THE FIRST RESORT

Luke 18: 9-14

Ephesians 2: 4-10

      One year while camping at Lake Chelan I was talking with a man whose family was camped next to us.   In the course of the conversation, he asked what I did.   Usually when people ask that questions, what they really want to know is your profession--- you know, what you do “for a living.”   So I told him I’m a pastor—to which he immediately replied,  “Hey, I’m a pastor too!”   I was pleasantly surprised by his response.   For usually I meet others whose reactions are quite different than this.   They often say,  “Hey, that’s great!   My grandmother was religious!”   Or they may say,  “I don’t need religion.   I live a pretty decent life.   Of course, I’m not perfect—but who is?”   These folks look at worship and prayer as an extra--- suitable, proper at weddings and funerals, but only important to a limited number of people.   And they say they would be the first to defend people’s right to practice their religion.   But it’s not for them.   The notion is that the average, good-living citizen does not need “religion.”   That’s a common attitude among a large part of our population, particularly here in the Northwest.   It’s common among several of my friends.

      How do we reply to that kind of attitude?   What do you say to the person who says,  “I live a fairly decent life.   I don’t need God.”?   Many of us may be baffled as to how to reply.   For indeed the person with whom we are speaking may be an awfully nice person, perhaps nicer than some church members.   Here is a law-abiding, conscientious, generous, good-hearted person, always ready to give a helping hand.   But he or she says,  “I live a decent life.  I don’t really need God.  I live by my own conscience and that is enough.”

       What about conscience?   By our “conscience” we mean that inner voice that tells us we have or have not lived up to what we know to be right.   Persons who say,  “I live a pretty decent life,” mean that, apart from a few slips, their consciences tell them that they are doing all right.   This at once raises the question of what our conscience is telling us, whether or not it’s reliable, and if it is possible for a conscience to become more or less sensitive as the years pass.   If we think about it seriously, it will be apparent that a conscience is not something like a moral alarm clock that is set to go off in everyone’s head at exactly the same time.   When a person says she obeys her conscience, we may want to examine the kind of conscience she has.   Some of the most ghastly crimes in history have been committed by conscientious people.   How do you react, for instance, when soldiers like those who took part in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam 35 years ago or like the Bosnian Serb soldier I saw on television a few weeks ago in a war crimes trial, when asked what they felt like when shooting down innocent women and children, replied that it did not bother them at all because they were simply obeying orders?   Was there nothing wrong with that kind of conscience?   Or the consciences of mass murderers like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, whose consciences became less and less critical the more horrible the crimes they committed?

      Conscience is not something automatic and universal in its judgments.  It is not an instinct on which we can rely to deliver an infallible ruling.   Every one of us has developed a conscience according to the moral teachings to which we have been exposed.   As each year passes, we become either more, or less, morally and ethically sensitive.   To some extent it depends on the kind of people with whom we associate.   A kid whose conscience at home tells him it’s wrong to take illegal and dangerous drugs may find himself in an environment of his peers where conscience seems no longer to say the same thing.  If a woman spends long enough in a business where ethical corners are regularly cut, she may soon find that her former standards of honesty no longer speak to her conscience.   Conversely, the friendship of a really good man or woman or the love of a wonderful parent or spouse can raise our moral sights and make our conscience a more sensitive instrument in our daily life.   So when we hear,  “I live a pretty decent life,” we can’t help but wonder about the standard of measurement—a decent life according to whom?

     Furthermore, how do we know whether our ideas about what constitutes a decent life are not slipping as the years go on?   Most of us need some sort of check.  Otherwise it is very easy to have our conscience gradually taken over by popular opinion or the mood of the day.   None of this is to say that our understanding of the world and how we are to live in it cannot change as we live and grow in our faith.   Sensitivity to God and to those who live around us in this world should help us constantly redefine our behavior.   But what I am saying is that what is needed is a new recognition that there is a moral demand on us that is much more stable than any temporary way of life, a demand that has its roots in something deeper than popular opinion.   Our consciences have to be educated by being exposed to the constant appeal of God who made us and knows how we should live.   We are asked to let our consciences be educated by the will of God for us.   In other words, I can keep my ideas of the “decent life” alive and growing only as I keep in touch with God, only as I live in relationship with God.   What am I saying?   I am simply saying that I want God’s voice to be heard by my conscience as I live my life hearing all the other voices around me.   Does that make sense?

       Jesus recognized this dilemma in which we live, surrounded by the influences of our society, and called us to hear God’s voice in the midst of it.   Jesus often used this form:   “You have heard the voices around you, but I say this…..”   For instance, one time Jesus said,  “You have heard that it was said,  ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’   But I say to you,  ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…. And if you do good to only your brothers and sisters what more are you doing than others?  Yes, you must try to do the right thing, what God wants you to do.”     Jesus is clearly calling us to a higher life, to a different voice than the ones we hear all the time.

      To be with Christ is to have one’s conscience continually renewed and sensitized.   To be reminded of God’s will, to be challenged by Christ’s life, to be stimulated by the presence of the living Spirit--- this is so much more than living a “decent life.”

     But something even more is needed than this constant check upon our conscience and concept of the “decent life.”   The New Testament says that Christ came to overthrow this whole idea of justifying ourselves with words like,  “I live a pretty decent life.”   Religious people are often accused of being smug and self-satisfied.   But real Christianity should have the opposite effect.   Every word and story of Christ and the apostles seems designed to demonstrate that none of us has a moral leg on which to stand in the presence of God.

      As I was flying back to seminary after Christmas one year, a man in the seat next to me, upon hearing I was studying to become a pastor, told me smugly that the Sermon on the Mount was the only religion he needed.   But he must not have looked at it very closely.  Because the Sermon on the Mount is devastating!   Read it again and I’m sure you will not end up saying,  “That’s the kind of life I lead, so I don’t need Christ.”   The people that Christ lamented most were not the rogues and ruffians, the adulterers and murderers, the burglers and robbers—but the smug and the self-satisfied.   The person who said,  “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” was, Jesus said, justified because he did not try to justify himself.   That was what the one guy did who recounted his “decent life” and thanked God he was not like those other people.   I don’t know any way of breaking out of our self-justification more powerful than this--- to let Christ show us that we have nothing to boast about before others—least of all in his presence.

     In fact, our salvation is a gift from God, for which none of us can boast.   As our scripture lesson from Ephesians said,  “It is by grace that we have been saved through faith.  It is not our own doing but God’s gift—not the result of works (that is “decent living”)—so that no one may boast.”

       The briefest and undoubtedly most honest prayer I have ever heard went like this—“Almighty  and everlasting God……. Help!”   Isn’t that how most of us really feel?   “Almighty and everlasting God….”    We repeat those mighty-sounding words and then all we find we want to say is “Help!”   Not a bad prayer, for it expresses exactly what we need.   If you have ever despaired of being the kind of person you really want to be, if you have ever faced a situation that was beyond your powers to cope with, if you have ever reached the blank spot where all the usual lights go out, then you know what it means to utter this simple cry for help.

      God should not be someone to whom we turn only when our “decent” life turns indecent.   God should not be the last resort but the first resort—which means that we allow God’s Spirit to work in us day by day, week by week.   God’s grace is not an emergency exit when the house is on fire.  It is the light by which we seek to live that “decent life” each day.   And the Christ who shows us how far short we have all come is the same Christ who accepts us as we are and comes to live with us in all his transforming power.   The Good News is that God cares, that God cares so much that God gave us Jesus to experience our life, our loneliness, and our death, and has invited us all to find the new and eternal life in Christ, our first resort.

                                                                  AMEN