ETHICS FOR MOBERN CHRISTIANS JOHN HH. BUCHANAN

PART I BETHANY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
MICAH 6:6-8 LAFAYETTE, INDIANA
LUKE 1619-96 OCTOBER 8, 1972

The trouble with tdking about Christian Ethics today is that we must do so ina
situation quite unlike anything the church has had to face before. And because of that,

most of the public articulations of standards for Christicn behavior, and most of what
I hear people saying that falls in the category of morality, sounds as if it is 1872 and
not 1972, and is thus irrelevant, out of date, and not taken very seriously by anyone.

Every so often I envy the simplicity of the past, particularly in the area of ethics.
It may not have been comfortable living on the American frontier, ‘.:t the moral decisions
a man had to make were straight forward and casy. Right was right, and wrong was wrong,
and more importantly there was a general consensus regarding which was which.

Now, T expect that's an oversimplification: and that men did strujgle with ethical
decisions one hundred years ago. In fact, one of the incidents cited in a recent study of
Situation Ethics poses the problem of a family hiding from a band of marauding Indians
on the frontier. The mother is holding an infant - her other children are scattered
about in the woods: the infant begins te cry. Shall she allow the infant to cry, thereby
revealing the fact that they are hiding, resulting in the death of the whole family?

Or shall she restrain the infant - even if it is smothered in the process? That's the
kind of dramatic illustration spokesmen for the situational nature of all ethical decisions
love to hold up. Obviously it is not a routine question - a normal daily circusstance.
But, it could have happened and probably did and it serves to illustrate that our fore-

fathers had to work through some sticky moral d#lemmas too. dN I ee Sle eler
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And yet, in many ways, it was simpler then. And that simplicity has been glamorized
and exaggerated in the classically nostalgic American morality play - more commonly known
as the Hollywood Western. One of its patriarchs - Tom Mix - died recently: my favorite
was Roy Rogers - and there were many of them. In their world things were primal and simple:
Evil could be wrapped up in one neat bundle: a mean, dirty low-down, unshaven, stage coach
robber ,who rolled cigarettes, drank whiskey, abused both women and horses, and generally
walked all over everybody. Likewise, good could similarly be expressed in an opposite
caricature - Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, etc. -a tall, clean shaven, neatly attired gentleman,

who could stand at the bar without getting drunk, whose relationship with women was totally

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platonic, whe loved animals, children and old people, and who was reluctantly violent
only in respanse to the presence of evil - i.e. the “Bad Guy", who he always dispatched
in the end. How sweet it was! How neat and how simple!

And for a long time it was adequate. Part of the reason for the rencwed interest
in the old Westerns today is, 1 believe, a product of our anxiety at our very complex
ethical situation. The same might bo said about the old radio programs that are enjoying
a renascence. And for me, nothing can beat the old World War II movies that bravely
defined good and evil in very simple terms. It's nostalgia, of course, but at least part
of it is the deep awareness that we're in trouble today morally: that the simple commen
denominators of yesterday are gone forever, and that our brave new world is demanding
more from us ethically than any generation of men before us.

For we are a generation that saw the romance of war turn into the unbelievable des-

truction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the stalemate of Korea, and the daily bombing of

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\ villages and hamlets all over South East Asia. We've heard that often enough, but I think

we need to be reminded of the vast difference between the heroism of Normandy and Omaha

Beach, and a protective reaction stpike against a Cambodian village, executed by American

\ Phantom jets whose bombs are guided by radar and laser. We are a generation that has had

A \w We have had to deal with all the complexity brought about by technology: we have had to fe
x adjust to a society in which success and instant gratification are the accepted moral Ky
en Standards: a society that has just out-grown the simple virtues of the past. on
es Ethical questions don't come at us in the form of the unshaven Stage coach bandit

anymore. Rather, theycome in new foriws and shapes and stytes, such as: heart transplants
and the definition of death: therapeutic abortion - abortion on demand - or no abortion
at all: euthanasia on the sustaining of life's vital Signs by way of tubes, pumps and
electric stimulators: bombing by radar ~- defoliation - My Lai: or ultimately - the bomb -
when, where and by whom?

As I was putting this together in my mind, the Journal and Courier Tent a helping
hand by publishing a front page thatcould be a study document in the ethical dilemmas of

contemporary America. Article one dealt with the Watergate incident, involving the

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electronic surveillance of a political party by a campaign organization. Article two
dealt with the untimely resignation of a high official in the Department of Agriculture
in the middle of the Russian Wheat Deal, and his emergence in the upper echelon of a grain
company that was a major beneficiary of the deal. Article three announced a raise in
Railroad Pensiens which spot lights the tremendous moral dilemma of aging in our nation:

a real problem for millions of people - part of whom are still here because of sophisti-
cated medical technology and an abundance of food, but many of whom simply have no place -
no meaningful reason to go on existing.

“a So we find ourselves in a new situation characterized by complexity - ethical sticki-
ness, In additon to that - at the same time the issues were getting tougher, the tradition-
al authority figures or structures in our culture were loosing credibility.

Part of my training as a young boy - and I expect part of yours as woll - was to
respect authority. That was my father's ultimate moral imperative. Respect it - listen
to 7% -obey it - whenever it appears: in school, church, scouts, athletics, police,
government - and of course - him. Dialogue regarding the legitimacy of his decisions
in my ome was very simple and brief: - it went like this, "Because I said so, that's why."
On the back side of our report cards was a section called "citizenship", ~ a list of
every conceivable kind of classroom vice. He could handle things like, "Talks out of turn"
or "Doesn't follow directions.” My waterloo was about third or fourth down the list '
“Doesn't respect authority". When that was checked I was in very hot water.

