Sermon: Embedded
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Sermon: Embedded Texts: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-8, 12-20 Date: October 2, 2011 Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church Henry, who was very elderly, was unhappy because he had lost his favorite hat. Instead of buying a new one, he decided he would go to church and steal one out of the entrance porch when the worshippers were busy praying. When Henry arrived at the church an usher intercepted him at the door and took him to a pew where he had to sit and listen to the entire sermon on 'The Ten Commandments.' The vicar answered, 'You mean the commandment ' Thou shall not steal' changed your mind?' Kind of a cute joke. Let me ask you a question. Is it anybody’s business besides Henry’s just where he left his hat and what he was doing when he left it there? Are Henry’s morals—or lack thereof—anybody else’s business? What do you think? Reed Price shared a New York Times column by David Brooks with some of us recently which comments on a new book examining the morals of young Americans. The book summarizes research among young adults in which interviewers asked open ended questions about right and wrong and moral dilemmas. They found that most of their research subjects had a tough time coming up with anything sensible to say about moral matters. Brooks writes, “When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot. ‘Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,’ Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. ‘I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,’ is how one interviewee put it.” Brooks notes that the default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?” Rejecting blind deference to authority, many of the young people have gone off to the other extreme: “I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel.” Many, Brooks says, were quick to talk about their moral feelings but hesitant to link these feelings to any broader thinking about a shared moral framework or obligation. As one put it, “I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.” Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and non-judgmentalism.” [1] I expect that most of the subjects of this research, if asked about Henry and his hat, would say that the morality of Henry’s activity had to do with whether it felt right to Henry. Does that trouble you? Does it make you feel sympathetic to those who feel an urgent need to post the Ten Commandments in courthouses, schools, public squares, billboards, and so forth—because they feel so strongly that people need a basis of morality other than how they personally feel about something? I do find the researchers’ findings on their young American subjects’ difficulty defining moral standards troubling. However, I strongly doubt that a ubiquitous posting of, or even knowledge of the Ten Commandments would do much to help people gain a moral footing. It’s probably true that more people can recite the ingredients of a Big Mac than can recite all Ten Commandments. But suppose that were not so; suppose every American could stand on one foot and rattle off all Ten Commandments in order. Would that make us a moral people? Not necessarily. It’s not data that is missing. It’s not simply information about rules that this American generation lacks. What’s missing for many individualists—young and old—is a group, a community of some kind, that equips people to make moral choices. That’s what the researchers conclude, not that young people are especially immoral--but that many of them have not been given the resources by schools, institutions, and families to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, and to check behavior that may be degrading. Brooks writes, “People are less likely to feel embedded in a moral landscape that transcends self.” He continues, “In most times and in most places, the group was seen to be the essential moral unit. A shared religion defined rules and practices. Cultures structured people’s imaginations and imposed moral disciplines. But now more people are led to assume that the free-floating individual is the essential moral unit. Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.” [2] The big problem with this approach is, of course, that the heart can be deeply corrupt. Furthermore, we have an almost infinite capacity to fool ourselves about the extent of our own corruption. In old-school church lingo this is referred to as sin. And boy howdy, do humans ever have it, in spades, almost from the very first stirrings of “I want” in our young lives. The heart as an isolated moral compass is bound to fail. Even if you add moral data like a list of commandments to the individual, I am convinced it is unlikely to override the natural corruption of the human who just wants what she wants when she wants it. We’re so good at rationalization; we can talk ourselves into just about anything. And keeping the commandments is no simple, black-and-white matter; there are complexities around how an abusive parent is to be “honored,” for instance, or whether it is always wrong to tell a lie, or always wrong to kill. A moral compass needs more than a gut feeling and a concrete black-and-white set of regulations. David Brooks’ excellent column already hinted at what people need for a firm moral footing: Relationships. Community. To be embedded with others in a moral landscape that transcends the self. What we might miss in the account of the reception of the Ten Commandments in Exodus is how completely this is a relational event, and how thoroughly relational the commandments are. They are given to a particular people in a particular place. These people had been liberated by God. The very first commandment begins with a reminder about that