12.24.2017         Preaching Text: “[According] to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed…” (Romans 16:25-26)

The theme that stands out in our readings this morning is a prominent feature of biblical theology, yet one ignored by many modern-day Christians.

It has to do with covenant. A covenant, biblically speaking, is like a contract, but different. It’s analogous to the kinds of pacts found in the ancient Near East whereby a powerful king would enter into an agreement with a lesser power to protect them and provide for their welfare.

In return, the lesser power would agree to observe the conditions set by this greater power. Thus it was like a contract except that it wasn’t a contract among equals. It was not a quid pro quo in which one party gives something desired by the other in return for something of commensurate value.

A biblical covenant, thus, is an agreement initiated by the greater power, God, who agrees to care and protect, first, the nation of Israel, and then, by extension, the church and world. In return, we agree to abide by God’s expectations for us, which, we understand, are meant for our good.

This is at the heart of the Bible. Beginning with Abraham, God makes a covenant, an oath, a promise, to save the whole world from the perils and predations of sin and brokenness, things begun in the Garden of Eden, things having despoiled the perfection God intended for Creation.

This covenant, renewed along the way with various biblical figures, remains the subtext of the entire document and, as such, our faith.

The Christian church, of course, as we see in Romans, understands Jesus Christ as the final covenant made with humanity. It is through Christ that God shall effect, finally, the renewal and restoration of Eden’s perfection.

As I’ve said many times, the idea of the covenant, or the Promise, forms the basis of virtually every story in the Bible. In the Old Testament, perhaps especially, the entire narrative revolves around whether God’s covenant will stand against human assault.

Time and again, Israel appears to jeopardize this covenant by failing their end of the bargain. Their lack of faith repeatedly endangers the covenant. Yet when all seems lost, God reasserts his covenant and his Promise, and achieves the impossible. For what is impossible for humans is not impossible for God.

Implicit in this covenant is the belief that God has a plan for you and me. In a world that often appears random and chaotic, the hidden truth is that God is forever with us, all the while faithfully effecting his plan.

This is difficult to accept. Our perception of the world, after all, is increasingly defined as random and without meaning. Modern philosophy says there’s no underlying core to life. Things just happen. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Everything’s in flux. Nothing is stable or perennial.

This mirrors ancient pagan beliefs which Israel and their God, Jahweh, stood forthrightly against. Until Israel came along, the events of life were thought to have been caused by the random actions of the gods, who, be it noted, were both capricious and utterly indifferent to human well-being. At best, one might attempt to placate these gods in ritualistic fashion in the faint hope that the worst just might not happen.

The Israelites believed differently. Their genius was in discovering that God not only created the world as good, but that this same God was also intimately involved in all human affairs, in history. What happens in your life matters. God is not some distant or dispassionate divine being but passionately interested in you. God has a plan for each and every life.

This belief, as I say, is a hard sell given all that goes on in our world today. Add to this the claim that science has explained everything, or is about to anyway. Such a concept appears both antiquated and nonsensical.

Last week I talked about how Christianity differs from Stoic thought in that Christianity does not believe that everything that happens is God’s will. This is because God has given us free will.

So how do we square this circle? I mean, how do we make sense of these two competing ideas – God’s sovereign plan vs. human free will?

Over the years I’ve suggested that Christian life is a kind of “fate with a choice.” God indeed has a detailed plan for each of our lives, yet we can freely choose to ignore that plan.

Take, for example, our vocation, or calling. Each of us is imbued with specific, God-given gifts, ones intended to play a specialized role in God’s overall plan for life. When used in godly fashion, these gifts bless life. When used wrongly, they, not surprisingly, produce the opposite.

When I was growing up my father used to annoy all four of his children by repeatedly saying: “You should look forward to going to work on Mondays.” Our response, as best I can recall, was to roll our eyes. Yet how correct he was. If you’re using the gifts God gave you, your work should be a blessing and a joy.

