The God of Christian Ethics (The Problem of Suffering)

Romans 8:18-28 / John 1:1-5, 10-14

July 14, 2013

Where is God when bad things happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? If God is good and loving and all-powerful, why doesn’t God put an end to suffering? As we continue through this sermon series on seeing gray in a world of black and white, today we pause from dealing with specific issues to step back and look at a broader issue – the problem of suffering.

Our goal in this sermon series is to help each one of us think Biblically and critically about Christian ethics. In my first sermon, I began by looking at the Wesleyan Quadrilateral – the role of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason – in making faithful ethical decisions. We revisited that this week in our small group studies. I then focused on the importance and primacy of scripture as we wrestle with the difficult issues of our day. Over the past three weeks Parker has helped us explore three specific issues: science and religion, life and abortion, and war and peace. I hope you’re beginning to feel like you’ve got the tools and resources you need to articulate or at least explore where you stand as a Christian on these difficult issues.

This week, as I’ve listened to Parker’s sermons, participated in several of our studies, and reflected on the problem of suffering, the thing that struck me was that our focus as we wrestle with these difficult issues often seems to be largely on ourselves. We tend to ask, how will this impact me? Even as we look at and acknowledge the primacy of scripture, experience still plays a significant role in the way most of us do Christian ethics. Experience is what leads us to wonder why bad things happen to good people. It feels hard to step away from our own experiences and look at the broader picture.

I think we all understand that suffering clearly falls into the gray area of our lives. Dealing with suffering is difficult, even if we’re trained professionals. But there are some things that just don’t work. I think of those who try to help others by saying, “Everything happens for a reason,” or “It must be God’s will.” These phrases tend to transfer responsibility for the tragedy to God, lifting the responsibility from our own shoulders. “It’s not your fault,” “There’s nothing you could have done,” “Everything happens for a reason,” “It must be God’s will.” And perhaps lifting blame does help, but transferring the blame to God is – well – wrong.

When I was teaching high school, the head cheerleader one year was this amazing young woman named Vanessa. She was bright, talented, and well liked by all her peers. One day on her way to school she was in a deadly car accident that left the entire school reeling in grief. Everyone knew and loved Vanessa. The thing is, people kept saying things like, “It must be God’s will,” and “God must have needed her in heaven.” And I just wanted to scream. I have no interest in worshipping a God who wills suffering or who takes the life of a beautiful young woman for selfish purposes. If that is the God we worship, then I’m out of here.

This understanding of God is called Determinism. In this view God controls all things, knows all things, and is all-powerful. We are merely actors in God’s plan. This simply doesn’t match my understanding of God. My God is all-powerful but has chosen to limit Himself so that I might have free will. That’s how much God loves me. My God doesn’t demand my love. My God wants me to choose to love Him, to choose to follow Him, to choose to be obedient. And my God has shown me through scripture, tradition, experience and reason that when I choose other paths – as we all have done – those choices have consequences. Seemingly random consequences that ripple out and impact others the way a drunk driver might take the life of a child who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And consequences that are very clearly the result of my own decisions. No, I don’t believe in Determinism. God doesn’t control all things. But that often leads to the question, “Does God control anything?”

At the other end of the spectrum we have Deism. The belief in a creator God who put the stars in the heavens and the planets in motion and established the laws that govern the universe, but now God is now sitting back and watching the world go by.  In this view, God neither causes suffering nor intervenes to stop it. We’re on our own.

I suspect there are many people today – both non-church goers and church goers – who understand God in this way even if they would never articulate it this way. They affirm that there is clearly some creative force in the world – just look around at the beauty and wonder! – but that creative force appears to be more or less powerless in our daily lives. Well, if this is the God we worship, then I’m wasting a lot of time and energy. This God doesn’t care about me and my problems! I need to take care of myself!

If Deism and Determinism mark the extremes – if a hands-off God or a totally hands-on God mark our black and white – then we might as well forget about Christian ethics and just do whatever feels right. After all, God either already knows what we’re going to do or God doesn’t care. On the other hand, I’m really not sure I want to worship a God who falls somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. I need a God who is so much more than gray. A gray God just sounds wishy-washy. I need a God who is all-loving, all-powerful, and almighty. I need a God who is deeply relational – a God who walks with me in my pain. I need a God who creates and redeems and sustains. I need a God who loves me unconditionally, yet challenges me to grow into the child of God He would have me be.

