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SERMON
The seminary professor stands before his ethics class, reflecting on
the commandment to not bear false witness. He muses aloud: "I wonder
about that sometimes when we buy those timers to turn our living room
lamps on and off automatically, making it look like we're home even when
we're not. I wonder if that is bearing false witness." Some of the
students chuckle, thinking he's making a joke. But he's not. He's not
saying that he thinks such timers are immoral. But clearly his ethical
mind gravitates to such questions on a rather regular basis, pondering
them with a kind of holy earnestness.
We live in a time of widespread moral relativism. The common response to
the question of something being right or wrong is very often, "Well,
it depends." There are many today (including some within the church)
who would certainly take issue with the idea that we ought to weigh the
morality of everyday matters like automatic light timers. Oh, they might
concede that there may be issues about which the moral lines are
more-or-less clearly drawn. But they would argue that we have no
business trying to do so with every little aspect of our day-to-day
lives. The fact is that our culture has become so fragmented that there
is a great deal of resistance to the notion that there are any universal
moral standards that apply to all aspects of life. Think about it.
We witness questionable behavior and regularly excuse it with the
explanation: "Well, everybody's doing it." And if we see
something we consider laudable in someone else's life, we don't
necessarily adopt that for ourselves because, as we also like to say,
"Different strokes for different folks." We might be offended by the
glut of pornography on the Internet, and we certainly wouldn't
consciously promote it. Yet we ignore the fact that the free flow of
what is clearly immoral is following the same trajectory as something
our society does promote: namely, the idea that whatever consenting
adults do in private is nobody else's business.
In a celebrity-driven culture, it is amazing how easy it is for actors
and athletes to maintain immense popularity even after getting caught in
some wretched scandals. Hugh Grant, Kobe Bryant, Paris Hilton and Martha
Stewart they have all been involved in sordid activities, but it
doesn't seem to matter. The next time they make an appearance or play in
a game, we line up and put our money down to see them.
Then along comes Psalm 15 to re-orient our ethical thinking. Of course,
we shouldn't naively equate the society of ancient Israel with our own.
Despite the rhetoric about America being a chosen nation or God's
shining city on a hill, the fact is that we have never been a theocracy
not the way ancient Israel was. As Christians, our job is to witness
to the truth of the gospel. But we cannot expect that our every belief
will be codified into the law of the land. Jesus told us to proclaim the
truth, not legislate it to the point that people will break the law if
they refuse to embrace the gospel.
Of course, that makes living as Christians all the more challenging. We
should expect to be out-of-step with the surrounding culture, and
we shouldn't be shocked when that proves to be the case. After all,
Jesus did warn his disciples to anticipate rejection and even
persecution. Jesus told them: "If the world hates you, keep in mind
that it hated me first."
But having noted that, God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the
same God of Psalm 15. And Psalm 15 makes it clear that, whatever the
world around us does, if we are to be among the righteous, we need to
lead lives that are consistently in line with the God we serve. Now, if
you take Psalm 15 head on, its message is downright daunting. It begins
by asking a question that could be paraphrased: "Who may come to
church? Who may sit in the pew and bow before the throne of grace?"
Who is worthy to enter God's holy presence? The answer is clear. The one
who walks straight, acts right and tells the truth who never hurts a
friend or blames a neighbor who despises the despicable who keeps
faith even when it hurts who makes an honest living and never takes a
bribe. There you have it! That describes all of us, right?
No, it sounds like those who presume to visit God in worship had better
be darned close to perfect! But even in ancient Israel, if Psalm 15 had
been vigorously applied, I suspect the tabernacle would have been empty.
On the other hand, if the Israelites had really maintained this set of
stringent moral requirements, you would have to wonder why God required
that sin offerings be made every single week as part of the liturgy.
After all, the only reason to bring a sacrifice would be if you knew you
were not completely blameless! And if we enforced the same standards
here, why would we bother with prayers of confession? After all, the
only people we let in the door would be those who were already so
perfect as to have no sins to confess. Let's get real.
Even the author of Psalm 15 knew that sin is as pervasive as it is
persistent. But if Psalm 15 was not literally applied even in Israel,
then what purpose did it serve? And how can it serve us now? Perhaps in
this way: by reminding us of what real peace looks like and thus giving
us a goal to shoot for a goal as lofty as it is lovely; as challenging
as it is edifying.
The problem in our lives is that we are too easily satisfied, as C. S.
Lewis put it. Too often we're content to live with aspirations that
barely rise above the level of what could be called ethical
kindergarten. Psalm 15 forces us to go for the best. But it does so not
because God is a kind of moral drill sergeant who insists we do things
his way simply because he likes to be in control. Keeping God's law is
never about our acting like circus dogs trained to jump through ethical
hoops. A lot of people think that God's rules for living are artificial
and arbitrary, and therefore they view them as optional.
But throughout the Bible you hear a different message. You find it again
in the last line of the Psalm 15. "The one who does these things
will never be shaken." There is God's promise. It doesn't say
that the person who does these things will make God smile. It doesn't
promise that the person who lives ethically will go to heaven instead of
hell. Nor does it say that the moral one will escape being corrected and
reproved. No, it says that those who live this way will never be shaken
which means their lives will be on a rock-solid foundation. That's the
promise.
Psalm 15 tells us to live this way because God knows that this is the
recipe for a life of peace and repose and stability. If you live a life
of dishonesty, you'll always be worried about your lies being uncovered.
