New Buckets, Part Two

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship, August 18, 2012

I heard a fascinating piece on NPR this week. Some years ago health organizations made a surprising discovery. They had been working to improve life for malnourished children. Everyone assumed the problem was simply not enough calories. So aid organizations had been working to provide rice or corn. This extra food helped. But then someone did an experiment. They gave kids a vitamin A supplement. It cut the mortality rate by 25 percent! This was a wonderful discovery but it posed a huge problem: how do you distribute vitamin pills to the tens of thousands of villages across rural Africa?

Then someone had a bright idea; What if we can get farmers to grow crops that will provide the vitamins? That way the people will not be dependent on aid organizations. There was initial skepticism. Was it really possible to get people to change their food culture? Changing the farming and eating culture would be by far the most effective way to improve the well-being of the people. But it also seemed to be an impossible goal.

A researcher named Maria Isabel Andrade took on the challenge. Farmers in Africa have been growing sweet potatoes for over 200 years. But the sweet potatoes they have been growing are white or yellow inside and they don't provide vitamin A. However, the orange variety common in North America does.

Dr. Andrade began researching varieties of the dark orange sweet potato that would grow well in Africa. In 1997 she began distributing the dark orange sweet potatoes to farmers in Mozambique. She launched a major advertising campaign promoting the advantages of the orange sweet potato. It caught on. Farmers began marketing their dark orange sweet potatoes as more nutritious. They could actually sell them for a higher price than the white or yellow varieties. Now over a third of the sweet potatoes grown in Mozambique are of the dark orange variety. The culture is changing. People are eating better. The blood levels of vitamin A in kids has gone up measurably. Life is better.

Changing eating culture is very difficult. But it can be done, and when done wisely, it results in a better life. Religion is the cultural expression of spirituality. Religion is the outward, social form of the values and beliefs that live in our souls.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about religion and spirituality. I compared religion to a berry-picking bucket and spirituality to the treasure of berries that we put in our bucket. Obviously, the most important thing is the treasure in the bucket, not the bucket itself. On other hand, there is no way to gather enough berries to share or enough to freeze for Thanksgiving pies without using some kind of bucket.

Sometimes in religion, we get so attached to our traditions and forms, to doing things the way we have always done them, to doing things the way we did them when we were young, that we damage the treasure of spiritual life for our kids. We insist that the only way to be genuinely spiritual is to be religious like we are.

We sometimes think the best religion is one that doesn't change. I strongly disagree. A changeless religion is like a fossil—a dead relic of something that was once alive. If it never changes it is no longer alive. What is the value of a dead religion, a fossilized religion? You could put it in a museum, but it doesn't offer much for life.

Vital spiritual life always is expressed and reinforced through external forms—that is through religion. We can't really be “spiritual but no religious” at least not over the long haul. And for sure, we cannot pass on to our children and grandchildren a vibrant spiritual life that is disconnected from concrete traditions and habits. Trying to escape religion is a fools dream. On the other hand, healthy, wholesome religion will change over time. If we do a good job, our children's religion will be similar to ours, but it will not be identical.

Once we accept the fact that a healthy religion will change, we immediately face the question: What kind of change is good? What kind of change is bad? When we examine our own religion, how do we figure out what is worth preserving and what needs to be updated?

Jesus addressed this issue head on.

Sabbath keeping was the centerpiece of Jewish religious life. It was the most distinctive, universal practice. It was enshrined in the heart of the Ten Commandments. The Sabbath was so important, the rabbis had come up with hundreds of rules detailing proper Sabbath-keeping. As I often remark, it's vital for us to understand these rules were developed out of a devout, thoughtful commitment to honoring the command of God. The people who came up with these rules and passed them on from generation to generation were good people, holy people.

Then Jesus comes along and blatantly ignores some of those long standing Sabbath rules. People were flabbergasted. How dare he ignore the historic rules? Jesus explanation of his behavior expressed a principle that can be applied across the board.

Then Jesus said to them, "The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!" Mark 2:27-28.

The purpose of religion is to meet the needs of people. God did not invent religion as a way for people to meet his needs. So when we find religion damaging people it's time to change it.

When we find religion helping people, we want to preserve it and strengthen it. When we find some element of our religion damaging people, it is our duty to change it.

What elements of Adventist religion are demonstrably helpful? What historic rules should be kept? What historic rules should be abandoned or modified? What beliefs are good? What beliefs are better jettisoned?

Smoking

Let's start with an easy one: The Adventist rule against smoking. Years ago I was studying some scientific literature on smoking cessation. What factors in a person's life were predictive of success in quitting smoking? This particular study observed that the best way to increase your odds of successfully quitting was to join the Mormon or Adventist Church. The church rules against smoking created such strong social pressure that people who joined those churches and quit smoking were most likely to be successful long term.