And this is the God we meet in Jesus Christ. John’s gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Think about this sentence for just a minute. In the beginning God was not alone. The Word was with God. But more profoundly than that, God was still one. The Word was God. John is opening our eyes to one of the most incredible truths about our God. Our God is and has always been deeply relational. While John is focusing on God the Father and God the Son, we know our God as Triune – we know that in the beginning God the Spirit was also present – the Spirit who intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

It is this God who made a covenant with us through Abraham. It is this God who led us out of slavery in Egypt. It is this God who sent us prophets and teachers. It is this God John speaks of when he writes, “and the Word became flesh and lived among us.” From the beginning this God has actively pursued a relationship with us. That’s how much God loves us.

In the book The Shack the Trinity is visualized as three persons – Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu. The main character, a man named Mack, is sitting at breakfast with God, listening to them talk. I love the way the author describes the scene: “It wasn’t what they – Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu – were talking about that captured Mack, it was how they related. He had never seen three people share with such simplicity and beauty. Each seemed totally aware of the others rather than of himself.” That’s quite an image of love and intimacy!

Mack comments: “I love the way you treat each other. It’s certainly not how I expected God to be.” God asks, “How do you mean?” Mack goes on: “I know you are one and all, and that there are three of you. But you respond with such graciousness to one another.” After further discussion, God explains, “We are a circle of relationship, not a chain of command... What you’re seeing here is relationship without any overlay of power” (Young, The Shack (Newbury Park: Windblown Media, 2007), 126-7).

This picture of genuine relationship within the Trinity – of love that is constantly focused outward without any power dynamics or selfish thoughts – is a picture of the relationship God longs to have with us.  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” God so longs to be in an intimate relationship with us! Just think of it – God the Son became a human being.  And we humans – who have always been rebellious and power-hungry and selfish – just completely missed the incredible gift of relationship we were being offered. Instead we crucified our Lord.  I still stand in total awe of the fact that God still didn’t give up on us – that God continued to love us unconditionally – that God still wants to have an intimate personal relationship with each one of us. On the third day God raised Jesus from the dead, giving us the promise of eternal life with God. If we choose it.

No, our God is not a Deterministic God or a Deistic God. Our God is a God of love and relationship. This is the core of God’s identity – a God who is three in one – deeply relational, overwhelmingly loving, full of grace and truth. Our God is so far from gray – I’d describe our God as all the colors of the rainbow, more beautiful and more vivid than anything we could ever imagine. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg because I have yet to fully experience God.

So what does this have to do with Christian ethics and the problem of suffering? Everything. Absolutely everything. A couple weeks ago we read Psalm 139 in worship:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away... You hem me in behind and before... It was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

God longs to be in relationship with you. God has been in a deeply loving and intimate relationship with you since before you were born. It pains God deeply to see us suffer. God weeps when we make decisions that have painful consequences. God feels our pain when we are caught up in the chaos that is the result of creation groaning. This life as it is was never God’s plan for us, but through the cross and resurrection we have hope.  We have a glimpse of God’s kingdom – a glimmer of the life that is to come. Hope.

And yet, in this current age, we still experience suffering. As Papa says to Mack in The Shack, “Honey, there’s no easy answer that will make your pain go away...Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship” (Young, 93).

Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship. Healing takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship. Bringing an end to suffering in our lives comes through a bit of time and a lot of relationship. Christian ethics – really understanding how to faithfully respond to the issues of our time – takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship. Time and relationship with God. Time and relationship with one another.

Which is why the Word became flesh and lived among us. And why the Spirit helps us in our weakness, interceding with sighs too deep for words. And we gather to worship God, even or perhaps especially in the midst of suffering, affirming that our God is awesome, that there’s no one like our God, that our God is greater and stronger and higher than any other. That our God loves us more than we could ever ask or imagine. Time and relationship.

I want to close with the words of the hymn, This Is My Father’s World. I vividly remember hearing this song in the midst of a very dark time in my life – a time of deep pain and discouragement. These words spoke to me powerfully, giving me comfort and hope. The words remind me that no matter where I am in my life – no matter how sad I am – no matter how wrong the situation is – God is with me. We are not alone. God has an intimate relationship with His creation, God wants an intimate relationship with me, God will never abandon me. Suffering will never have the final word.