Now, I'm not making fun of that. It served him well ~ and me too, I believe, and I
love him for it. But for better or worse, that's not where it is today. The once sacred
halls of authority are just mt held to be sacred anymore. On measure, I think that's good.
But it does create a further dilemma when we think about religious or Christian Ethics.

The point is that "religious morality" is not granted authority simply because it's
religious anymore, That day is gone. When the Pope, for instance, reaffirms the Church's

$ historic stand against artifical contraception nobody pays much attention. Or when a

ye minister ~ or a church body - pontificates about the morality of an X-rated movie -

¥ nobody cares much.

So, here we are ~ in a brand new situation that nobody's ever been in before, with

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the props pulled out from uncer the old authorities, with a monumental amount of hand-
wringing going on, with people wondering what will become of us and thanking God that thoy
don't have to live in the next generation, and generally having. a good time playing that
old parlor game called “Aint . it awful!"

My deepest conviction is that the time is now for the Church to be deeply and
aggressively involved in the ethical turmoil: not simply by repeating the old formulas
that ignore the newness of the situation: not certainly by parroting the Jatest fad in the
name of Christian Freedom and a faith that's really "with it". But by going down into the
valley where life is lived today - by taking seriously the fact that more is demanded of
us ethically than ever before - and by bringing to bear in every situation all the ammuni-
tion we have - namely the witness of the Bible, the experience cf our own history, and the
Good News of a Gospel that seeks not to repress and restrict, but to set us free to become
fully, joyfully and morally men.

Thus, a series of sermons this fall, on the topic "Ethics for Modern Christians:" or
more accurately, a succession of probes or soundings that will raise more questions than
they solve, but that, hopefully will stimulate you to do some careful thinking and examin-
ing in order to discover where you are and where you want to be ethically.

In the time remaining today I should like to begin by offering briefly three basic
understandings that provide the foundation for any Christian approach to the question of
ethics.

First, Christian Ethics are ethics of response. In the Old Testament the Taw begins,
not with a rule or regulation - but with a positive affirmation about God. The Shema,
repeated by the faithful across the centures, reads, “Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God
is one Lord: and you sal? Jeve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul, and with all your might? "The Ten Commandments, likewise, begin with theology not
morality, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the Tand of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage’. Ethics begins, Biblically, with God, - with his oneness, with his
gracious activity toward men. Men are to obey the law - to be moral, then, not in order to
please God, but in gratitude because God has already done something gracious. Now, that's

very redimentary, but it's also the point at which we usually turn the system around.

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Ethics, we assume, are the way to earn favor with God, to win a place in heaven, or to
avoid somekind of misfortune. And because we've reversed the basis - our ethical systems
come out pretty negative - a list of sins to avoid. But Bibilically, ethical behavior is
positive - something done, not something not done: it is an act of gratitude to the God
who has already shown that he is gracious.

Second, the Old and New Testaments insist that there can be no separating of what a

V man believes and what he does. Biblically, there is no such thing as a set of standards

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for Sunday and another, more pragmatic set of rules for the rest of the week. Again -
pretty rwimentary, and again a point at which we usually turn it around. We're very much
inclined to fall in line with Archie Bunker, who recently was caught not reporting income
to the I.R.S. because it was money earned on the Sabbath.Becausavhat we do on Sunday doesn't
really have anything to do with how we conduct our affairs on Monday.

The genius of the Hebrew prophets was in seeing the hypocricy of a religion that
became detached from common every day behavior. Our Old Testament Lesson this morning
summarizes the point: "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousan
rivers of oi1?... He has showed you, 0 man, what is good: and what dees the Lord require
of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?" For
those rams and all that oi1, substitute a thousand recitations of the Apostle's Creed,
and ten thousand prayers of confession.

Third, Christian ethics are ethics of concern, compassion or caring. Once more ~-

a rather ridimentary understanding, but again a very critical point in the new situation
of twentieth century America. For we live in a culture that no longer seems to put a
premium on personal, individualized compassion. A T.V. commercial advertising steel belted
tires does so on the basis that no one is stopping along the road side to help anymore.

And if you do care - if you hurt when you see somcone else hurting - if a hungry child
makes you a might uncomfortable as you sit down to dinner - if you have the capacity to
feel the despair and pain of an A.D.C. mother - if you can hurt along with a black mother
whose child has just been called a dirty nigger - you are going to be called a “bleeding
heart" - which, ironically, now means naive, soft, unreal. You're not going to win friends

and influence people because you're bleeding inside on behalf of the disfigured children

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of Vietnam. In fact, you will be rejected or patronized or barely tolerated as a "do-

gooder" - a label that has scmehow come to be negative.
In our New Testament lesson this morning S is in hell and the pooeman in
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heaven: not because lewarus did anything wrong. There is no indication that he stole
anything or that he treated the poor man unkindly. All he did was fail to be compassionate,
to care.

Any Christian Ethic must finally come to rest on Jesus Christ. Everything about him -
nis teaching, his parables, his life itself, keeps insisting that to be good is to care,
personally,warmly, lovingly, painfully, helpfully for a neighbor in need.

One writer put it this way, and I can't improve on his words: “Here is the difference
which Christianity made. Jesus came to tell men of a God who cares desparately, a God who
is involved in the human situation,a God who...is afflicted with our afflictions, a

God who is concerned." (Wm. Barclay, Ethics in a Permissive Society. P. 31)

Ultimately, that's where it rests then. In subsequent weeks we shall be exploring
the implications. But for now, at the outset, in a brand new cultural situation,with the
old authorities gone, God's call to you and me - his ethical demand - is very simple. It

is this - "For Christ's sake, Care." AMEN

Father, we need help to live our lives honestly and faithfully. We need the support of
each other in the Church. We need the wisdom of the scripture. But most of all we need

the power of your presence. Grant it to us: in the name of Jesus Christ. AMEN