liberation, and behind that phrase is the story of deliverance, crossing the Red Sea, being sustained in the wilderness by manna, water and quail given by God. The relationship has already been established, acted on and lived out; it’s not relationship by decree. The first few commandments have to do with maintaining and enhancing the relationship with the living, liberating God—how to live as God’s people. The second part of the commandments have to do with how God’s people relate to each other. The people of God are not embedded in a moral landscape as a multitude of individuals who happen to live within sight of each other. They are God’s people together, and these commandments help people understand how to maintain and enhance their relationships with each other. Eric Barreto points out in an article on this text that the story of the Ten Commandments in Exodus is really less about proper behavior than it is about identity. Who are we? What is our relationship to God? What is our relationship to one another? Jesus’ teaching continues in the same line, going even more deeply into the heart and mind as the place where identity as a lover of God and neighbor takes form before even it manifests itself in behavior. Jesus teaches us that the way we see ourselves in relation to God and neighbor begins to train the soul in the way it should go; attitudes surface as genuine communion. People who are only tuned into their own heart’s feelings as a moral guide lack some valuable tools. Many of us were lucky enough to have families that took moral guidance seriously, and sent us as children out into the world with a strong sense of right and wrong. But family systems can be broken, or terribly provincial in their convictions; families can pass down traditions like racism or homophobia, for instance, from generation to generation. One of the many reasons I’m a big fan of Church is that a church fellowship can serve as an even richer place than family for an individual to be embedded in a group that grounds persons in relationships to God and neighbor. Church can be like a family in terms of love and acceptance, but it is broader than a family, bringing us into close fellowship with people who see things differently. It is self-consciously grounded in a tradition that is bigger than itself, continually wrestling with how the ancient instruction in the Good Life bears on present dilemmas. Church dares to claim an identity as God’s people, and dares us to recognize each other as equally valuable members of God’s family. It is a practicing community—a place to practice being in loving relationship to God and in loving, forgiving relationship with at least a few of God’s people. It is a place where we can observe how walking with Jesus plays out in real life. It’s a community where we can not only ask ourselves “What would Jesus do?” but also, knowing and admiring our fellow sojourners, “What would Madelyn do? What would Stephen do?” I’m 100% sold on bringing young people into church for moral instruction and practice. It’s not that we’re perfect, but I believe our kind of imperfect teaching and modeling is much needed by growing people, whether they recognize its value it or not. We do and will continue to commit to being a teaching community for people of all ages because it is an essential obligation. It breaks my heart to think of the young people in the research project who have been set adrift on a sea of moral dilemmas without a community to anchor them. Such moral drifters are not to be scorned or despaired over but assisted, in any way we can. As the old chestnut joke about Henry and his hat points up, the young are not the only ones in need of the moral guidance of a community embedded in a larger landscape of faith and practice. One of my favorite seasons of church life so far was a brief period in the University Place church in which we had a small group committed to “the art of theological reflection.” Members took turns bringing cases to the group for discussion—real life moral dilemmas they were wrestling with. In a confidential setting, we tried to put decisions to be made in the context of our historic faith and our contemporary ethics, not to make a judgment but to help the decision maker in her discernment about right action. It was electrifying to be part of such a group that really felt like it was good for something. I would love to see that happen here, and would be more than happy to pull together a group that met regularly or episodically, when there is a need for it. Even without an “organized group” it is a gift to be embedded in a community dedicated to loving God and neighbor. It helps restrain wrong action to know that I might disappoint or let down people I love if I were to act on an immoral impulse. It’s good to have good people who are all up in your business, who see that you are capable of goodness and expect it of you. Accountability is more of a gift than a burden, until that day when we all become perfectly perfect. Is the fictional Henry’s morality anybody’s business besides his own? In a word, yes! It is God’s business, and the business and vocation of the people of God to see that such a person leads a good life embedded in a loving community to which he is both acceptable and accountable. Let us pledge that insofar as we have any say in it, we will not leave any person (young, old, or in between) to the feeble guidance of their mottled and muddled heart alone! Grounded in ancient wisdom, guided by the life and love of Jesus, embedded in faulty but faithful community, we promise to take hands and help each other walk the Way. [1] Brooks, David “If It Feels Right” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/opinion/if-it-feels-right.html?_r=1
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