The Myth of Voluntary Ethics

An Worship Service by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Presented to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday November, 13, 2005

Ancient Reading

Micah 6:8

He hath shown thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Modern Reading

I Call That Church Free

James Luther Adams (SLT 591)

I call that church free which enters into covenant with the ultimate source of existence, that sustaining and transforming power not made with human hands.  It binds together families and generations, protecting against the idolatry of any human claim to absolute truth or authority.  This covenant is the charter and responsibility and joy of worship in the face of death as well as life.  I call that church free which brings individuals into caring, trusting fellowship, that protects and nourishes their integrity and spiritual freedom; that years to belong to the church universal; it is open to insight and conscience from every source; it bursts through rigid tradition, giving rise to new and living language, to new and broader fellowship.  It is a pilgrim church, a servant church, on an adventure of the spirit.  The goal is the prophethood and priesthood of all believers, the one for the liberty of prophesying, the other for the ministry of healing.  It aims to find unity in diversity under the promptings of the spirit “that bloweth where it listeth…and maketh all things new.”

Prayer and Meditation

Prayer as Symphony

William Henry Channing (SLT 484)

To live content with small means; To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely await occasions, hurry never.  To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.  This is to be my symphony.

The Myth of Voluntary Ethics

An Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Purchased in the 2004 UU Service Auction by Bill Bennett and Lee Eddy

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday November, 13, 2005

This is my annual “Auction” sermon.  Today I “Pay the Piper” for the sermon that I put in last year’s church auction.  Gosh, has it been a year already?  Actually, I appreciate these sermons—which others purchase the privilege of picking—because they consistently take me back to ultimate, core, realities of our faith tradition.  Bill Bennett and Lee Eddy were high bidder last November—so today, a scant 6 days before our next auction I preach on all our behalf—but at Bill and Lee’s behest.

I met with Bill and Lee over lunch one day to discuss the direction this sermon should take.  They said that following a course by our Program Minister, Jonalu Johnstone, that they were interested in UU Theologian James Luther Adams.  “I see,” are the words that slipped “gleefully” from my mouth.  Both Jonalu and I relish every opportunity to discuss Adams so I realized that this sermon promised to be fun—at least for me!  Specifically Bill and Lee were interested in Adams ethical teachings.  Then, so as to prove that no glee is ever quite freely enjoyed, they added—“Oh yes, we’d like it be a sermon against the war.”  Pfffffff…The escaping air propels my balloon in an undisclosed direction.  Particularly this week, I approach this core aspect of their request with a bit of concern.

About 20 of you forwarded me articles this week about a church in Los Angeles.  That church received notice from the IRS saying that they likely had voided their non-profit status because of an election eve anti-war sermon.  I don’t think we’re in danger here.  In the case of All Saints Church, they appear to have run afoul of the IRS because of an article printed in the LA Times.  Are any of you planning to write an article for the Oklahoman?  I think we have the good will of the journalists among us—so we’re probably OK. 

Still, even without the threat of the IRS, I am cautious in approaching the request that this be an “Anti-war” sermon.  Opinions among us are varied.  My opinion is varied.  In many ways, I understand sermons to move in the direction the Spirit leads—not the way I would lead it.  If there is one thing, though, that being asked to consider James Luther Adams, Ethics and the War at the same time teaches, it is that personal comfort and pleasing everyone are not the prime determinants of a sermon.

But to the task at hand.  Let me talk first of Ethics and James Luther Adams.  Adams was a theologian of Power.  By that, I mean he believed we have the ability, and responsibility, to effect change in the world.  He maintained that human beings have power and that we are accountable for how we use it.  In his essay, “The Prophethood of All Believers,” Adams writes—

We live in a world of change and as religious liberals we have the obligation to confront the problems posed by our social economy, the problems of depression and unemployment and insecurity which have become characteristic of the present phase of that economy.  Only those who have a priestly attachment to the status quo (which moves whether we like it or not) will try to persuade us that we are living in a former stage of our epoch or that new occasions do not teach new duties.  This sort of attachment produces the false prophets who say, “Ye shall peace at this time.”  They say, “unto everyone that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, ‘no evil shall come to you’.”

Adams wrote those words in 1947 but their message seems applicable today…quite appropriate to the question of war.  We have a religious responsibility to confront social, economic and political ills. 