Recently I was talking to my oldest brother who retired from banking a couple of years ago. I told him I had to end the conversation because I needed to be at my very last official church meeting across the street.

His response was telling. One would have thought that I was about to be released from prison. Having never really enjoying his work (though he was good at it), his perception of retirement is that of an unalloyed good.

But for me, as I explained, retirement is bittersweet. As much as I’m ready to enter the next phase of life, I’m sad to let go of certain people and things. Retirement, for me, is not the freedom that comes after serving time!

Years ago, at the ecclesiastical council convened to assess my fitness for ordination, I was asked how I knew I had a calling from God.

“I know this,” I said, “because I backed through every door. I never chose to become a pastor. In fact, I tried to avoid it like the plague. I resisted it every step of the way. I went kicking and screaming.” God, in other words, had a plan.

Today I can’t imagine having done anything else.

Over the years people have commented on how difficult being a pastor must be. My pat answer is that it’s no more difficult for me to do my job than it is for you to do yours. That’s because God gave me certain gifts for ministry. Had I stubbornly pursued some of the other things I once thought I really wanted, I’d have been miserable. For instance, I’d have made the absolute worst businessman…ever! Why? Because I simply don’t have the gifts for it.

Then again, our biblical faith also tells us that despite how effectively we follow the plan God has for us, God will intercede and save us, even from ourselves!

God’s plan, in other words, is not ultimately dependent on how faithfully we live it out. Does our faithlessness, like Israel’s, cause hardship and suffering? Surely. But God uses all of life, both our successes and failures, to ultimately draw life closer unto himself.

We might fail, but God? Never.

In looking back over the years, I am grateful for the ways God was able to use me. On the other hand, I’m also aware of those times I failed both God and others. This is the fate of every human life.

But the Good News is that God uses every aspect of our lives, both the good and the bad, in effecting his overarching plan. God shall not be moved.

As we assess our lives through the lens of timeless God’s plan, we take comfort knowing that God in the end will make all things right. It is this that helps us place our shortcomings in proper perspective, even as it encourages us to place an ever-renewing trust in God’s steadfast, holy beneficence.

This past week, Linda and I signed papers to have our cremains buried in the Memorial Garden (only to discover that the Cabinet had already voted to give these plots to us as a gift!).

In this we are staking a claim on God’s future for Christ’s church here in Harwich Center, confident that God will continue to bless this congregation and its faithful witness to our world, even as we await God’s final act in Christ.

In the end, we all are staking a claim on this one basic truth – Immanuel – God is with us.

And forever shall be. Amen.

12.17.2017     Preaching Text: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 16-18)

If you ask me, there just may be a single motto that defines contemporary American “spirituality”: “Don’t worry, be happy.”

I know what you’re thinking, “He’s finally lost his razor-thin hold on reality! I mean, now that he’s only got a week left, maybe he’s just letting the cat out of the bag, so to speak.”

But hear me out. Years ago (1952) a pastor in New York City lit the country on fire with his landmark book, The Power of Positive Thinking. His name, of course, was Norman Vincent Peale.

I’ve referenced him several times in other sermons. In general, and not necessarily in a good way, I tend to think of him as the patron saint of American religious thinking.

In today’s reading from 1 Thessalonians, we read this: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

That almost sounds as if Peale could have written it himself, right? On other words, don’t worry, be happy. Be positive. It’s God’s will, after all. Just look at life and think positive thoughts, and everything will be great.

Yet is this what Paul is actually saying? Is “don’t worry, be happy” or positive thinking really a Christian outlook? Should life be lived this way?

You’ve heard it said that there’s nothing really new under the sun. Even so, it may surprise you to consider that positive thinking and its corollary, “don’t worry, be happy,” is really an updated, warmed-over kind of Stoicism.

Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that holds that everything that happens in life is willed by God. Everything. So if it happens, it’s what God wanted to happen.

