Sermons

 Values

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
October 12, 2008	Philippians 4:1-9

You may remember that sometime in August an event was held in Southern California, a presidential forum. Senators McCain and Obama were present, although they appeared on stage at different times.

What was notable about the event was the location, an evangelical mega-church called Saddleback Church, and the moderator of the event, the church’s pastor, Rick Warren. You may recognize Rick Warren’s name – he was on the cover of Time magazine this summer, a rare occurrence for a minister, and his books, including The Purpose-Driven Life and The Purpose-Driven Church, have sold millions.

Warren and his church have not been easy to categorize more recently. In fact, they do toe the line on many of the social issues that define American evangelicalism. At the same time, Warren has been branching out. He has been holding dialogues with members of the gay and lesbian community, though he points out that such conversations show no change in his position. And he is investing lots of time and energy in Africa, with particular focus on the AIDS epidemic.

So this presidential forum in August interested me for many reasons. But on another level it agitated me, and still agitates me.

The phrase is “values voters.” “Values voters” are people who, according to the pollsters and pundits, vote for candidates based on a litmus test of certain issues, defined by a conservative Christian agenda. We know those issues well. Now I do not begrudge anyone the right to vote for any candidate based on any rationale – though I pray that people will not vote in a few short weeks based solely on matters of race or gender.

My agitation centers on that term, “values voters,” and the presumption that only a certain stripe of citizens, and a Christian stripe at that, holds values, or applies values when voting, or that those values are the only set of values that a Christian may apply when voting. It is just not true.

Last week, our guest preacher insisted that the gospel has political implications, and in various ways with varying success I attempt to articulate that proposition week after week. But no where in those same conversations do I attempt to suggest with ballot box precision where those implications should lead you. That would be an improper use of this pulpit, an improper consideration of church and state matters, a disservice to you and a disservice to the gospel.

To take the gospel seriously will naturally lead us to its political ramifications and implications, but it will also lead people of good will and good faith to different conclusions.

The problem at the moment – demonstrated by the term “values voters” – is that that has been lost. That is to say, if you don’t believe certain things about certain issues, your Christian values simply don’t count, or worse, simply aren’t Christian.

Litmus tests rarely prove anything. Life is not like that. Take matters that have been, and will be with us always. Poverty and war and race.

The Old Testament and New Testament take the poor seriously – make provisions for their care, suggest that those with resources have an obligation to care for those who don’t. How that concern plays itself out in the political sphere could take many directions. If politics forgets the poor, we have a problem. But how politics cares for the poor can be a legitimate topic of discourse.

And in Christian tradition, there have been many theories about warfare. Some traditions are strictly pacifist – no war is appropriate at anytime. Some traditions – like ours – have grudgingly accepted something called the “just war” theory, that has posited that there may be times, with certain criteria met, that war may be the only response. That does not put the Bible’s clear admonitions about peace on the shelf; it simply seeks to apply them in a world of human brokenness.

And the Bible’s insistence on racial reconciliation is clear. So if a political theory or economic policy promulgates racial division, something is deeply flawed. But how we as a society move toward racial unity may be a legitimate topic of debate.

Part of the task, then, is to rescue the notions of values and voting and “values voting” from those who would define it narrowly and specifically. But that would just be sour grapes if there were not a more positive task, a faithful corrective to politics as usual and religion as usual.

That is to say, not I, nor any preacher, should tell you how to vote. In fact, this past week, some conservative preachers are doing just that, trying to get the IRS to bite in order to initiate a political and judicial tussle about churches and their tax exempt status. None of that from me – no endorsements from this pulpit.

But perhaps it is my task, and in good Presbyterian fashion, our task, to point us in the direction of the focus of those values, and how those values begin to shape not only how you vote, but how you approach all of life, politics, economics, culture, your own personal living, day by day.

The gospel does have political implications, and if you connect the dots from scripture to scripture to scripture, from vision to vision to vision, a picture begins to emerge that suggests trajectories and responses.

* It would include Micah’s admonition to do justice, to love kindness, to walk in humility. It would include Amos’ insistence that justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
* It would, at its center, need to wrestle with Jesus’ challenge and good news that peacemakers are blessed. What does that mean for us, now?
* And it would take seriously what Paul suggested to the first century church in Philippi.

Paul understood that that little church was being buffeted about on all sides – religiously and politically. Stand firm, he encouraged them. Stand firm and stand together. Do not be afraid – words to take seriously in this political AND economic climate.

And then he reminds them of the bedrock principles of their faith. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. Gentleness. And then this – whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable – think about those things, do those things, live like that. Those values will make all the difference in how the church lives together, and they will make all the difference in how the faith is reflected to all the world. And if they are pursued, with spiritual discernment and rigor, the political decisions we are asked to make will be made in a whole new light.

In the 1780’s, as Presbyterians in a new nation were formulating their own constitution, they articulated a core Presbyterian belief that echoes still. “God alone is lord of the conscience,” they said. God alone is lord of the conscience. Them was fightin’ words, as they say.

If God is lord of the conscience, then nothing else is, finally and ultimately. No pope, cardinal, archbishop. No king, prince, president, court. No church, presbytery, preacher. No pollster, pundit, political party. No blog, TV advertisement. God alone. A position that carries with it great risk, and also great reward. There are always consequences.

No one can tell you what your values should be, or how to exercise them, on November 4 or any other day. No one. Just your spirit, your heart, your values, your deepest discernment of scripture and how God’s voice is speaking to you.

Let me tell you about Maurice McCracken. Maurice McCracken was a Presbyterian minister, a graduate of my seminary, I am glad to say. In the 1940’s, his theological commitments led him to political action, in that he began to withhold a portion of his federal taxes, the portion that he calculated paid for the military. “To give financial support to war while at the same time preaching against it is, to me, no longer a tenable position,” he said. That position had its consequences. He was arrested many times, and finally, in 1963, the Presbytery of Cincinnati “defrocked” him, not a Presbyterian term, but you get the point. His congregation in Cincinnati essentially left with him, and founded a community-based church. It was only decades later that the presbytery apologized to him and reinstated him, more a case of the prodigal presbytery coming home than the prodigal son.

My point is not to argue his case. That is worth considering some time, and cases like his. Rather, my point is to identify – in this mixed-up “values-voting” environment, a follower of Christ seeking to apply his Christian values in a complex world, seeking to take seriously the implications he discerned from his consideration of the gospel.

In the posthumous work The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonheoffer wrote: “The way of discipleship is unutterably hard, and at every moment we are in danger of straying from it. If we regard this way as one we follow in obedience to an external command, if we are afraid of ourselves all the time, it is indeed an impossible way. But if we behold Jesus Christ going on before step by step, if we only look to him and follow him, step by step, we shall not go astray. But if we worry about the dangers that beset us, if we gaze at the road instead of at him who goes before, we are already straying from the path. For he is himself the way, the narrow way…He, and he alone, is our journey’s end. When we know that, we are able to proceed along the narrow way through the gate of the cross, and onto eternal life, and the very narrowness of the road will increase our certainty.”

That road led Maurice McCracken to ecclesiastical exile. It led people like King and Bonheoffer to their deaths. Who knows where it will lead us, you and me.

But if we believe, in fact, that God alone is lord of the conscience, and if we believe, in fact, that the Bible sets before us values through which our consciences may be lived, then we have a roadmap, whose directions include peace, and truth, and honor, and justice, and purity. Keep on doing these things, Paul tells us, and the God of peace will be with us. Amen.