September 14, 2003
Series: Have You Ever Wondered…Imagining The Ethics Of Jesus
Title: Questions You Were Afraid To Answer
Theme: In our struggle to find answers to the great ethical questions of
our time, the first principle we should probably use is humility—we know
less that what we think we know.
I spent a lot of this week thinking about how to begin this kind of sermon,
and I am not sure I’ve really found a solution, because this is pretty
difficult sermon to preach. What we wanted to do in this series is to
begin thinking about the difficult ethical issues of our time, and to see if
we could get some clue about how Christ might have tackled some of
them—we know that he talked a lot about how we should live, and yet
there a lot of things he didn’t talk about. And so we’re left having to
piece together some sort of idea of what he might have thought about on
this or that topic. We’re trying to imagine what he might have thought or
done when confronted with what we confront in our time, sometimes on a
daily basis. I mean, THAT is hard work, and because we are a
progressive, liberal church, its even harder because we recognize the
grey area of our lives, better than most Christians, I think, those places
and spaces where things are just not black and white, where there is a
lots of room for disagreement amongst Christians than most of us were
taught was ever possible.
But you know what? The hard part in life, I think, is recognizing the grey
areas, recognizing those moments in our lives when we thought for sure
that we had an opinion that we knew was shared by God—and then
suddenly we’re challenged by our personal experience or by others and
we all of sudden realize that other people of faith, other Christians, may
really, fundamentally disagree with us. Or maybe a situation in life brings
us to a point where we recognize that there was a lot more grey area in
this or that part of our lives than we had ever expected. It’s that moment
when you realize those beliefs you were sure were right about or those
beliefs that others held were wrong, each of them start blurring into
shades of grey, and you’re left with more questions than you ever
thought possible. And what’s worse is that some of those are questions
that you’re not sure you can answer, that you’re stuck with the questions
that you’re afraid to answer.
I remember the moment when that unanswerable question came to me,
when I was student in school many years ago, and my friend, whom I’ll
call Susan, thought that is not her real name, the moment when Susan
and I were sitting in a car, outside a family planning clinic that provided
abortion services, and the silence between us at that moment was just
huge. My friend Susan had become pregnant by a young man she felt
she had no real future with, and she was in the midst of her schooling,
and was about to begin her professional life, and she simply was not
ready to care for a child, nor ready to ready to carry a child to full term to
be adopted. It was an awful situation for her, and this decision to
terminate her pregnancy was hard and difficult for her, and the hardness
of it all seemed to tumble into that car at that very moment, as we were
sitting there, waiting for her early afternoon appointment. I think were
both stunned, stunned that she found herself having to make this difficult
choice, and me because I was sitting there with her, full of ambiguity and
mixed feelings, not knowing why I was feeling so uneasy. You see, I had
been a bleeding heart liberal for years, and like all good liberals, I totally
believed in a women’s right to choose to make this difficult decision—and
I still believe that to this day. I think up to that point I had been what I
now call a “sloppy liberal,” that is, someone who just sort of takes on all
the liberal positions on issues that liberals are supposed to take,
WITHOUT doing much thinking about them, about the reasons behind
those beliefs and positions—abortion and a woman’s right to make that
choice for herself was just one of the many liberal positions I took on
without thinking about it all that much.
But what happened for me during that week between the moment we
knew she was pregnant and the moment we found ourselves in front of
that clinic was my own painful process of sifting through my emotions and
thoughts and feelings about her decision to end the pregnancy. What I
found inside of me was a lot more ambiguity than I had expected to feel,
a lot more misgivings that I would have liked to have admitted, because
my comfortable, sometimes smug, liberal beliefs ran smack into real life,
into a situation where black and white, the good and bad, started shifting
into grays, different shades of right and wrong came into view, and it was
not easy anymore to feel like you knew for sure what was right or wrong.
Though I did not think the fetus she carried in her was a child at that
moment, the reality is that it had the potential of being a child and I really
struggled with the reality of that for a few days. And yet, I also knew the
complicated and painful history of women’s fight to win some control over
their lives, especially in relationship to their bodies, and the struggle for
self-determination that has almost always begins with the right to have
some control over her own body.
The worst part if it all, I think, was the question she asked me afterwards,
the question I didn’t want to answer, it was almost in the form of an
accusation—“what were you thinking when we were in the car, waiting for
me to go inside?” She wanted to know what I was feeling, what I was
thinking, because she knew something had happened during that week
with me, and that I had struggled a little with her decision, though I know I
she had struggled more deeply and painfully than I ever would with it. I
think she saw that silence between us as my conveying some sort of
judgment on upon her, though I never meant to convey that, nor do I
believe I ever did judge her, and I suspect that some of her interpretation
of it was part of her own struggle with this difficult decision. I do know
that I didn’t want to tell her of my own struggle with her decision, one that
I fully supported as her right to make, and yet I had felt such unease
because of what could have been, of what might have been, and it had
showed, she had seen the turmoil within etched into the silence we
shared in that car, outside the clinic. The only answer I had, the only
answer to this question that I was afraid to answer, was the truth, and I
shared with her what I had felt, and why I felt that that silence so many
years almost seemed to engulf us, which was the truth about my own
ambiguous feelings about was about to happen. I wish I had been
honest earlier with her, before that moment, because I made that
incredibly difficult moment even harder for her. We remain good friends
even to this day, and I’ve remained pro-choice and have even served on
a clergy panel for Planned Parenthood since then. But that day, sitting
in that car, sifting through my ambiguous emotions and thoughts, and
completely empty of all self-assurance and self-righteousness, was one
of those moments where I think I grew up: I realized that you can have
opinions and beliefs, and even then, you can know that things like this,
these hard ethical decisions, aren’t ever easy, one way or another. I
guess I understood myself more and I think I understood those people
who fervently disagree with me on this issue more, and I must admit that I
understand them because of that experience, in that car, with my friend,
full of confusion and mixed feelings.