This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget

that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.

This is my Father’s world: why should my heart be sad?

The Lord is King; let the heavens ring!

God reigns; let the earth be glad!

United Methodist Hymnal #144

Scripture: The Extreme Center (Second Sermon in Series on Seeing Gray)

Matthew 5:17-26

June 9, 2013

What is the Bible? Is it simply a collection of ancient writings? Or is it the Word of God? Are the words merely the words of human beings, capturing their biases, their cultural situations, and their interpretation of events? Or are the words inspired by God, speaking the deep truths of God and God’s people? Does the Bible contain errors that can be questioned? Or is every word perfect and without error, totally true and trustworthy?

These questions – and others like them – tend to catch us in this awkward place of “Yes, but...” These questions try to fit the Bible into a category and depending on what category you affirm, you are then placed in a category. You are either liberal or conservative, hell-bound or heaven-bound. There seems to be no room for gray.

Adam Hamilton captures this tension in a quote he found on a blog written by someone named ‘Strada’: “I spent 6 long... years in a black and white church and it almost killed me or at least my spirit. I have no verses to quote but I can say I dig the gray area, not because it leaves me room to twist His word, but it gives me room to understand it, make it real... God gave us a brain, we should use it and try to wrap it around His word” (Hamilton, Seeing Gray, p. 59).

I admit that I also dig the gray area. I love wrestling with the difficult texts of scripture, not because I ever find easy answers – actually I often end up with more questions than answers and an uneasy knot in my stomach. I love wrestling with difficult texts because they push me to see God and the people of God in new ways. The challenge is that when I read scripture deeply I inevitably confront my own sin, my own vulnerabilities, my own shortfalls. Through scripture God calls me to change, to repent, to grow in holiness – and while that is beautiful, it is never easy.

I’m struck by the fact that over the past century much energy has been spent arguing about the authority of scripture. The fundamentalists insist on the inerrancy of scripture, arguing that the Bible is fully inspired by God, with every word placed in the minds of the Biblical authors by God’s spirit. Consequently every word of the Bible is true and without error. Way at the other extreme we find folks like the Jesus Seminar who come to the Bible with great skepticism. The Jesus Seminar argues that only 18% of the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels were likely actually spoken by him. Essentially they dismiss Biblical authority completely, leaving the Bible as not much more than a bunch of stories.

I think these arguments are the work of the devil. Arguing about scripture has successfully kept us from actually reading and engaging scripture. Bibles sit on shelves, covered in dust. Morning devotionals cite scripture, but so often we don’t take the time to actually read the scripture. Many so-called Bible studies are really book studies or social gatherings. Many worship services gloss over scripture instead of actively engaging it.

I think it is time for us to reclaim God’s Word in our lives. I think it is time to dust off those Bibles and see what the book actually says. Speaking from personal experience, the year I took the Bible off its shelf and started reading it was the year God became real to me. It was the year Jesus went from being a wisdom teacher to being the love of my life. It was the year that shook me to my core, forcing me to reevaluate my priorities. It was the year that transformed my understanding of worship, and made Holy Communion holy. It was a year!

I love this book. I am much less concerned about who authored it or whether it has errors in it than I am with how God speaks to us through His Word. And I do believe it is the Word of God for the people of God. This book is a vital key to our growth in the knowledge and love of God. Today I want to challenge us to read scripture using 4 C’s. Scripture is meant to be read Communally, Critically, and Confessionally. Scripture is meant to be Communion with God.

Scripture is meant to be read communally. The invention of the printing press in the mid-15^th century radically changed the way people read scripture. Prior to that time the limited numbers of Bibles meant scripture was inevitably read in community. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the one holy catholic church splintered into hundreds of factions once people began to read and interpret the Bible on their own.

I don’t want you to hear that you shouldn’t read the Bible on your own. Rather, I want you to hear that we read scripture in light of a great cloud of witnesses. We read scripture in light of our creeds and our doctrines. We read scripture in the light of faithful interpreters from Augustine to Aquinas and St. Francis to Luther and Calvin to Wesley and Bonhoeffer and even Rob Bell.

I think this is what Jesus is getting at when he says, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” We can’t dismiss the pillars of our faith. We can’t throw out laws we don’t like just because we don’t like them. Jesus didn’t come to abolish them but to fulfill them – to bring them to completion.