Those who are truthful sleep more soundly than those who spend their
days covering their tracks. Why be stingy, refusing to be generous with
the resources God has entrusted to you? The fact is that generous people
have an easier time going out in public because they don't have to worry
about bumping into someone they deliberately avoided when they had the
chance to lend them a helping hand.
God knows that not doing the moral activities mentioned in Psalm 15 only
serves to unsettle our peace of mind and heart. The fact is that living
selfishly and dishonestly and brutally unglues us. We fall apart. God
doesn't want that for us. If Psalm 15 seems to set the ethical bar
dauntingly high, it's because whenever you try to clear that bar, you
experience nothing less than the lovely webbing together of all life
into that integrated reality the Bible calls shalom. It is precisely
that all-encompassing peace that Psalm 15 helps us to see.
Look closely at the Psalm and you can detect a series of concentric
circles. And this moral map of life was consistent with Israelite
society generally. You may recall that in the wilderness the Israelite
camp was laid out in a series of concentric circles. At the very center
was the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle a place so sacred that only
the high priest could enter it. As far as the Israelites were concerned,
God lived at the very heart of their society.
The next circle was a bit wider but was still a restricted area where
only ordained priests could be. The farther out from the Holy of Holies,
the wider each circle became. Beyond the circle of priests came the area
of normal Israelite life where the people who were in good standing with
God could live and carry on their daily routines. Farther out yet was
the circle where aliens and non-Israelites lived. Ultimately you would
get to the area outside of the camp where people had to go in case they
became ritually unclean.
In a similar way, if you look closely at Psalm 15, you can see how it is
laid out to encompass the various circles of life. It begins at the
center with the sanctuary where God dwells. But then it moves out to the
immediate neighborhood where people live. Then comes the wider world of
commerce where one might face temptations for bribes and other
ill-gotten gain.
But the point of Psalm 15 is that no matter where people might be at any
given moment, they were still tethered by the ethical lines that run
straight back to the center of all things to the dwelling place of God
among his people. No matter how far out from the tabernacle they went,
they remained tied to the God at the center of it all. The same is true
for God's people today. No matter how far you may be from church, God's
fierce desire for your shalom goes with you. And it still dictates how
you must live, how you must conduct yourself before others, how you make
decisions when you come to a moral crossroad.
So let's say you're in court swearing an oath. God hears that oath and
knows that it is in your best interest to keep it. Someone may pull you
aside after a meeting at work, suggesting that you cut corners here and
there to pad the company's bottom line even if it could put innocent
people at risk. God is there reminding you that, just as protecting the
innocent is near the top of the divine agenda, so it must be for you.
And while we're on the subject, that verse about "accepting a bribe
against the innocent" means far more than someone flashing a wad of
money to tempt you to betray someone. These days there are myriad ways
by which the lust for easy money can harm the innocent. Every time an
executive compromises the testing of a new food or medicine to see if it
is really safe, the innocent are put at risk. Every time somebody saves
the company money by dumping a few extra chemicals into the river behind
the factory, the innocent are put at risk. Every time someone becomes
aware that a certain car, or a kind of tire, or a child's safety seat is
not safe, but then lets it slide because it would cost too much to fix,
the innocent are put at risk.
No matter what we do in life, we all regularly face decisions on what to
say and what not to say on whether to try to lend a hand or to keep
our hands buried in our own pockets on whether to spread around that
juicy little piece of gossip we heard or let it die with us. Psalm 15
reminds us that, if we really want the Holy Spirit of God to dwell in
the Holy of Holies that is, the inner sanctum of each of our hearts
then we need to see all the tethers that connect every single part of
our lives with that Spirit at our core.
Psalm 15 forces the question: Are you living the kind of morally
consistent life that gives you peace that makes for shalom? As I said
earlier, if that were the case, you'd have no reason to offer prayers of
confession. Psalm 15 insists that we be honest, and so the first thing
we need to be honest about is precisely our dishonesty. The truth is
that, no matter how hard we try to make people think otherwise, we don't
always play according to God's rules. And left to our own devices we
never will. Our devices regularly become our vices. We were designed to
live for God's glory, and we do that whenever we live righteously. But
the uncompromising message of the New Testament is that we cannot live
righteously on our own. It is only what Jesus has done for us that makes
us right with God. We live by his grace alone.
But grace (and we always have to remind ourselves of this) not only
forgives, it transforms. You don't hear it much anymore, but once upon a
time a standard way to thank someone who did something for you was to
say, "Much obliged." Implicit in that expression of gratitude is
the notion that obligation stems from our having received something.
Certainly that is true of God's grace in Jesus. We are much obliged for
what Jesus has done for us. Jesus is our Righteousness; but that hardly
frees us to live however we please. Common sense tells us better.
And so, along with the author of Psalm 15, we aim high. We aim at
nothing less than blamelessness, honesty, integrity and generosity. No,
we won't always make it. But we aim to love all the right things;
reserving whatever disgust we feel in life for that which is genuinely
disgusting to God. We aim high ethically not out of fear that God is
going to clobber us if we don't, but because we know God's heart. We
know that he loves us enough to want the best for us. He promises us
nothing less than shalom that our lives will never be shaken. And as
far as I'm concerned, that is reason enough to let God call the shots.
I'm still not quite sure what to make of that automatic light timer
thing. But I'm quite sure that seminary professor was on the right
track. People who understand themselves to be the dwelling place of the
Spirit of God do think about such things. They really do.
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