If you accept this premise, you’re left with but two responses. Either you choose to fight against the vagaries and injustices of this life (and be miserable), or accept everything, both good and bad, as God’s will (and thus be happy, since there’s nothing you can do about it). “Don’t worry, be happy” fits the latter to a “T”.

Classic Christianity, however, completely rejects the idea that God causes everything to happen, especially sin, evil, suffering, and pain.

Years ago my mother and I were having a conversation about some event or another when she blurted out, “Well, it was meant to be!”

Being the argumentative type, I challenged her.

I asked whether God is responsible for giving someone cancer. As I recall, she didn’t particularly like the question. Yet isn’t it true that we tend to say such things only when life circumstances go well? But what about those times when they don’t, when great evil arises?

As I say, classic Christianity sees things differently. While it acknowledges that bad things happen, it never ascribes them to God. That’s because we’re created with free will. It is we who choose to reject God’s ways and thus cause sin, not God. So when things go south, humanity owns it.

Classic Christianity also advocates for a different response from us when bad things happen, as they inevitably will. It does not ask us to ignore bad things, or not worry about them in order to be happy. That’s because Christianity actively charges us to do something, to help mitigate or prevent such things.

The Quakers are known for “quietism.” Quietism, in short, sees God as the main actor, so much so that the human task risks becoming one of simply waiting for God to act. Taken to an extreme, this leaves little room for human agency, confining us to a far more passive role than does classical Christianity.

For biblical Christianity encourages us to participate in life, to try to do good in the time we have here on earth. Without this, we abdicate the active role God wishes for us to play.

Broadly, to not worry and be happy (to leave things up to God) strikes me as, in some sense, selfish. It risks our tuning out the suffering of the world in order for us to feel good. Worse still, it absolves us from any real responsibility.

The other extreme, its direct opposite, is to think we are in total control, that we somehow can perfect life without God. One sees a lot of this in contemporary culture, even in our churches. The conceit here is that we can fix the world ourselves, forgetting the more fundamental truth that we need to fix ourselves first. Each of us is a sinner after all, and without exception.

The paradox of Christian faith is that while we are called to be engaged in making the world a better place, we are forced simultaneously to admit we can achieve only so much. For ultimately only God can fix what truly ails us.

Thus 1 Thessalonians is not a call to ignore reality in order that we might be happy, but an assertion of clear-eyed hope in the midst of life’s very real brokenness, a hope that waits steadfastly upon God’s unalterable promise to cleanse and recreate our lives and world, in God’s time.

What Paul is saying in 1 Thessalonians is that we can know authentic joy (as opposed to the fake or contrived kind) even in the midst of events and circumstances that otherwise do not recommend it. This kind of joy betrays the fact that we can endure and even thrive amid life’s travails, but only if such travails are placed in proper perspective.

Knowing this, Paul exhorts us that while we wait for God’s decisive future in Christ we are called to make the most of the present. We are to seek peace with everybody, admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and be patient with all. We are not to repay evil for evil, but to seek to do good to one another.

And, yes, we are to rejoice always, praying without ceasing; knowing that this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.

G.K. Chesterton, the great Christian writer, once lamented how Christian virtues, once decoupled from religion, can take on monstrous form.

“When a religious scheme is shattered,” he once wrote, “it is not merely the vices that are let loose…But the virtues are let loose also, and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage.

“The modern world is full of old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they are isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth, and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity, and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

Thus when the virtues that produce Christian joy or happiness are taken in isolation, and away from their proper context, that is, the Gospel, which alone gives them their sole meaning, the “happiness” produced becomes divorced from reality. And that’s never a good thing.

So in conclusion I say, worry. Not in abject hopelessness, but with appropriate and loving concern for the world around you.

But be happy also, not because there’s nothing to worry about and, as such, nothing to do, but because God has promised, in and through Jesus Christ, to fix our lives utterly, and with a godly perfection. Amen.