The value of the church rule against smoking is the assistance it gives people in achieving their own goal of non-smoking. Of course, some Adventists smoke. When one of our members is struggling with smoking, we don't scold them. We don't condemn them. We feel sorry for them. We love them. We pity them because of the power of the addiction. One thing we don't do is soften our rule. The Adventist rule is: No smoking. That is the norm in our community. And it works. Fewer Adventists smoke than people in the general public. Fewer Adventist kids smoke than is typical of American kids over all.

The rule, Don't Smoke!, is built on fundamental spiritual principles. Our bodies are the creation of God, so habits that wreck our bodies are an affront to God. The centerpiece of Jesus' public life was the ministry of healing. Smoking contradicts that high regard for human health. As followers of Jesus, we have special regard for the vulnerable, the weak, the feeble. We might be able to smoke moderately like a friend of mine back in New York City. She enjoyed four or five cigarettes a year. That amount of smoking would not hurt you. But, of course, the vast majority of people find that any smoking leads quickly to lung- and heart-destroying addiction. Our concern for the large number of people who are at significant risk of cigarette addiction prompts us to absolutely outlaw smoking.

And it works. Most Adventists don't smoke. Most people who join the church quit and never smoke again. For a few people quitting takes a really long time. One of my Adventist friends battled cigarette addiction off and on for forty years before he finally achieved long-term freedom. Another friend escaped a horrible addiction to street drugs. He joined the church, but was still seriously addicted to

cigarettes. It took another ten years after he joined the church to escape the tobacco addiction. But freedom did come. And, in part, it came because of the pressure created by rules of the church. His congregation loved him. He was not ostracized or criticized or scolded. Still he felt the pressure of our religion's public, emphatic insistence that smoking is evil.

This is part of our religion I definitely hope my children and grandchildren will continue. Smoking is declining among educated, wealthy Americans. But the poor, the under-educated and people of color are still being ravaged by the cigarette industry. In places like China and Africa smoking is still spreading like wildfire. Our church is a global community, a community that includes those who are well-off financially and those who are poor, Americans and Africans, Germans and Chinese. This global community is best served by a religion that strongly resists the allure of tobacco addiction.

Our principles of care for creation and commitment to the ministry of Jesus call for a religious rule against smoking. I hope our children will agree.

Alcohol

Our prohibition on alcohol is more controversial in some circles. Why? First there is some evidence that a very low level of regular wine drinking might actually be helpful for our hearts. Second, quite apart from the putative cardiac benefit of minimal, regular wine usage, there is the argument that a little bit of alcohol doesn't do enough damage to worry about. Third, the Bible explicitly allows for drinking alcohol, just as it allows for polygamy and slavery. Or to put the other way around, there is no Bible prohibition on moderate use of alcohol.

So, should we modify our religious rule against drinking?

I argue that even if the above arguments are correct, our religious rejection of alcohol is still helpful for humanity over all. Why?

Alcohol causes about 80,000 deaths and costs $250 billion deaths a year in the US (See CDC web site). Much of that $250 billion is borne by tax payers and paying health care customers. Alcohol abuse is a major societal problem. While it is theoretically possible to use alcohol in ways that are safe, practically it poses a serious threat to human well-being. It is by far the most expensive drug problem in the world. Something that expensive and damaging deserves a thoughtful, conscience-guided response from religion. Binge drinking is a huge problem on college campuses all over the country. It happens even among Adventist students. But the number of kids involved at Adventist schools is a fraction of what it is elsewhere. The Adventist taboo on alcohol helps to protect Adventist kids from this plague. We include Natives in our church family. Their genetics means even the slightest exposure to alcohol is horribly risky. We do not condemn Natives who get caught in the trap of alcohol, but we publicly work to create a culture where it is okay NOT to drink. Being a man, being an adult, being cool—none of these things has anything to do with drinking.

The Adventist religious rule against alcohol helps protect our Native members. It helps protect our college students. It helps protect the large number of people who carry an unknown level of risk of alcoholism and alcohol abuse. This bucket—the rule against recreational alcohol consumption—contributes contributes to human well-being.

Sabbath-keeping

This bucket, this aid to human well-being, is irreplaceable. If Sabbath as a whole day of respite from the demands of commerce and achievement ever disappears from a community, it would be almost impossible to regain its blessings. We can observe this in most Christian churches. Over the last thirty years most churches have recognized that “Sunday-keeping” has no basis in Scripture. Preachers have no warrant for urging their people to protect Sunday as holy time. So, most American Christians no longer keep Sunday. Which means, of course, that they keep no day. Their lives have no dedicated day to the cultivation of spiritual, family and social life. Americans live under a tyranny of unrelenting pressure. Soccer practice. Long hours at work. Long hours working on work even while away from the office.

Sabbath is so precious it is worth great effort to preserve its role as sacred open space in our lives.

Some of our historic Sabbath practices need to be changed. The notion that children playing on Sabbath is a violation of Sabbath sacredness is wrong. The Bible does not prohibit play on Sabbath.

