BEYOND GOODNESS

February 18, 1990
8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Isaiah 49:8-13
Matthew 5:17-26

“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and
Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
-Matthew 5:20 (RSV)

It is not easy to do the right thing. It is not easy to know what
the right thing is. It never was, but the world in which we live, and the
world of the future which is emerging, have made the matter of knowing and
doing the right thing more difficult, and more critical than ever.

The newspaper yesterday was a virtual textbook in the moral
complexity of our world. In Los Angeles, a couple whose seventeen-year-old
daughter is dying of leukemia has conceived a baby from whom they hope
to be able to take bone marrow cells which could save the seventeen-year-
old's life. They are being criticized by ethicists from coast to coast.

in Milwaukee, a twelve-year-old boy was convicted and sentenced for
sticking a sawed-off shot gun in the face of an undercover policeman.
“Little Man," as he is known to Milwaukee law enforcement officers, worked
as a guard at a crack house for which he was paid $100 a day. Let's think
about him and what went wrong.

Who could have imagined the epidemic of cocaine and crack addiction
in which we find ourselves? Who could have predicted that this substance,
virtually unknown just a few years ago, would become a major cause of
societal deterioration affecting every social system we have? At the level
of morality, or at least the minimum acceptable standards of public
behavior, we have agreed that the use of this substance is not a good
thing: so bad, in fact, that we have made its use and its sale illegal
criminal behavior. Who could have foreseen that our moral position would
actually seem to contribute to the epidemic level of this drug's use.
Because it is illegal, it is scarce. Because it is scarce, it is
expensive. Because it is expensive, it is profitable. Because it is
profitable, a fourteen-year-old youngster in Cabrini Green can earn lots of
money — several hundred dollars a week, being a spotter, runner or salesman
in what has become a huge, well organized and highly efficient
entrepreneurial system. What's the right thing here? To date, our
conclusions have been that the right thing is to try to reinforce the moral

position that it is wrong to use this drug. So we have been talking mostly
about stiffer jail sentences, more law enforcement to make it costlier and
dangerous to participate in the System - either as a user or as a venture
capitalist. But it's mostly talk because no one at any levei of government
finds it possible to suggest more taxes for any reason. And so the simple
truth is that you can purchase crack easily, not very far from here. And
we are talking to the countries where the substance is grown, processed and
shipped in hopes that they will do in these countries what we have been
unable or unwilling to do in our own.

There is something we could do, however, but it would mean rethinking
the whole matter of morality. We could remove the legal prohibitions and
with decriminalization the danger, scarcity and therefore the profitability
of the entire enterprise. Without the profitability, there would be no
money to pay young children $200 a week to serve as look-outs, nor would
there be a reason any longer. Without the profitability the gangs which
now market and sell crack within carefully defended geographical perimeters
would be without their prime source of revenue and so young people would
stop killing and dying, at least for this. Simple enough... Then why don't
we do it? The reason is that we cannot, or at least we have not yet been
able to change our minds about the matter of morality. We cannot bring
ourselves to say that it is allowable, if not socially acceptable, to use
crack. Because that would seem to say that it is not immoral, unethical,
bad. It is not easy to do the right thing. It is not easy to know what
the right thing is and people of deep moral conscience line up on both
sides of this particular issue.

Is there a faith resource? Does the Christian tradition have
anything to add to the conversation? In fairness we must acknowledge that
there is no single Christian position, universally accepted, on most of the
moral dilemmas of our world. Christians of integrity and intelligence and
sincere faith will disagree on decriminalization of drugs, on the right to
end pregnancy by abortion, or to prevent pregnancy by contraceptive means.
Christians will disagree on capital punishment, the use of military force,
etc. etc.... and in disagreeing Christians will claim the authority of God
for their position and will be able to discover Biblical proof texts to
support their position... all of them and each of then.

And so we must ask, is there a faith resource? If the Christian
religion does not incorporate a complete set of ethical rules for
life...does faith have anything to do with this type other than to
complicate it?

That very issue came up early in the teaching ministry of Jesus...
One time he said...

I have not come ta abolish the law, the traditional
definition of goodness. It is still valid. All of it.
But - as for you, my followers, your goodness must exceed
that moral goodness defined by the law. For instance,
the law says that killing is wrong. And it is, but I say
that anger is wrong. The law says adultery is wrong, and
it is. But I say that lust is wrong.

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Those words are placed by Matthew at the beginning of Jesus' public
ministry, in a section of the Gospel narrative called the Sermon on the
Mount. It is the most familiar and most frequently cited section of the
New Testament. "Blessed are the poor in spirit," he began... the
Beatitudes... a whole new way of thinking about blessedness or happiness.
And then "You are the salt of the earth." You are to live out this new
life thoroughly enjoyed in the world. And now... specifically - “You have
heard that it was said... but I say to you..." - a new definition of the
very basis of moral living.