Adams says we must identify those who have a “priestly attachment to the status quo,” those who benefit from things as they “have been” so much that they resist the need to address the unfolding realities of a new day.  What prompts those people to maintain that “Peace” is in-breaking when objective evidence leads to different conclusions?  What is it in us makes us ready to hear that we will be OK, that if we properly attend to our own affairs that no evil will befall us?

To be true to these questions we have to acknowledge that there is no “Them” in ethics.  “We” are the targets of Adams’ prophetic judgment.  Make no mistake, Adams calls for judgment, a judgment that leads to action, a judgment that seeks to shape the powers that be.  These judgments don’t stand, simply, against those who hold political office.  There is no “They” in ethics.  The questions are pointed to us all.

Another of Adams central thoughts on power and ethics is that we must understand “The power of organization and the organization of power.”  In his essay “A Faith for the Free” he offers insight into how we are to live into the fullness of a prophetic imperative.

The community of justice and love is not an ethereal fellowship that is above the conflicts and turmoils of the world.  It is one that takes shape in nature and history, one that requires the achievement of freedom with respect to material resources as well as with respect to spiritual resources.  Indeed, the one kind of freedom is not genuine without the other.  Freedom requires a body as well as a spirit.  We live not by spirit alone.  A purely spiritual religion is a purely spurious religion; it is one that exempts its believer from surrender to the sustaining, transforming reality that demands of the community of justice and love.  This sham spirituality… is the great enemy of religion.  Anything that exists effectively in history must have form and the creation of form requires power, not only the power of thought but also the power of organization and the organization of power.

To be true to our ethic it must push us to work and to work together.

One of the lessons I draw from this observation is: “That which does not incarnate dissipates.”  Anything that does not evolve into some kind of an organizing structure will, in short order, return to the nothingness from which it came.  That requires us to use our given means to create organizations and associations that take ethical action.  Another central aspect to Adams’ thought deals precisely with those associations.  He maintains that our freedom—personal, political, ethical and religious freedom—is wasted if we do not create the Voluntary Associations that will become the focusing agent for ethical work.

It is never enough just to reach the correct conclusion.  We are called to muster the powers that be to meet ethical demands.  I took a class in Theological Ethics in seminary.  The very first question the professor posed was “What is the difference between theology and ethics?  What is the difference between theology and theological ethics?”  The conclusion that I came up with centers on Adams notion of power.  Theology is all about beliefs.  Beliefs are essential and can be life defining and life transforming for the individual believer.  Beliefs by themselves, though, don’t necessarily cause us to transform the world.  Ethics happen when we realize we have an obligation to change something in our behavior, to change something in the social make up, to effect an end that is more consistent with our values and our theology—something that drives us to incarnate our beliefs into an institution, an organization, an association that will seek change in the world.

Adams, in his essay “A Faith for the Free,” maintained that it is our religious duty to follow the injunction from St. Paul, “Examine all things.  Hold fast to the good.”

The free person does not live by an unexamined faith.  To do so is to worship an idol, whittled out and made into a fetish.  The free person believes with Socrates that the true can be separated from the false only through observation and rational discussion.  In this view, the faith that cannot be discussed is a form of tyranny.  An unexamined faith is not worth having, for it can be true only by accident.  A faith worth having is a faith worth discussing. 

Remember that Adams calls that unexamined faith “spurious religion.”

Simple examination, though, leaves us far short of the life-transforming ethic that is at the core of our free faith.

The power that is reliable in history places an obligation to righteousness upon the whole community of the faithful as a community…The response to divine power is responsibility.  The covenant of God is with the community and the individual members of it; it imposes responsibility upon community and individuals for the character of community and especially for concern with the needy and the oppressed. 

In “Theological Bases of Social Action,” Adams maintains that we are responsible for the nature of our community.  We are responsible for both our actions and inactions.  Sins of commission and omission are both real.  In terms of community, we fall as far short of the mark when we don’t take action as when we take the wrong actions.

Adams maintains that active and passive power are at work in the world.  The power to effect change implies the power to be changed.  The healthy person, the healthy community, will hold itself accountable to each in its own right.  We cannot escape from the ethical demand that we live in the present and shape history as it unfolds.  We can only fulfill or fail our ethics.  Our ethics are mandatory, not optional.  While Adams maintains Voluntary Associations are the means of ethics—ethics themselves are anything by voluntary.