Even as we wrestle with the difficult issues of our day, we know that Jesus is calling us to a higher standard, a greater righteousness. So we read scripture communally, listening to the great cloud of witnesses and paying attention to our traditions, constantly seeking to grow in holiness. At the same time we don’t just accept scripture at face value. Rather we read scripture critically.

How many of you have heard the saying, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Oh, if only the world were that black and white! The Bible says a lot of things – God tells the Israelites to destroy entire cities because the people in those cities are non-believers. If I simply believe that at face value then what am I to think about God? And what do I do with the commandment about murder? No, nothing is settled. We are called to read the Bible critically.

So just what is Jesus getting at when he says, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.’” The Bible says it. Do I believe it? If so, then all of us will be judged for our anger or thrown into the hell of fire for calling someone a fool. And what about grace?

A critical reading calls us to question our holy texts, to ask how these texts have been interpreted over time, to seek to understand how they witness to Jesus, how they call us to grow in our love of God and neighbor. A critical reading of this text may lead us to the conclusion that life is precious to God and that all our actions should consequently be life-giving. When we are angry at someone or call them a fool, we are diminishing their lives, sucking the life out of them. Murder is simply the most dramatic way to take away someone’s life. But so many other actions can keep a person from living life fully. How are we, as Christians, called to help everyone live life to its fullest? How do we invite everyone into God’s abundant life?

A critical reading calls us to read scripture imaginatively and to find ways to embody scripture in our daily lives. The Word of God is so much more than a series of laws and practices. It is a call to holiness. The Word of God constantly invites transformation. Which brings me to our third C – reading scripture confessionally.

Several years ago I read today’s scripture passage while leading worship with a group of men at the Durham County Jail. It’s one thing to read these words here, surrounded by people who value life and seek to love others. It’s another thing to read these words when you are surrounded by men who have never been given a reason to value life; men who have never been loved by others. Murder, anger, and insults are simply a way of life on the streets of downtown Durham. Life has no value. And yet God calls us to a higher standard. “If you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

It is in the uncertainty and unsettledness of the text that we hear God’s voice. Calling us to repentance. Calling us to seek forgiveness. Calling us to be reconciled. A confessional reading of scripture opens our eyes to new truths and calls us to humility. I want to share a paragraph from my reading on scripture that speaks to the challenge of reading scripture confessionally:

More often, in our postmodern milieu, our attitude is one of tolerance rather than humility. There is an important difference between the two. Tolerance can keep its distance: Competing ideas can be relativized, promoting polite agreements like ‘You have your view and I have mine, and both are of equal value.’ Differences can be shrugged off, allowing misleading generalizations like ‘All religions are saying the same thing anyway.’ Common ground thus gained rests on artificial supports and pleasantries; it cannot withstand the give-and-take of real exchange. Humility, however, requires engagement: One view is held in relation to another. Conversants hold a stake in a point of view for which they are willing to argue. Conversation goes back and forth; there is an exchange. With this exchange, viewpoints are challenged and honed. A robust teasing out of meaning comes through difference, engagement, and a willingness to have views revised. An attitude of humility requires a willingness to explore competing ideologies and to identify the fault lines and shortcomings of our own beliefs as well as those of others” (The Art of Reading Scripture, 140).

That night in that jail I came to see my own shortcomings. For I was no different from the men I sat with. Perhaps I thought tolerance was the answer when I went into that jail that night. But tolerance keeps its distance. And that night I realized that we all needed to leave our gifts at the altar and be reconciled to someone – to one another, to our brothers and sisters, to God. Reading the Bible confessionally is a humbling experience – one that requires engagement with the text, with one another, and with God. Reading the Bible confessionally means being open to being changed. And the beautiful thing is that reading the Bible confessionally inevitably draws us closer to God.

Which brings me to my fourth C. As we engage scripture we are called to read scripture communally, critically, and confessionally. When we do, scripture becomes communion with God. Adam Hamilton describes an analogy that I find helpful. The Bible is like Holy Communion. When it comes to the bread and wine we use in communion we know human hands created these things. We can analyze the ingredients, describe the production process, and recognize the flaws. But something happens when we gather as the community of faith to share this ordinary meal. The Holy Spirit uses the bread and wine as an instrument of grace – the meal becomes holy – and we encounter the risen Lord in this profound and intimate way that is full of mystery and beauty.  