He used as his beginning point the going definition of goodness as
it is described and defined in the law - the Olid Testament commandments
and rules and regulations, and all the accumulated commentary and
interpretations - called Torah. The Pharisees were a group or party of
religious laymen who dedicated their lives to keeping the Torah. The law,
Pharisees believed, was a light in the darkness, Israel's gift from God.
God was revealed in the law. God was worshipped and served by keeping the
law. So that is what they did and although "Pharasaic" has become a
perjorative term in our vocabulary, Pharisees were good people. They were
generous and kind and responsible.

Jesus agreed that the religious law, the traditional definition of
what it means to be a good moral person, was valid. But, at the same time
he told his followers that he expected far more of them than the goodness
exhibited by the Pharisees.

That, of course, is not possible if the law defines goodness. You
cannot keep the commandment to refrain from killing anymore thoroughly
than not killing anybody. It is not ambiguous and under most circumstances
not difficult to accomplish.

What Jesus did was deepen and intensify the traditional law by moving
its focus away from behavior and toward the inner spirit, motivation,
attitude, inclination of his hearers, and that does get ambiguous - quickly!

What he said about anger and murder and lust and adultery, makes all
of us murderers and adulterers, Emil Brunner once quipped. And for twenty
centuries the Christian Church has been struggling to find a way to
interpret and live his new approach to morality.

The oldest formulation emerged early in our history. Jesus' words
are a new law... but obviously not everyone can abide by it so there will be
two moral standards: one for clergy and another less rigorous one for the
rest of the people. Thus clergy will be chaste, poor and obedient and the
laity can cheer them on. That was part of the point of the Reformation...
after which several other possibilities were added.

One suggested that we are all supposed to live literally by the
standards Jesus taught, but in order to do that one has to withdraw from
the world, and live a distinct and very different life style. A modern
example of that alternative is the Amish... who take seriously and
literally the precise ethical formulations of Jesus. The motion picture,
Witness, was a powerful story of what happens when that style of life
encounters the harshness of the modern world.

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A little Amish boy, on his first adventure into the outside world,
witnesses a drug-related murder in a railroad station. And when a
detective is assigned to protect him, the two worlds meet head on with very
tragic results. The Amish experience is strong and noble and admirable,
but it teaches clearly that a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the
Mount is not relevant for most of life lived in the world most of the time.

A third alternative tries to take seriously the fact that Jesus was
not as concerned with behavior as he was with the human heart, the internal
soul, where human being is established, and now things get complicated.
Jesus wants something more than law keeping. He wants responsibility
apparently... And he gives latitude - freedom in which individuals must
make difficult decisions. St. Augustine understood it this way in the 5th
century. A new convert asked Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, what the
ethical requirements of Christianity were. “Love, and do as you please,"
Augustine answered.

What Jesus was teaching was something beyond goodness. He was
probing behind behavior to the human heart and in so doing redefining the
focus of religion, recasting it in terms of an individual relationship with
God.

"What he wants," one New Testament scholar said, “is not new behavior
but new being.”

"You have heard that it was said... You shalt not kill, but I say to
you that everyone who is angry shall be liable to judgment.” What do you
make of that? Is anger always wrong or just sometimes? One inventive
scholar suggested that there must have been another phrase in the original
version which was omitted by the scribes who made copies of the text.
Surely it must have said, "the one who is angry without cause will be
liable to judgment.”

One thing we know for sure and that is if anger is prohibited, we're
in a lot of trouble. We have learned something about anger... namely that
you cannot control whether or not you are going to have it or feel it. In
fact, psychologists tell us that it is neither healthy nor possible
ultimately to deny your anger or any of your feelings. People who were
taught as children, and many of us were, that it is bad to be angry, don't
stop getting angry, they simply repress it, express it in other ways and
continue to feel guilty for feeling it in the first place. We know now
that repressed anger becomes seething anger, can make life a hell, can and
does affect us in physiological ways.

Sometimes, the psychologists say, we need to stop denying and
repressing our anger and learn to express it, own it, acknowledge it and
speak it. The idea is that mature, secure adults can both handle other
people's anger and express their own appropriately. I've always been a
little cautious about that. I'm not sure a raging anger ought to be
expressed, to the person with whom we are angry. Sometimes we say not
only our anger — but more. Sometimes we are carried away on a tide of
anger that seems to pick up velocity and intensity until it is out of
control. I have a sense that most incidents of child abuse or battering

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women does not begin with a premeditated, planned assault... but as a
result of anger out of control. The defense attorney told the court in
Milwaukee that the twelve-year-old crack house guard “had been brutalized
by virtually everyone he had come in contact with - even those he loved
most including his mother and grandmother. I don't think he was ever
exposed to an adult who did not expose him to violence," she said.

