Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen
“What do you have to do to get to heaven?”
That’s a question
many people ask. And for some people
that’s what Christianity is all about.
Everything we do, everything we believe is all focused on this one
objective, getting to heaven.
Nothing else
matters.
I had a youth
director for whom this question was at the forefront of her concerns. She saw her job as saving the souls of the
youth of the congregation.
One Sunday during
the children’s sermon she began with that question.
“What do you have
to do to get to heaven?”
Immediately, one
particularly feisty young boy blurted out:
“Die!”
I could hardly
contain my laughter.
He was
right. The only thing we have to do to
get to heaven is die. God has done the
rest.
Faith is not a pathway
we must follow to get to heaven, faith is to trust in God in all things, and
let it go. “Got you covered.” God says.
“Got you covered.”
But does what we
do in this life matter?
If it’s not about
getting to heaven, what is it about?
What is the point
of Christian Ethics?
And does it make
sense to talk about Christian Ethics at all?
What we have too
often done is to miss the point of Christian Ethics. We think that Christian Ethics is all about
earning a reward and avoiding a punishment.
It’s about heaven and hell.
The truth is much
different.
Christian ethics
is about our quality of life, not eternal life.
It’s not about
getting to heaven.
It is about
living well now.
What then are we
called to do as God’s children?
Jesus was asked
by a lawyer, “Teacher, which commandment is the greatest?”
Jesus answered
him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your mind. This is
the greatest and first commandment. And
a second is like it: You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.”
It is for this
reason that God created us in the beginning.
God wanted, and still wants, only one thing. And that is to be in a loving relationship
with us. And then, God also desires that
we love each other as he first loved us.
That is the good
life that God imagined from the beginning.
It’s all about
creating a loving family.
That’s why we
talk about God as our Father, and why we refer to each other as children of
God.
We are bound
together by love.
So, you see, the
question of Christian Ethics is not “How do I get to heaven?” but rather “What
does it mean to love?”
Here’s where the
books can and have been written.
Love is
situational.
What is loving in
one situation may not be in the next.
Parents often are
faced with this. Many parents start out
with the conviction that they should treat all of their children the same. And yet each child’s situation may require a
different response.
Love is not a ‘one
size fits all’ proposition.
Love always takes
into consideration the needs of the person we love, and those needs may vary.
For example,
sometimes the most loving thing we can do is to challenge someone to do better.
But at other
times, what is needed is the assurance that they are good enough, just the way
they are.
Both are loving
responses.
But within all
the complexity of what is loving, and all of the varied situations that we are
called to respond in a loving manner, Jesus does give us some guidance.
Two things stand
out in our lessons for today.
Never judge.
Always forgive.
On the first one,
Paul writes in Romans:
“Who are you to pass judgment on servants of
another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be
upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.”
Why shouldn’t we
judge our neighbor?
Because we are
not their lord, we are not God, and oh, by the way, God has already judged and
forgiven them, so let it go. Just
let it go.
Christians have a
hard time with this.
We are quick to
pass judgment on one another.
This is so much a
part of our makeup, that it is almost impossible to avoid it.
In fact, if you
think about what I just said, I’m guilty of it.
In saying
Christians are often too judgmental I myself have rendered a judgment.
Well, I can be
judgmental. You can be judgmental. We all can be judgmental. That’s a sin we are all guilty of in one way
or another.
We form alliances
based on our judgments.
Conservative
Christians tend to make certain judgments.
Liberal
Christians are equally judgmental, just on different issues.
I, for example,
have a real hard time with racists, or abusers.
If a white supremacist
showed up at our door, I don’t know that I could welcome them.
And as for
someone who sexually abuses children, for example, I’d like to string them up
and kill them. That’s kind of
judgmental.
That said, there
is one judgment that we as Christians can rightfully make:
“For there is no
distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are
now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus.” (Romans 3:22-23)
If we must make a
judgment let it be this:
That all have
sinned, and there is no distinction, that is, no one’s sin is better or worse
than another.
But having said
that, we make the declaration that sinful though we all are, we are justified
by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is ours in Christ Jesus.
Are we sinners?
Yes, but sinners
Christ has redeemed.
Never judge.
Always forgive.
Always
forgive. That’s the second key to living
a loving life. Always forgive.
“Lord, if another
member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as
seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you,
seventy-seven times.”
This runs counter
to our human nature.
“Fool me once,
shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on
me.”
Now that’s a
statement that rings true to many of us.
When I was
looking up that statement on the internet, just to get it right, I came across
another:
“I’m a good
enough person to forgive you, but not stupid enough to trust you again.”
I once had a
couple come in for marital counseling.
They were there
because the husband, while away on a business trip, had been drinking and
hooked up with another woman at the bar.
What was
interesting was that his wife was willing to forgive him, in part, because she
reasoned that his drinking had played a major part in his lack of judgment in
that situation.
But, for whatever
reason, she desperately wanted to save their marriage and was willing to
forgive him.
He wanted a
divorce.
The reason he
wanted a divorce was that though his wife promised to forgive him, he was
convinced she would never again trust him.
And he couldn’t live with that.
Another example:
If someone has
sexually abused a child, can we forgive them?
But even if we forgive them, can we ever trust them again to be alone
with children?
And if we cannot
trust them again, does that mean we have in fact never forgiven them?
This is where the
ethics of love gets complicated.
Love entails
forgiving.
But love also
mandates that we protect the vulnerable from harm.
We have learned
the hard way, that though forgiveness is available for all, trust can often
never be restored in this life.
Underlying that
is a fundamental question: Is trust
something that we give to another, or something that is earned. And when someone violates that trust, is
there anything they can do to restore it?
I do know
this. I would never entrust my children or
grandchildren to the care of someone who has abused children before. I love them too much to subject them to that
risk.
And if that’s a
sin, I guess all I can do is ask God’s forgiveness, because that’s a sin I’m
willing to commit.
There is another
side to forgiveness, though, that is often overlooked. And that is ‘just let it go.’
Harboring anger,
or resentment toward another, bottling it up inside and being consumed by it,
is more harmful to our selves than it is to the other person.
It is said that
hanging onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to
die.
One of the
reasons God wants us to forgive those who sin against us, is so that we
ourselves will not be destroyed by our resentments and rage.
I learned this
first hand five years ago. Someone in my
congregation did something that so enraged me that I turned to my bottle of
Scotch and tried to drink the rage away.
The person who
almost died as a result was not the person who harmed me, but me.
Just let it go.
Forgive our sins
as we forgive the sins of others.
How often must we
forgive?
As often as you
need to forgive.
God isn’t asking
us to do the impossible.
God’s command to
forgive is actually for our own sake.
Our failure to forgive will kill us in the end. It will destroy the very fabric of our lives.
And that’s the
last thing God wants for us.
And so God
forgives us all our sins.
And for our sake,
encourages us to do likewise.
Amen
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