In the same way the Bible is a kind of communion, written by human beings, shaped by their historical context, their limitations, and their agendas, yet inspired by God and used by God as an instrument of grace. Through our faithful encounter with the text, the words become holy and we meet our risen Lord in ways that can profoundly transform our lives (see Hamilton, pages 68-9).  Through our faithful encounter with the Word of God we enter into this incredible story of our God and the people of God. It is my prayer that this summer as we wrestle with difficult texts and challenging topics we will be open to change – open to repentance – open to a radical reorientation of our lives and our thinking that is good and faithful and true.

Seeing Gray (First Sermon in Series on Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White)

Luke 10:25-37

June 2, 2013

There’s nothing about this world that is completely black and white. I think we often wish things were black and white, but we know everything has shades of gray. The commandments say to honor your father and mother. That seems black and white unless you have an abusive parent. We want issues like abortion and homosexuality and war to be black and white issues. But then your sister has an abortion or your uncle comes out of the closet or your best friend dies on the battlefield and these issues take on shades of gray. And we question what is right and what is wrong. We live in a world of gray, wanting simple answers and usually only discovering more questions.

This is exactly what happens in today’s gospel lesson. A lawyer stands up to test Jesus, challenging Jesus with a seemingly simple question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer would have been an expert in Jewish law – knowing the scriptures inside and out. He would know from the scriptures that inheritance was the reward promised to the people of God. Inheritance belonged to the covenant people, extending all the way back to the time of Abraham. In other words, inheritance belonged to the Jews. The answer was simple: live into the covenant God made with you.

Jesus is an extraordinary teacher. Instead of answering the lawyer’s question, Jesus answers the lawyer with two questions. The first, “What is written in the law?” acknowledges that the lawyer should know the answer. It is, after all, a simple question. The answer is black and white. Or is it? Jesus’ second question alludes to the gray: How do you read the law? How do you understand what is written there? What does it mean to you to live into the covenant God made with you? Maybe the answer isn’t so clear cut after all.

The lawyer answers by going straight to the greatest commandment, found in Deuteronomy 6. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.” And then he tacks on a law from the holiness code in Leviticus 19: “And love your neighbor as yourself.” Black and white. Right? It’s all about love. God is love. Love God. Love your neighbor. And Jesus responds, “Do this and you will live.”

But the lawyer, wanting to justify himself, asks a second question: “Who is my neighbor?” At that time, Israel was part of the Roman Empire and the people were caught in a difficult place between their desired allegiance to the God of Israel and their required allegiance to the emperor. It was a tense situation at best for the Israelites as Roman laws and customs threatened to envelop and destroy the Israelites. The people of that time did much as we would do today when we feel threatened by outsiders – they embraced their own community. The neighbor was understood to be the fellow Israelite because so many of the rest where so clearly the enemy.

Who is my neighbor? The answer should have been black and white. But Jesus answered with a story. Stories, whether they are parables or real life situations, open our eyes to the complexities of life. Stories are a great way to help us see shades of gray. A man is beaten and stripped and left for dead. A priest goes by without helping him. Then a Levite. This is rather incredible that two men of God would go by on the other side. Certainly the third person will help – that’s just good story telling. But we can hear the listeners gasp when Jesus tells them that it was the Samaritan who stopped. It was the Samaritan who took the time to clean his wounds and carry him to an inn. It was the Samaritan who showed mercy.

A Samaritan! That’s a little bit like saying that it was the Islamic extremist who stopped to help. Our minds can’t quite grasp the idea that a potential terrorist might show mercy. We can’t quite wrap our heads around how a person who reads many of the same scriptures we do could interpret them so differently. We just don’t want to accept that we both worship the same God.

Jesus, that’s not just gray, it’s wrong! We want black and white. Tell the story again and let it be an Israelite who stops to help. That’s who the third person should be. Then we can just be critical of our leaders. Don’t make the enemy be the one who showed mercy!  That’s just wrong. It’s uncomfortable. What are we supposed to do with that?

Christian ethics. Determining right from wrong, deciding how to live faithfully, and making Christ-centered decisions is far from straight forward. Jesus has this habit of taking what seems to be black and white and making it very gray. How are we to love a neighbor who is so very different from ourselves? We have enough trouble loving the neighbor we already know!