Well, Bill and Lee, that is the approach to ethics and the call to engagement and action that I derive from James Luther Adams.  He holds before the necessity to discern and to act—to use our power.  I have yet to address the final point you asked me to consider—the war in Iraq.  When I offer a sermon in the auction, it includes the caveat that I can’t promise where any particular sermon will lead.  I steer the sermon but the winds and tides and currents hold as much sway as my intentions.  I will tell you that I cannot, in good faith, turn this, or any, sermon into the anti-Bush extravaganza that I think you would like.  I can however apply the ethical framework I derive from Adams to ask the questions that can, perhaps, lead us to right action. 

We are called on to use power to create institutions and communities that will stand for the needy and oppressed.  Bearing in mind that there is no “They” in ethics—to what extent have we done this?  Why did we have to wait for the terror of September 11 to turn us against the oppressions of the Afghan Taliban?  Why, as a nation, did we look past the oppressions of Saddam’s Regime so long as he was at war with Iran?  My enemy’s enemy is my friend?  None of this absolves us of guilt for Abu Garav.  None of this returns Baghdad to a functioning city where people lived and loved and played but these questions come first.  This is part of the ethical framework I derive from Adams.  Adams compels us to ask who has a “priestly attachment” to the means and ways of how things “have been” so as to prevent the formation of ways to build a world characterized by love, compassion and justice?  It is easy to point at Halliburton—but the truth is, it’s a deeper question than that.  Halliburton did not spring into existence by itself.  There is no “They” in ethics.  Failure to attend to ethical ends abound—those ends of love and justice and compassion—not just in the Bush Administration, not just in Washington, not just in business, not just in society—but in all our hearts.  There is no “They” in ethics.

The best way to build peace is to work for justice.  There is much justice work to be done.  Ethics ask whether or not we are prepared to address the justice work that we have been ignoring for decades?  For generations?  For centuries?  If our nation’s capital outlay for the war runs into billions of dollars, I want to know if we would spend that money to create the world of justice from what we have been ignoring for generations?  If we hadn’t spent that money on the war would we be willing to spend it to create that community of justice and peace in Iraq?  Unless we can answer yes to that question, to condemn the war leaves us on ethically thin ice.  If we could avoid the loss of life by spending the money, would we?  Ours is a great nation, a favored nation.  The ethic of justice calls us to use our disproportionate portion of the world’s assets to build a better world—not just for ourselves, but for all persons.  Are we willing to expend these resources even when we are neither the cause of destruction nor the direct benefactor of the improvements?  

We need to ask why our desire for resources to outstrips the needs of the rest of the world.  Why is my comfort more valuable than other people’s freedom?  Why we are threatened by those whose social, political and religious ways differ from our own?  We often go beyond the notion of “Ethnocentrism”—that our ways are best—to maintain that differing ways are illegitimate and must be extinguished.  Where does this kind of hyped up self-righteousness hide in our hearts and minds and ethics?  What would the world be like if we were really willing to let other people, families, communities and nations have the freedom to choose ways that are different from our own?

The task for this community is to use our power, naming the outworn and false as idols of the past.  Our power includes our ability to engage in the world, to chart new ways of being, new ways of knowing, new ways of believing, new ways of living that will usher in a time of justice and compassion, love and peace.  This is not voluntary work.  This is the real work the Spirit sets before us.  The difficulty is that it’s not enough just to name the truth.  We have to do it.  I am not sure always know how.  I am not sure we are always willing to make the sacrifices this demands.

This community exists to transform persons who transform the world.  To do this we have to engage fully in the world—as it is—not the world as we “wish it."  We are confronted with an ethic of responsibility.  This is not voluntary.  Ethics are not voluntary.  We don’t chose to make an ethical demand or an ethical judgment.  Each of our actions, demands, judgments and assessments is an expression of our ethics. 

The first step to building the world that “should be” is to give up The Myth of Voluntary Ethics; ;o give up the myth that we choose to be ethical; to know that all of our actions embody an ethic whether we chose them or not.  Ethics are compulsory not voluntary.  Our formation as an ethical community is compulsory.  What is voluntary are the ends that our ethics point us toward. 

On this day, as we look at our world, and look at the love and compassion that is possible in that which is real—I pray our ethics serve justice, hope and compassion.  For us?  Yes.  For others?  Yes.  But most of all for all of creation.  I know of no higher calling in life.  Thank you.  AMEN