12.10.2017         Preaching Text: “‘Those who desire life and desire to see good days…’” (2 Peter 3:10)

Denial, in certain circumstances, is a beautiful thing. And, to employ an already overused joke, I’m not talking about the river in Egypt. I’m talking about the strategy of ignoring evidence of anything stressful or unpleasant.

Which is to say that denial has been my strategy for dealing with my impending retirement and departure from First Church, a place Linda and I absolutely love. I just don’t think about it.

Then again, as the time approaches, and it’s coming faster and faster, I’ve been forced to face the inevitable. The handwriting is on the wall. Just a few short weeks and things change dramatically, in ways I’m not as yet fully prepared to accept.

As such, over the last couple of weeks, with the turn of each successive calendar page, I’ve found myself tossing and turning in the middle of the night thinking about all I have to do to get ready.

Among the most daunting projects is clearing out my office. The desk alone is an unqualified abomination. As I’ve joked over the years, I clean my desk every two or three years, whether it needs it or not.

And whenever I have gotten around to it, it’s more like an archeological dig. Unearthed are remarkable things, things long forgotten and long since out of mind.

So I’ve been tossing and turning thinking about all I have to do.

Of course, the process of getting ready – or preparation – is precisely what the season of Advent is all about, although I wish it didn’t have quite as much significance as it does this year.

Advent, as such, is a busy season. As I said last week, and as we all well know, it’s a season tinged with joyous anticipation of the mystical, cheerful, appealing, and beguiling celebrations of Christmas.

But let’s face it, the run-up is stressful. If you then were to compound this with all the troubles in our nation and world, troubles, incidentally, not too dissimilar from the events described in our scripture readings from ancient times, it can all seem downright overwhelming. (The latest conflict over Jerusalem, in other words, is not, unfortunately, really all that new.)

Another way to put this is to admit that life on this planet has never been easy. Problems go with the territory. Violence, mayhem, and extreme suffering were not invented by us moderns. The fact that we in this country have been spared much of this, relatively speaking, can render us less capable of admitting how commonplace it has been in every age, our own included.

Contrast this with the fact that every human heart yearns for peace, justice, love, and joy. It’s hardwired into us. Every single child knows this, that sin and evil should not exist. It’s not what we’re made for.

In the very first pages of the Bible we’re told that God created everything perfectly. It’s the baseline of our being. We know God intends life to be joyous and so our disappointment when it isn’t is heartbreaking.

How we deal with this makes all the difference. We can grow cynical and world-weary, allowing our outward “sophistication” to mask our deep disappointment. We might even take pride in our ability to recognize life’s failings as we navigate around them with style and panache.

If taken to an extreme, however, such cynicism can lead to despair, along with all sorts of maladaptive, escapist behaviors. It is this that causes substance abuse as well all other forms of addiction. Sometimes these addictions produce overt dysfunctionalism. In other instances, they take the form of socially approved addictions, such as workaholism and status-seeking.

In a sense, when you boil it all down, life’s worst circumstances are due to humanity’s collective inability to accept reality, to accept the facts. And because of this inability to face the truth, we make up our own reality.

Specifically, we reject the idea that human beings are existentially limited, vulnerable, finite. Unable to face this basic fact we adopt strategies for coping. We try to cover up our insecurities, forgetting that being vulnerable is the way God made us.

In truth, what we want most is to be loved. So we try to make ourselves lovable, but in contrived ways. Mostly, it seems, we attempt to cultivate a persona we think other people will be impressed by. Covering up our deep insecurities, we project strength and power, often through the pursuit of status.

Work and money are perhaps the most common means for making ourselves feel important and thus somehow more “lovable.” People will see our high station, our wealth, our lifestyle, our importance, and will admire us.

But this, of course, is sheer nonsense and we all know it, deep down at least. What’s absent is the peace of God. In a broken world filled with those who claw and grasp in order to feel loved, such peace is invariably fleeting.

