Standards -- Expectations

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship

North Hill, October 15, 2011

Imagine some friends of yours got married in Kansas three weeks ago. They are now back in Seattle where both of them have jobs. You have been invited to a reception at a venue in Seattle that is completely unfamiliar to you. There is one question you're very likely to ask yourself. If you're married, it's almost certain your wife is going to ask this question. “What are people wearing?”

Of course, the intent of this question is to come up with the right answer to another question: “What should I wear?”

Humans are social beings. And clothing is one way we signal each other. You don't want to walk into a party in a suit and tie only to discover everyone else is wearing shorts and T-shirts. You would want to show up for a concert in jeans and look around and see that every one is is dressed in formal evening attire.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about standards using as “the minimum acceptable level of performance.” I compared church standards to standards in the practice of medicine or in engineering. You don't want lab techs getting “creative.” You want them to run the same test the same way every time. If you are about to be anesthetized, you want to know the medical staff is going to do exactly right thing. One way hospitals work to eliminate errors is by through standards of care. There are certain procedures that must be followed every time. Without exception.

That's a standard.

When engineers are designing the construction process for a jet engine, they detail every step that must be followed in the assembly. Do it exactly this way! They prescribe the performance characteristics of every bit of steel that is used. The steel cannot be softer or more brittle or more susceptible to corrosion than is specified in the standards. If a part doesn't meet the standard it must be discarded.

There are very few standards of the church that fit this category. Forgiveness is one. If we don't forgive, we will not be forgiven. Abuse of children is another standard. Jesus said that if you harm a child, it would have been better for you to be drowned. The Ten Commandments are standards. Concrete, specific – and most of them – minimums. Don't kill, steal or cheat on your spouse is not a prescription for an idyllic life. This is a list of minimums for ordinary living.

Today, I want to talk about standards in a very different sense. I want to talk about standards as expectations. In every community way beyond rules or laws there are all kinds of expectations that just part of the culture. We expect these behaviors of one another almost without thinking about it.

Clothing is one example of this. When we go to a social event we feel more comfortable if we are dressed in a way that other people will find acceptable. And the easiest way to feel acceptable is to dress like everyone else.

The problem this raises for church is that once you manage to get everyone to dress in the same style, more or less, dressing in that style becomes the cost of feeling comfortable in church. So anyone who comes in, not knowing the community ahead of time, runs the risk of feeling out of place. Also anyone who finds the dominant style alien is likely to experience church itself as an alien place – a place where people like them don't belong.

One way we've attempted to address this here at North Hill is to encourage a wide variety of styles. Suits and ties, stylish dresses. Jeans and T-shirts. Polish shoes. Flip flops. Biker's leathers and preppy sweaters. This way, no matter what someone is wearing when they come through the door, if they look around, they'll see someone dressed just like them. They will see that they belong.

I guess you could say our dress standard (in the sense of minimum acceptable level of performance) is please wear some.

At North Hill we are not so laissez-faire about everything. One traditional standard that we vigorously uphold is a T-totaler's stance on alcohol. Certainly, there are some among us who use alcohol, but as a community, our public stand is crystal clear: we believe the damage consequent to alcohol use is so huge that the only responsible stance for us as adults is oppose it.

Let me ask a trick question: Have you ever known some one who was hurt while riding their motorcycle without a helmet?

In church, when I asked this question people began nodding and raising their hands. I warned them: Don't raise your hands yet. This is a trick question. My guess is that your friends who got hurt were not hurt while they were RIDING. They got hurt when they quit riding their bikes and began riding the pavement or a telephone pole or the side of a car.

If people who ride motorcycles without helmets could avoid accidents they wouldn't need to wear helmets. People wear helmets because accidents are hard to plan. We never know when some car or truck is going to switch lanes right into you. We never know when there might be some oil or sand spilled on a corner, right at the spot where your tires need maximum traction.

Because of the statistical likelihood that if you ride a motorcycle, eventually you will make unplanned contact with the pavement or another hard surface, we expect people to wear helmets.

Because of the statistical likelihood that if drinking is a common practice in our community some of us will make a wreck of life, we actively, publicly renounce alcohol as a beverage. Drink something else.

Using alcohol can appear very glamorous. Maybe all your friends are drinking. Or you think they are. We want to create expectations among us here at church that we will not drink. We want to create a community that deliberately cultivates an awareness that drinking is dumb. And getting drunk is really dumb. And binge drinking is really, really, really, really dumb.

It's not the unpardonable sin. There is no devil in the bottle. There are not even any verses in the Bible that explicitly condemn moderate alcohol consumption.

What the Bible does tell us is that we are to do to others what we would have them do to us. If I have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, would I want my friends at church encouraging me to drink? If my son or daughter had a weakness for alcoholism, would I want my church to encourage or discourage drinking?

In my time at North Hill, we've buried two young men who were killed in auto accidents. In both cases, our young men were sober. They were obeying the law. They were killed by other teenagers running red lights.

Alcohol is the most destructive drug in the world today. It is more destructive than cocaine or marijuana or heroin. Of course, part of the reason alcohol has such a high social cost is that it's legal. It's used more than all other drugs, so it gets abused more than all other drugs.

Alcohol ruins families. It is strongly associated with domestic violence and child abuse and neglect. Impaired drivers kill thousands.

So as a community committed to the ministry of Jesus—the ministry of healing—we are publicly, outspokenly against the casual consumption of alcohol. It causes too much havoc.

As humans we affect one another. Hanging out in a community where drinking is considered ill-advised, stupid and even immoral will tend to influence all of us away from drinking. The standard of not-drinking is experienced as an expectation of ourselves and others. And this expectation will influence our behavior. It will bear good fruit.

Now, it's important to recognize what this kind of standard cannot do. It can't fix the past. Healthy standards are forward focused. They have nothing to say about yesterday – about your performance or the performance of someone else. The standard does not tell how you should have acted, looking back. It only tells us about today looking forward.

I remember a while back asking someone if they had done their exercises that week. It was a bad question. The reason I asked it is that I suspected the person had not done them. If they answered truthfully, who would the information help?

I resolved to change the way I ask this question. From now on, I'm going to ask, “Will you do your exercise this week?” This now is a helpful question. It is rooted in a helpful standard. My expectation will add weight to the advice from the doctor and physical therapist. I'm letting them know that their well-being matters to me. I'm hoping they will find the motivation to get moving.

Jesus used standards this way. In the most famous instance – the woman caught in adultery – Jesus refused to say anything about the woman's past. But he did express an expectation about her future. “Go and sin no more.”

In Luke 13, some people asked Jesus what he thought about some people who had lost their lives. Jesus dismissed their question, basically saying, Don't ask about their past. Change your future.

Jesus boldly, strongly voiced standards, expectations. He was hopeful for people to change, to do better, to be better. He was gracious and forgiving toward their past and insistent and commanding toward their future. He wanted people to be well, to do good.

There is a second thing that standards cannot do. They cannot give personalized help to people who are trying to live up to the expectations. One of the values of AA is that it offers personalized, non-judgmental support for a person trying to change their life.

As the community of Jesus, we join him in communicating clear, challenging expectations of one another moving forward. We also join him in doing something that standards are utterly helpless to accomplish: we understand people's struggles. We look for personalized help. We practice forgiveness.

Curiously, this brings us back to the most fundamental, the most indispensable of all church standards: gracious forgiveness toward one another.

Behavioral expectations are important in the life of the church as they were in the ministry of Jesus. And as we move forward expecting good things from one another we rely on this most of all: here, there is grace and pardon, forgiveness and laughter. For all of us.