I have a respect for anger, which suggests yet another alternative.
You can't not feel anger, but you do not have to live out of it. Jesus
said anger is at least related to murder, a very important insight, it turn
out. I conclude that anger is something we need to express appropriately,
for the purposes of healing. I'm not sure the person with whom we are
angry can be asked to bear the responsibility. I'm never sure a seventy-
year-old parent can be expected to bear the burden of a forty-five-year-
old's life-long-anger. I suggest expressing it to a third party - a
pastor, a counselor, a confidante, or God. Because that is where Jesus is
taking us, I believe. I'd suggest owning our anger, acknowledging its
potential for hurting others and then telling it to God: "God, I'm angry
at her or him. I'm hurt and I'm angry. And I don't want to be. I want to
be healed. Help me, Recreate me."

Jesus wants new being, not simply new behavior,

In the meantime, the new world in which we are living presents us
with moral dilemmas which are unprecedented in complexity and seriousness.
They require new approaches. New thinking.

On the troublesome topic of teen age pregnancy, the National Research
Council released a report on Contraceptive Development last week. It
confirmed again how our unwillingness as a culture to think in new ways
about ethical decisions is actually causing unnecessary pain and suffering.

No one, for example, seems to think that abortion is a pood idea. No
one advocates it as a convenient or appropriate method of birth control.
But, in fact, the number of abortions that occur is related to the number
of unwanted pregnancies, and so you would assume that preventing unwanted
pregnancy would be a matter of very great importance to us. It isn't.

Research indicates that sexual activity is about the same for young
peopie throughout the Western world. American teen-agers, however, become
pregnant in numbers far greater than in other countries. The reason is
simple, clear and known to everyone. Birth contro] information and devices
are not as available to them. The National Research Council reports that
this simple fact results in one and a half million accidental pregnancies
and 750,000 abortions annually, and no one knows how many abused and
abandoned and tragically unloved and uncared for children.

It is time to think anew about this new American tragedy. It is time
for people of courage and compassion and love to step forward and tell the
truth and find new ways to define goodness and morality.

John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, in Megatrends 2000, say that in
a time of upheaval and change people are inclined to look to the religious
extremes for moral guidance: either to a rigid legalism which relieves

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them of the necessity of thinking things through and deciding what to do,
or to the other extreme, the arena of personal feelings when moral
decisions are made on the basis of private feeling alone.

There is a third way, the way to which God calis us, I believe. And
that is the difficult way of listening to the tradition and understanding
the world and then moving out into new directions.

"Sin boldly," Martin Luther once advised, "and have great faith." To
Jive fully in the world involves some risks. He calls us to be salt of the
earth and that involves mixing it up with a world that doesn't often yield
to moral euphemism, or even the simple moral formulation of the past. It
involves the very real possibility that we will make some mistakes. "Sin
boidly and have great faith," he said because he knew about God's great
forgiveness and that the issue for faith is not merely new behavior but new
being.

For many people, I discover, and all pastors know it, perhaps for
many of us, our relationship to God - shaped and nurtured by our
relationship with the church - is marked by guilt. We can't measure up.

We have a sense that whatever God expects of us, we aren't getting it done,
and unfortunately moralistic, legalistic religion has confirmed that for us
over and over again. Most cf us don't kill. But who hasn't been angry?
Andrew Greeley said that only 10% of us commit adultery; a spokesperson for
the Kinsey organization said the percentage is much higher. But if Jesus
was proposing a new legalism we are, all of us, murderers and adulterers.
And so, guilt is a reality of our religious experience.

What Jesus really wants is new being, a new attitude, a conversion.
What the Gospel is about, finally, is not more rules to guide our moral
decisions, but a more intimate relationship with God. That relationship,
Jesus taught, is characterized by grace and forgiveness and life made new
by the power of love. That relationship will eventuate in moral decision-
making that will exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, he said. That
relationship, Jesus taught, is based on the fact that our judge is also our
savior, that the one who sets the behavioral standard, is also the one who
lived as one of us and knows our humanity, who got angry, who felt the full
range of human feelings, and who loves us.

The word for all of us and each of us: for those who live with moral
rigor and those who have not measured up - is a word of love. Beyond
goodness. Beyond the rules Jesus wanted and wants, a brave, courageous
commitment to follow, to try every day to live responsibly and faithfully
in the brave new world he loves — the world he died to save,

God gives us the grace and courage we need.

Thanks be to God.

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