Let’s take a deep breath and step back to look at the big picture. I think the story of the Good Samaritan does an excellent job of showing us a faithful approach to Christian ethics. Jesus and the lawyer start with the primacy of scripture. What does the law say? What does the Bible say about a particular situation? All our decision-making needs to start here. Next week we’ll begin to examine how we read scripture faithfully. For today, I simply ask that we acknowledge the primacy of scripture. It is our best source for understanding what God would have us think and say and do.

But scripture alone is not enough, as we see from Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s question. It doesn’t provide clear answers to every question we have. Even a seemingly simple question like “Who is my neighbor?” is not always obvious.

John Wesley identified three other things that help us make good decisions: tradition, experience, and reason. With scripture, these four make up what is commonly called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Tradition, experience, and reason help us to get a clearer picture of how God would have us live. We always want to be aware of the roles of tradition, experience, and reason as we wrestle with the difficult issues of our day.

The thing is, tradition and experience can lead us astray. For the lawyer, tradition said that the neighbor was the fellow Israelite. Experience said that the Samaritan was the enemy. And Jesus spoke a deeper truth into that situation. Jesus used a shocking example to remind the lawyer that the Israelites were once slaves in the land of Egypt, so we should love not only our neighbor but the foreigner in our land. Jesus tagged the enemy as the one who showed mercy to remind the lawyer that God’s covenant with Abraham was a promise that through Abraham all the families of the earth would be blessed. And through reason the lawyer affirmed that it was the Samaritan, the one who showed mercy, who was indeed the neighbor.

Oh, the discomfort of Jesus’ teaching! Jesus has pushed the lawyer – and you and me – straight into the gray area. This murky place where right and wrong are so far from black and white. And John Wesley did the same, over and over again, with this movement he began called Methodism. Tradition told Wesley that you preach in a church and expect the people to come. Experience told him that the only way to reach the people was to go to the people. So he reasoned that in order to show the love of God to the world he needed to start preaching on street corners and in town squares. This was something he found quite repulsive. Something he did not want to do. But the conviction of scripture was clear. Go. Make disciples. Now. Not tomorrow. Today. And Wesley went.

This is an exciting and terrifying place to be as we confront the difficult issues of our day. We know most issues are not black and white, but we so dislike the gray. We want simple answers. And yet Jesus has invited us straight into the gray area by having the despicable Samaritan show mercy. As we wrestle with the hot issues of our day we may feel and experience much of the same discomfort as the lawyer as we are challenged by Jesus and by God’s word. It is likely that at some point over the summer each one of us will be offended or upset or angry, just as the lawyer was. It is my prayer that God will use these difficult moments to help all of us grow in our knowledge and love of God.

This is an exciting and terrifying place to be because asking tough questions inevitably leaves us vulnerable – open to being criticized, challenged, and found wanting. No one wants to be vulnerable. It is so uncomfortable. Even humiliating. The poor lawyer couldn’t even say the word Samaritan – he was so uncomfortable with this newfound truth. He had to say instead, “The one who showed mercy.” And we can feel his discomfort. We cringe at his humiliation. And then we remember Jesus on the cross.

Over these next weeks we will wrestle with scripture as we seek to understand the issues, inviting God to speak to us through the scriptures. This is a real challenge. Coming to God’s word with an openness to hear God speak is scary because God may well push us to think in new ways. God may well humble us. Sometimes this kind of thinking is painful because it touches our lives and our hearts as well as our minds. It calls us to change. And God may well invite transformation. Truthfully most of us really don’t want to change. It’s more comfortable to think of the neighbor in narrow terms. 

And still, God calls us. God pursues us. God invites us. God longs for us to change – to repent – to turn away from sin and to grow in holiness – to become more like Jesus. May this journey into Christian ethics be a time of growth and transformation for all of us. May God have his way with us. It is my hope and prayer that by the end of this sermon series and the corresponding five-week study each one of us will have grown closer to the God who created this world and all that is in it; that each of us will more deeply love the God who already knows and loves us intimately; that each of us will experience new life through the God who longs for healing and wholeness not just for us but for the whole world. It is my hope and my prayer that each one of us may gain new insights into the difficult issues of today – insights that help us to love our neighbors even when they think and act and believe differently from us. And in all things, it is my prayer that God be glorified. Thanks be to God!