So in my 3 a.m. musings, as I toss and turn, I often have to remind myself that it is God alone who is in control of life, not I. This sounds pretty simplistic, I admit. But if you really stop and think about it, it’s a basic truth we routinely ignore.

Advent, evidenced by our readings this morning, reminds us that in the midst of human anxiety, trouble, discord, sin, and evil, God is still in heaven. God has not forgotten or forsaken us.

Advent reminds us that no matter how troubled we may be about our individual lives or the troubles around us, God will act, decisively, and for the benefit of us and our world. That is the basic hope upon which our faith is premised. It is, as the author of Hebrews put it, a faith that presumes “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

We are people of the Word, which taken in faith reveals that which is hidden, that God has a plan for our world and that that plan will restore all of life to its original purity in that future moment when “death will be no more; [when] mourning and crying and pain will be no more…”

The birth of Christ kicks this plan into high gear, a plan, we are told, conceived “before the foundations of the world.” Thus, in my 3 a.m. musings this simple yet profound fact offers a steady calm and the kind of peace “the world cannot know.” In short, it offers an elemental comfort.

As a mother about to give birth, with birth pangs that disquiet and alarm, we await that which is to come, not with dread but hope, hope of a new life that shall give birth to a new joy and a new peace. In this is the essence of Advent. Amen.

 12.03.2017       Preaching Text: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence…” (Isaiah 64:1)

The senior pastor in the first church I served had the well-earned reputation for lengthy sermons. A member of the congregation, in fact, once made a proposal: “If you ever preach a sermon under 5 minutes,” he announced tongue-in-cheek, “I’ll buy you dinner.” Neither ever happened.

On another occasion, in the receiving line, a church member complained that the service had gone over an hour. Without skipping a beat he came up with this little gem: ‘Well it’s not a TV show, you know.”

During that same time period, I took our youth group to a Hispanic church in downtown Worcester. During a question and answer period, one of the kids asked the pastor how long their services last.

“We don’t think like that,” the pastor replied. “We meet as long as the Holy Spirit allows, and then we stop. It could be hours.” The kids were dumbfounded, if not a bit mortified.

Now I’ve never been known for short sermons either, but given today’s re-dedication of our Memorial Garden, I thought I’d try to shorten it a bit! (Of course, by offering this lengthy introduction, I’m already halfway toward failing my stated objective!)

In any event, I wanted to talk today about the various moods of the Christian life. Today, as you know, is the first Sunday in Advent, which marks the beginning of a new liturgical year within the church calendar. It’s our New Year’s Day.

The theme of Advent is preparation, waiting, and hoping. All of our readings this morning carry this theme. So too do they seem a bit dark and foreboding. At least that’s the way we experienced them in Bible Study this past week.

Each assumes adversity, one largely brought about by human sin. Advent, in fact, rather than reflecting the celebrations of Christmas, has been called a “mini-Lent.” Be it noted that Advent’s purple, a color that symbolizes pain and suffering as well as mourning and repentance, is the same as Lent’s.

That Advent takes place during the darkest time of the year is instructive. The idea is that when life seems its bleakest, hope can carry us through.

As we wait for the birth of Jesus, we prepare for his arrival by “getting our house in order,” by repenting of those behaviors and habits that would make us less receptive to his arrival, less capable of receiving the gift of his presence.

Thus Advent only anticipates something glorious. Yet its uneasy present is defined always by the contours of hope, that God’s exultant light shall indeed break forth into the darkest of human places, even our beleaguered hearts.

In the meantime Advent’s description of life, at least based on today’s readings, remains rather grim. It presupposes a state of rampant, unrepentant sin, even as it looks to a future of impending joy.

Then again, the Bible is nothing if not realistic about the human condition. In fact, if everything were hunky-dory, there’d be no need for scripture’s “Good News.” It’s only good news to those in need of good news, to those yearning to be rescued from life’s shabbier realities.