But I tell you what I think you what I learned from that experience,
something that I think probably all of us can learn, especially when we
debate the hard ethical and moral issues that we have to deal with as
Christians, and its something Jesus taught his disciples, especially in this
story that we heard today in the Gospel reading. It is a lesson that Jesus
is teaching his disciples on this day when he confronts them with a
question they do not want to answer—“What were you arguing about on
the way?” Jesus asks them. And they just clam up, they don’t say a word
in response; they don’t want to have to admit that they’ve been arguing
about whose going to be number one in this literal kingdom of God that
they thought Jesus was about to set up in then-Roman occupied Israel.
Silence just greets Jesus’ question—they knew better, of course, they
knew better than this, and so Jesus gives them a solution to the
argument they’ve been having among themselves, a way to settle it,
without ever naming who is going to be the greatest amongst his early
disciples. It is a solution to their argument that never quite answers the
argument of who will be greatest, but instead the answer Jesus gives
focuses on HOW they are to be with each other and what trait, what
ethical, moral, spiritual trait, will be the one thing determines the measure
of true greatness, of who among them will be great (CAMELOT VIDEO
CLIP)
Humility—knowing what you know and knowing what you do not know,
knowing your place in the universe, knowing what you are capable of,
knowing that you may be right, but also allowing for the possibility that
you could be wrong. Humility is about reining in all that self-
righteousness that feeds the side of our soul that loves that sort of
personal poison, that loves the thrill of being “right,” of winning an
argument. And I know that a lot of us have this idea that humility is all
about putting ourselves down, or making ourselves small, or we think in
terms of false humility, you know those moments when people pretend to
know their weaknesses, which they only use to point out their strengths.
For me, humility is all about having an opinion or a belief, knowing full
well that people of faith, fellow Christians, can sincerely disagree with me
about this or that issue and I never, never dare question whether or not
they are disciples of the same Lord you follow. Humility is about knowing
yourself, and knowing what you really know and knowing what you really
don’t know, and I didn’t know myself or my feelings all that well on this
subject, until I had to be with Susan, in that car, struggling with a decision
that was not even my own to make
I think one of the reasons why the pastors wanted to preach this series
was so that we as disciples of Christ would chose to struggle with the
hard questions and issues, so that we would work hard at thinking about
why we believe what we believe and to do the hard work of thinking
about what Jesus would do in these difficult situations. The thing about it
is that we’re going to disagree with each other about what Jesus would
think about this or that issue—abortion is a perfect example of that,
because Christians on both sides of this issue are sincere in believing
that Christ would do as they are doing, or believe the way they believe.
The problem isn’t having an opinion or a belief about abortion or any
other issue—the problem for us Christians is that we don’t practice the
one thing Christ gives his very clear opinion on, over and over again,
across all four Gospels, and that he points to as a sign of true
greatness—and that is a having genuine humility about who we are and
what we can know and what we cannot know, especially in these
situations where Christ remains silent and we stuck with piecing together
an idea of what he might have thought or believed.
One of foundational rules of ethics, the beginning rule of most ethics,
actually, is the idea “first, one should do no harm.” I think that is a great
rule and it is one of the reasons why I don’t sing any of the communion
liturgies—it would do us all great harm to hear me try to sing anything
publicly. But I really think that rule is not the first rule of ethics—the first
rule of ethics is “first, be humble about what you know and what you do
not know about the will of God.” It is to know that the world is as
complicated as we think it is, it is as complicated as you and I are, and it
is full of hard, difficult situations where the road is not clear and God has
not laid out a clear path for us to walk. That doesn’t mean we don’t seek
out the right path, but I imagine, if I had been a better person at that
point of my life, a little more self-aware about my mixed feelings and
thoughts, and if I had been a little less arrogant with my sloppy liberalism,
if I had been a little bit more humble, I would have been prepared for that
moment in the car with Susan, when the silence between us became
such a source of pain for her. I imagine that if I had known better, I
would kept my eye on the principles that Christ kept speaking to over
and over again, love and forgiveness, humility and gentleness, rather
trying to be “right” about this or that issue. I imagine I would have been a
better friend to her, and would have loved her more like Christ loved her
in that painful, difficult moment. May you and I, during the next months
when we imagine what our Christ would do in some incredibly difficult
situations, may we first look to what makes us great in God’s eye, which
is humility, seeing the world as it is, seeing ourselves for who really we
are, in all of our complexity and beauty, and never, ever being so
arrogant as to think there is not another way of believing about these
hard, difficult issues. We know better, don’t we, we who have chosen to
follow this living Christ with others, with others whom we love and whom
we sometimes struggle with, in those silences, the gulfs of belief and
opinion that so often divide us. Amen.
