Sermon “Situational Ethics” The Rev. Rali Weaver

First Church and Parish in Dedham

Unitarian Universalist

9.27.09

Last summer my older sister came to visit me for a day. While she lives nearby in CT I don’t see her very often because over the years, as with many families we have gone our separate ways and some distance of spirit has existed between us mostly because we no longer view our life story in the same way.

To emphasize this tension soon after she arrived My Sister began recounting our childhood and growing up in a way that always leaves me wondering how we grew up in the same family.

When my sister recounts our childhood she talks of imperfect parents and hurt feelings and wrongs that can never be righted. I know these things are true for my sister but they are not my truths. What she holds onto as important in the story of her upbringing and what I hold onto as important in my upbringing are vastly different. And in the end the way she sees the world is very different from the way I view it and the tension between our conflicting beliefs is often uncomfortable to me.

This same tension of a family member who views shared history differently is I believe the same tension that the Pharisees were feeling with Jesus in our reading from the Christian Scriptures today.

In the excerpt from the book of Mark we find the Pharisees critiquing one of their own kin who does not hold to the same truths and does not follow the same traditions that they find important.

When my sister came to visit and started her recounting of a life that I did not experience I had an urge to shout “there is no way we can be related what you view as the truth and what I view as the truth are too different.”

I imagine that the Pharisees were feeling the same way.

Here was one of their own relations who viewed the world so differently he ignored the traditions that everyone else followed with great compunction.

“There must be something wrong with him.”

And here is where Jesus responds the way he almost always does in the Gospel of Mark to the criticisms of the Pharisees.

Jesus quotes Isaiah and criticizes them right back “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’

On this Sunday, which falls at the close of Rosh Hashanah and the eve of Yom Kippur, I think it is good and right that we should explore how our priorities and beliefs form our worldview and how our traditions and behavior either reflect or worldview or don’t.

In the excerpt we read today from Leviticus that is traditionally read at Yom Kippur we find outlined the ritual for Atonement and we can see how rules and expectations can provide guidelines for ritual that inform spiritual practice.

It is clear that having prescribed rituals and traditions can provide stability and support. At Yom Kippur a period of abstention is required from working and eating. Even washing is not prescribed as is usual in the days of eating. And this period of fasting is a time of renewal and purification to absolve one of error and get them on the right track.

In contrast our Christian Scripture reading today we find Jesus and his disciples ignoring a different law. They are eating without washing their hands or washing the food they bring from the market.

I think most of us would agree with the Pharisees on this issue. Washing hands and produce and pots and pans is a vital part of hygiene. We understand with a scientific certainty that washing up before we eat can reduce the chance of disease.

The prescribed Jewish tradition of washing before you eat is not just ritual but also a helpful guideline for healthy living both physically and spiritually.

And yet from camping and traveling I understand situations where washing is difficult and is eating imperative

Riding across the country by myself there were countless times when I would be on stretches of roads in our country when no adequate washroom could be found and my need for lunch (which I had in the car) would outweigh my need for good hygiene.

Outside the gates of Jerusalem it is easy to understand that their might be different needs and priorities for Jesus and his disciples.

It makes some sense that they might need to prioritize eating over cleanliness rituals.

And so the question becomes not what makes us clean but what defiles you?

What defiles you?

This is a perfectly appropriate question for us to ask ourselves on the eve of the Day of Atonement. What makes us unclean or unfit and in need of making amends for our errors?

The Pharisees articulate that the only way to be holy is to follow the traditions and Jesus states that the only way to be holy is to have a pure heart. Just as my sister and our stories today hold to different truths.

The scripture from Isaiah 29 that Jesus uses to criticize the Pharisees states:

“The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote, I will proceed to remove this people…“

Then Jesus adds “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”

Here in the context of our worship services where the only words that are proscribed each week are our covenant and our rituals are as benign as water communion it might be difficult to understand how the ritual nature of words and traditions might interfere with right action.

Yet it is important that we recognize that even our brief covenant that we read aloud each week in worship is a human construction learned by rote and while it may bring us comfort and inform our lives it is only in our actions that we live our true covenant to each other and if we view it that way to God.

The words spoken each week come in from outside of us- written long ago, they have no value in themselves. It is only in how we live them that makes us pure.

How many times have you encountered a mission statement that while full of lofty and noble goals nowhere matches the action of the program or agency it is connected to?

I wonder how things might change if in all times and all places we truly focused our intentions on living out our covenant.

Words and Rituals and Traditions are valuable tools to help us get on the right track it is when we hold to them beyond their usefulness that they loose there meaning.

If the need to wash hands and food prevented one from eating when they were hungry then it would be a sin -it would miss the mark.

Following rules and rituals and traditions when they no longer nourish the heart misses the mark too.

I believe Jesus’ response to the Pharisees in our reading this morning is in many ways an early example of situational ethics.

If you aren’t already familiar with the concept Situational ethics, or situation ethics, it is an ethical theory that was developed in the 1960s by the Episcopal priest Joseph Fletcher. His theory basically stated that sometimes other moral principles can be cast aside in certain situations if love is better served. The moral principles Fletcher articulated specifically refer to the moral codes of Christianity and the Agape love or unconditional love for all beings that Jesus called his disciples to live.

Situational ethics is concerned with the outcome or consequences of an action; the end, as opposed to an action being intrinsically wrong. In the case of situational ethics, the ends can justify the means.

By focusing the question of what can defile a heart on the outcome instead of the strict and sometimes impossible to follow rules --the love of God becomes not some linear thing to attain through prescribed right words and deeds on a day set aside for Atonement but it is a fluid thing that is accessed through loving practice every day.

Just as our actions and all of the words we say can be a comfort or a club. They can help us to see more clearly or muddle our vision.

A few years ago I was in the hospital for a minor day surgery. While I was in the recovery room, recovering from anesthesia the anesthesiologist brother in law of a dear friend of mine saw me in the waiting room recovering from the sedatives and came to greet me. While there he started to tell me about my friend, who had been in Africa for several years, and how she had gone on a nature walk and been chased by White Rhinoceros.

Now ordinarily this story might have been amusing but in my state of mind (just coming out of a medically induced sleep) hearing this story left me quite disconcerted and confused. As a result of his words I had nightmares about Rhinoceroses chasing me for months.

I bring this up because I think sometimes rituals and words even reading from the bible can at times feel like a club depending on where we are coming from when we hear the words.

From this vantage point what makes a heart or mind clean or what makes it in need of forgiveness is founded in the truth of where we are each coming from. And no proscribed ritual or word can be right for all of us in every moment of time.

So while the ritual of saying the words of our covenant each week can offer great peace of mind and strength when we try to live them with literal exactness we may loose sight of the true love and forgiveness that is offered that is beyond our words.

As I have examined my relationship with my sister I have realized a similar truth. If I focus on her words and my own beliefs and try to find what is right I loose sight of the true connection I want to form as an adult with my sister. When we can abandon our stories and expectations (or at least hold them more lightly) we can begin to connect in deeper more loving ways. I think this is true with everything.

Rituals and Traditions and Rules and even our stories about ourselves have deep spiritual value when practiced with intention, but when we hold tightly to them we miss the possibilities of true connection.

As we approach this Day of Atonement and move forward through this Jewish New Year I hope we can all share our ways of viewing the world and the rituals and traditions that support our lives.

If we share openly and directly I imagine there will be times in our sharing that we will find differences. We may even hold to different truths about our own history as a church. I encourage us all to look at this as an opportunity to examine the true and pure connections beneath the words we say each week and find new deeper ways of connecting. May it be so.