But, it’s essential to note, the liturgical voice is not monotone. It’s not stuck on the downside of human life. As the year progresses, it takes us from the deprivations of Advent to Christmas, a time of feasting and celebrating – for God has heard our cries.

We then move to Epiphany, which chronicles how Christmas’ lighted candle, flickering vulnerably amid the manger’s surrounding gloom, becomes an ever-burgeoning light as Jesus – and all that his life portends – moves inexorably out into the world.

From here we again enter a period of waiting, introspection, and preparation (Lent), in anticipation of Easter’s Resurrection and the culminating defeat of all vestiges of darkness and death. In this God’s purposes are revealed in full.

During the season after Pentecost, the Resurrection Spirit spreads out to the furthest reaches of the planet, carried by the nascent church, a movement that, as we well know, eventually was to arrive on these very shores.

At the conclusion of this seasonal movement of the Holy Spirit, we encounter finally the majestic imagery of Christ the King on the Last Sunday after Pentecost, as he holds forth in heaven in preparation for welcoming all his people therein. At which point we return to Advent, and start all over.

Within the sacred rhythms of the liturgical year, we experience not just times of adversity, confusion, pain, suffering, and yearning. We also experience moments of revelation, insight, and jubilation. We know times when God appears hidden but also times of spiritual luminosity, comfort, and peace.

Again, the point is that our biblical faith, and the liturgical year that reflects its themes, relates to the human condition, not in a superficial or “Pollyannaish” way, but in a clear-eyed, honest way. It does not sugarcoat or explain away life’s challenges, for to do so would betray a God both distant and removed, one who abandons us to face the vagaries of this fallen world on our own.

Instead we are offered a palpable hope and blessed assurance, and a way through life’s inevitable difficulties and travails. It pronounces eternal life as life’s greatest truth, wherein God’s unstinting love for us is revealed.

No matter what life-circumstance in which we find ourselves, our biblical faith offers a corresponding mood. Its sheer humanity reveals a God who respects and takes seriously the truth of our lives, offering us not a diffident, unmoving cosmic being, but a steadying, authoritative, merciful, gracious, and loving God who is both personal and wholly responsive to the deepest human need. Amen.

 

11.26.2017     Preaching Text: “[For] I was hungry…I was thirsty…I was a stranger…I was naked…I was in prison…” (Matthew 25:35-36)

Today’s reading from Matthew is one of the most commonly used in the U.C.C. The reason is that we’ve always sought to champion the well-being of the poor and the oppressed. The U.C.C.’s stated self-identity, after all, trends toward social justice.

This passage, notwithstanding, is an important and essential reminder of our responsibilities as Christians, and as those in a position to help. So even as we thank God for our personal blessings, we are duly reminded that there are others whose struggles are both real and ongoing.

Yet there are other evils going on in our culture of which we rarely speak, things having to do with the overall moral decay within our culture. As a case in point, we’ve recently been inundated with news stories about widespread sexual impropriety and, worse still, sexual assault.

These stories seem to be coming at us by the hour if not the minute, as more and more names are added to the list of rogues and miscreants. I don’t know about you, but I need a shower after reading the news.

Linda and I were having breakfast on Thanksgiving Day at a local restaurant. At the table next to us were two retired pastors. They were talking about this whole sordid mess. One suggested that we’re now discovering that the elites in entertainment, media, and politics constitute a veritable “cesspool” of lawlessness and immorality. I couldn’t agree more, though, to be honest, I’m not sure it’s really anything new in the powerful ruling-classes of every age.

But what about the rest of society? Back in August of this year, several months before most of these stories came to light, two law professors, Amy Wax from the University of Pennsylvania and Larry Alexander from the University of San Diego, wrote an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer entitled, “Paying the Price for the Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture.” To say it was not well received is an understatement.

The opening paragraph gets right to the point: “Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.”

“The causes of these phenomena are multiple and complex,” the authors concede, “but implicated in these and other maladies is the breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture.”