Some of our women need to give up the notion that Sabbath dinner needs to be some version of Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. I remember that shock I experienced as a kid when I went to my Aunt Louise's house after church and she fed me and my cousins peanut butter sandwiches and fruit for Sabbath lunch. It was a complete violation of our family's Sabbath habits. One other thing I noticed: lunch took minutes to prepare and minutes to clean up after. The entire house was more relaxed.

In today's world where nearly every one is working full time, we need to change our idea of meals together so that focus is on “together” instead of the meal. Or we need to make meal preparation itself a community affair. So that people come together and prepare a meal instead of having the designated hostess have everything ready for the guests.

Some of our historic rules need to be reinforced. In our world where everything works 24/7 we need to push back against the creep of “necessary work.” It is true that far more than “medical work” must be done on Sabbath. Police and fire, transportation and electricity, for example, must be sustained 24/7—and that includes Sabbath. We cannot logically prohibit our members from providing services which we ourselves use on Sabbath. Still, especially in liberal congregations, we need to strategize toward protecting Sabbath from the overwhelming pressure of “necessary work.” We must work to protect its sacredness, its openness.

All rules for Sabbath keeping are a bit arbitrary. Still there is decided value in having some clear limits to our engagement with “ordinary stuff” on Sabbath. (See other sermons where I have developed this idea at length.)

Adventists and Prophecy

This is an area where we need significant change. The historic Adventist approach to prophecy led our members to focus on bad news. We often believe things are worse than they actually are. Our prophetic convictions actually increase our fear and anxiety. This is not good.

When Adventists send me emails about the state of the world or post things on facebook. They almost always post bad news or bad speculations. Just this week someone posted on my facebook page a link to an article about the imminent collapse of the American economy.

I couldn't help laughing when I read it. Over the last 30 years I have seen many such predictions. Global meltdown in the next six months or the next year. David Gates, the famous Adventist missionary issued such a warning three or four years ago. Famous Adventist evangelists specialize in this kind of dramatic predictions.

No nation, no empire stands forever. The US will not always be at the top of the dog pile of nations. But after thirty years of doomsday predictions that have failed, I think we would do much better to largely ignore them.

If you want to pay attention to threats, give your attention to threats that have a high likelihood of touching you and your children. Obesity is a far greater threat to our children than chemicals in our soil or Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (which, of course, did not exist!) So get your kids outside and moving. Which, of course, means you need to get outside and move. :-)

The historic Adventist notion of a “final, perfect generation” is deleterious to long term spiritual health. Young people find this idea exciting. It fills them with holy ambition to prepare themselves to be part of special group of people. But then by the time you term fifty or sixty, you realize you aren't going to make it. You are not going to triumph over every “hereditary and cultivated tendency to evil.” So, if participation in God's plan for the end requires a perfect character, you aren't going to make it.

Repeatedly, I have talked with older Adventists whose spiritual life is clouded with the inescapable realization that they are not going to be part of the movement they spent their entire lives preparing for and praying for. Because they realize that after decades of trying (praying, surrendering, trusting—use any expression here you want) . . . after decades of dreaming of being part of that final PERFECT generation, they recognize it isn't going to happen.

We need to get rid of this idea. It damages the sweetest, purest, most sincere believers. God is not waiting for a “perfect generation.” You do not have the ability to throw a kink in God's global plan. You do not need to achieve some higher level of perfection for God to be able to use you as an agent of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Instead of talking of some theoretical “final perfect generation,” give your attention to the perpetual call to holiness. (God does not ask anything from the “final generation” that he does not ask from every generation.) Cultivate holiness through positive spiritual disciplines like Sabbath-keeping, Bible reading, prayer, meditation, listening to sweet music, sharing fellowship with other believers, going to church, contemplating beauty. Protect holiness through the negative disciplines of fasting, abstaining from hate-mongers and fear-mongers. (To be specific—most talk radio, some preaching, some Bible study.)

Fundamental Principles

There are Bible passages that can function as declarations of basic principles. These principles offer wise, reliable guidance as we assess our religion. Here are my favorites:

Micah 6:8. He has showed you O Man what is good. And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Matthew 5-7. Everything from “Blessed are the spiritually bankrupt, because even they have a place in the kingdom of heaven” to “Hating is not allowed” to “Be perfect as your father in heave is perfect” (with perfection defined as profligate generosity) to “Don't worry” to “Doing matters far more than believing or liking (in the facebook sense). In chapter 5, especially, Jesus emphatically rejects the notion that the explicit language of Bible rules is the last word. Instead he points to high ideals that lie beyond any possible rule.

Luke 10:25-37. Love God. Love your neighbor. Who is your neighbor? The person to whom you can render aid.

All religion, our practices and beliefs, prophecy and behavioral standards, our administrative structures and practices, everything can be evaluated in the light of these passages.

We can trust the next generation to do their own shaping of religion in the light of these principles. We can trust God and our children with the future. Our calling, our mission, is to form a church culture where the truths enunciated in these passages become the test of all of our own practices and beliefs. As we do that, we are fulfilling our God-given mission. It will be enough.