14th Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 51

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.

Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be as pure as snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

It’s All Relative

Have you ever noticed that when you’re having a disagreement with someone, that being confident in what you’re saying is usually more important than being correct? A long time ago, when I was still at my first job, I was either still in high school, or recently graduated, I was having a conversation with a coworker. We were at lunch, and he was an adult, and kind of new to Christianity. He was really zealous, the way a new Christian can be sometimes, really quick to point out other people’s flaws and what they’re doing wrong. I can’t remember the exact details of what we were talking about, but it had something to do with the nature of God, we might’ve been talking about the Trinity. Anyway, I brought up the first verse of the gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” I probably paraphrased it a little. And, I’ll never forget this, he immediately said, “That’s not in the Bible,” as if he had memorized the entire thing. Now, I have to admit that even though I was the one who brought up the verse, I couldn’t remember at the time where exactly in the Bible it was, so I couldn’t point it out to him. I should also mention that this was in the time before smart phones, so we couldn’t just Google it the way we can now. But, he was so sure of himself, that I immediately doubted whether I was remembering it correctly, and I wondered if I really had read that in the Bible, or if it was possibly a line from a fantasy novel?

Some people like to say that the truth is relative. It seems especially apt nowadays, when the truths that people believe are so often connected to their political party. So many people are just not interested in facts anymore; people are no longer swayed by evidence or scientific rigor. It doesn’t matter if something has been peer reviewed or repeatedly tested. What people seem to gravitate to is whether an idea is a conservative one, or a liberal one? Left or right, red or blue?

I’ve always been resistant to the idea that truth is relative. I fully understand that there are always more sides to a story, and that we all have different perspectives on things, but I’ve always held on to the idea that if we could just step back far enough, if we could collect enough information, get everyone’s versions of things and synthesize them into a cohesive whole, then there must be some kind of objective truth. What would the world look like if that was the kind of truth that we were always looking for?

Earlier this summer, I went to Miminagish for the first time to be a counselor at the kids camp. We didn’t have a lot of kids this year, a lot fewer than the 60 we were hoping for. There were only 14 kids, ranging in age from 8 to 15. But we thought of this year as a rebuilding year, and you have to start somewhere. One of the older kids really started pushing back against some of the things that we were talking about in our group discussion on the second night, especially about the concepts of right and wrong. He was really trying to push the idea that right and wrong are relative. It would have made for a really great and interesting discussion, except there were a lot of really young kids there, most of them were only 11 years-old, and some of them were younger than that, so this discussion was really just beyond their comprehension level. So, I asked him if we could chat after the group discussion, and we ended up standing in front of the chapel talking for about an hour and half.

The other counselors would occasionally walk by, giving me looks of sympathy, because we had been standing there for so long. But, I knew that this was a really important conversation, not just for the topic, but because I knew this kid needed someone to pay attention to him. Relative morality is a really scary concept for me, because you can use it to justify just about any behavior you want, and that not the kind of world that I want to live in. I’m not sure that I was able to get through to him that there really is an objective right and wrong in most cases, but I hope that I at least gave him something to think about.

Our psalm today was clearly written by someone who was experiencing a lot of guilt over some wrong they had done. It was written by King David, after he had sent Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to battle, where he knew Uriah would die, so that David could have Bathsheba for himself. When David was confronted by the prophet Nathan about this, David said, “I have sinned against God.” And, it is true, that David sinned against God, but he also sinned against Bathsheba, he sinned against Uriah, and he sinned against his people. He was supposed to be their leader, he was supposed to make wise decisions for them, but instead, he acted selfishly and sinned against the community.

David is such an interesting character; he’s always getting into some kind of trouble, making mistakes, he’s very human. And, we can see in this psalm that he still isn’t quite getting it, because he says, “Against you, you alone, have I sinned,” as if what he did to Bathsheba and Uriah had no impact on them. His selfishness and self-centeredness is still very much apparent here as he addresses the harm he’s done to his relationship with God, while ignoring the harm he’s done to his community.

A community can’t survive if the members of that community only think about themselves. I mean, I don’t think you could even call that a community at all. As members of a community, we have to consider other people’s needs when we make decisions, and we have to help other people when they need help. A community isn’t just a bunch of people existing in close proximity to each other. It’s people interacting, people communicating, people involved in each other’s lives. And, when that starts to break down, when justice starts to break down, then what are you left with? You have prejudice and bigotry. You have sexism, ableism, racism, and homophobia. You have people taking advantage of each other, hurting each other, ignoring each other.

Jesus was killed because he lived in an unjust society. He died to expose the unjustness of it, so that we could see just how corrupt the culture was. How many people are we going to sacrifice to our culture? How many people are we going to let die before we change? How much damage do we have to do to our world before we admit that there is something deeply wrong with the way that we’ve been living?

So, we’ve talked about truth and sin, right and wrong. What about grace? Grace is the unconditional love, forgiveness, providence, and mercy of God. If we are able to make any difference at all in the world, it’s because of God’s grace. I see God’s grace at work right here, in this congregation. It is so obvious to me that God is at work here doing beautiful, wonderful, transformative things. We collect food for Food Share. We’ve raised money for the Montana Jewish Project to help them buy back their historic synagogue, and we’ve developed a strong friendship with that community now. We’ve done so much work, including the amazing ping pong day we had here a few weeks ago, to welcome the Afghan refugees to Helena. And after the service today, we’re having our Fishing Tips pot luck to talk about even more things that we can do. So, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is the kind of work that God expects of us, and this is the kind of work that Jesus asks us to do.

We will continue to work to make the world a better place, and we will strive to love those who stand against us, because Jesus, the great teacher, the great healer, the great miracle worker, is alive inside of each of us. Jesus is here. And, regardless of what we think is true or not, we should always be showing kindness and love to one another, because that is the deeper truth about how the world is really supposed to be. So live in truth, and live in grace, and live in love. Amen.

~ Rev. Charles Wei