will have to deal with the damage created by what they have said and done.

David faced a nation of citizens who knew what he had done to Bathsheba and Uriah. He faced his family who knew what he had done. Confessing his sins was a huge step in the right direction. Accepting God’s forgiveness was even better. It set the stage for a new approach to life.

As a nation, almost everyone confesses that our health care system is a mess. As currently configured, it isn’t sustainable. It doesn’t serve all of our citizens. It costs too much. People on the right, center and left agree something needs to change.

However, we have been stuck in the act of confession. We need to move beyond confession and deal with the consequences of the health care system we have created. On Capitol Hill, good people are working hard on it. We need to give them a chance to complete their work rather than tearing it apart as they think through possibilities.

We also need to be clear: no matter what passes, it won’t magically create a perfect system. Finding some parts that work while others don’t, we will need a slow process of making changes incrementally. We will fine tune and fine tune some more.

Calvin called this the process of sanctification. We begin with confession and then accept God’s forgiveness. Then, said Calvin, begins the hard work of changing the way we live, of being sanctified.

Whether it be health care or a troubled relationship, we can’t just make everything right in a day. In fact, we may never be able to make things totally right. But we have to try.

As a young pastor, I never liked to tell people that they were stuck with the consequences of what they had done. I probably didn’t like to tell them because I didn’t admit it was true for me as well. But I finally got up the courage to say it a few times.

The response was fascinating. Numerous individuals said, “Thanks. I knew that but I just needed someone else to say it.” They left my office resigned to dealing with that with which they needed to deal.

Some of them left to tell a spouse something that might jeopardize the future of their marriage. Some of them went to tell a boss something they knew would get them fired. Some of them went to a rehab to sober up. But they all went and began the process of dealing with the consequences of their actions.

These humble, humbled people are amazing profiles of courage…women and men who own up to what they have done and then reset themselves in another, faithful direction for the future. They aren’t sinners. They are saints. Observing their courageous actions has been the most rewarding and astonishing part of my career.

Sadly, Nathan’s prophesy was accurate. The sins of the father David trickled down to the next generation. David’s son Amnon raped his sister Tamar provoking his brother Absalom to kill him. Absalom revolted against his father, causing David’s ruthless chief of staff, Joab, to kill him. Adonijah was passed over for the kingship in favor of Solomon. When he attempted to gain the throne, he too was killed.

We cannot undo all that we start. Once we set things in motion, we have to live with some of the consequences. All the more reason to be very, very careful what we start.

But, and it is a huge but, we can control what we do in the present and future. Unburdened by crippling guilt, we can move forward with a renewed commitment and ability to do the right thing. This is why they called it Good News in the First Century. This is why it remains the best news in the world in our 21^st Century.

Let us pray: Gracious God, help us not to be intimidated by the damage we do and have done. Instead, help us to confess it, accept your forgiveness and move in a new, sanctified direction. All this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.