This bourgeois culture, they argue, predominant from the late-40s to the mid-60s, “laid out a script we all were supposed to follow.” (I would argue that this script goes back as far as our nation’s founding, based as it was on Judeo-Christian precepts, and as practiced by a dominant Mainline Protestantism.)

The authors offer a short summary of what constitutes this bourgeois “script”: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

Though the authors are quick to add that society during this period was hardly perfect, the almost “universal adherence” to these values “by people of all backgrounds and abilities” was “a major contributor to the productivity, educational gains, and social coherence of that period.”

They even go so far as to suggest that those who deviated from these norms “rarely disavowed or openly disparaged the prevailing expectations.”

This “cultural script,” however, began to change in the late 60’s, and was replaced by a countercultural movement, one particularly attractive to the “chattering classes – academics, writers, artists, actors, and journalists – who relished liberation from conventional constraints and turned condemning America and reviewing its crimes into a class marker of virtue and sophistication.”

An earlier age would have considered this change “antiauthoritarian, adolescent, wish fulfillment.” Fueled by “sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll,” it constitutes a mindset “unworthy of, and unworkable for, a mature, prosperous adult society.”

Curiously, as Charles Murray pointed out in his landmark 2012 book, Coming Apart, an exhaustive study of cultural change during the period from 1960 to 2010, we have an upper-middle class that still largely observes this “bourgeois script” while at the same time maintaining an oddly dispassionate “nonjudgentalism” toward those struggling with the predictable, bitter fruit of this increasingly chaotic way of life. (Recall Murray’s wry observation that the upper-middle class today refuses to “preach what they practice.”) This “bourgeois” group, I would venture to add, includes those of us in Mainline Protestant churches as well!

To say this message of warning has not been well-received by the church is an understatement. As a case in point, I’m reminded of an annual meeting I once attended while serving a church in the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference.

The keynote speaker, whose name I no longer recall, was a scholar-in-residence at the University of Chicago and had published a detailed study of cultural trends within the United States over the last few decades. Much of what he said mirrors both Murray’s and the two law professors’ observations.

Notably, he honed in on the problem of out-of-wedlock births, which at that time had reached roughly 40% of the population. He commented on how this emerging trend most adversely affects women and children.

The response from my colleagues was somewhat less than felicitous. They objected to the subject matter without providing, as far as I recall, any real basis for their opposition. Maybe they just didn’t like what the facts suggest.

It’s easier, or so it seems, to “preach” about helping the poor and disadvantaged without having to look deeper into the varied causes of their suffering. Perhaps it has something to do with our selective views in judging others. Nonjudgmentalism, it appears, is in the eye of the beholder.

Then again, the Christian life, as I’ve often said, actually requires that we judge. The problem is that we too often judge arbitrarily, selfishly, and according to our own personal standards, rather than God’s.

So what if God never judged? What if God were to turn a blind eye to sin? What if God didn’t care that this same sin causes his children real and lasting pain? Like a bad parent, God would then seem more neglectful than loving. A good parent, after all, seeks to spare the child unneeded, self-inflicted suffering. This is what we try to do as parents, right?

In a sense, then, our job as Christians is to accurately discern God’s righteous judgments and, in so doing, not only live by them, but “preach” them as well, not stupidly, meanly, arrogantly, or self-righteously, but with selfless love, intelligence, and tact. For God’s judgments are never intended to harm or oppress or condemn, but to open the pathway to a godly life, one free of sin and its very real, life-negating effects.

In Matthew 25, Jesus says he will judge how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner.

But as, daily, our culture grows ever coarser and morally corrupt, and as more and more people suffer its debilitating effects, as numerous studies reveal and – let’s be honest here – as we all well know, is it not possible that Jesus will judge us for our response to these things as well?

In the end, believe it or not, it may be fair to say that Christ will judge us on how faithfully we ourselves judged, not, of course, in terms of what benefits us, but for the wholesale good of others. Amen.