Most Important Texts

Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists for October 28, 2017. Preliminary draft.

Imagine it's the night before your daughter heads off for her freshman year of college. You're in the kitchen talking, and asks the most delicious question in the world: Mom, do you have any advice?

Your first reaction is to begin a three hour dissertation. You want to give your eighteen-year-old all the wisdom you have acquire through your decades of mistakes, successes, and reading. But you catch yourself. You know that at some point during that three hour dissertation your daughter's eyes are going to glaze over and she will quit listening.

So you limit yourself to a single bit of advice. Something simple enough she will never forget it.

Something profound enough that it will be relevant all her life.

You decide to give her a Bible verse. A memory verse from her childhood. Something that is already rooted deep in her brain.

What verse would you cite? What single passage would you wish to live most brightly in your daughter's mind? In your son's mind?

Another scenario: You are running for political office—state senator or governor. A reporter is interviewing you. “I understand you are a person of faith, a member of a church. If you were going to cite one Bible verse to illustrate the core of your religious convictions, what verse would that be?”

This could be a complicated question. Do you mention a Bible verse that non-church people will like or do you mention the Bible verse that means the most to you? Is there a difference between those two realities?

A third scenario: you are at the end of life. To everyone else in the room it appears you are comatose. You have heard the medical judgment. You will not recover. You are in a place of no return. You cannot speak, but your mind is still alive. You have moments of inner lucidity, times when you are aware that you are in a place of no return. You are aware that you are waiting for the next step of the journey, a step that comes eventually for everyone. In that place, what Bible verse would you most like to light up your mind?

Three texts: One for your college-bound daughter. One for an inquiring reporter. One for your last hours.

The Bible is a marvelous source of nourishment for our souls. It offers wisdom for our youth, slogans to guide our public policy, and solace in our times of weakness and loss. The wisdom of the Bible is so varied, so diverse, we can words there appropriate to nearly situation, every circumstance of life. This also means it requires wisdom to use the Bible appropriately.

If we ask the question what is the most important passage in the Bible, there are a several of obvious candidates. Micah 6:8. He has showed you O Mortal what is good and what the Lord requires: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. Or Jesus' declaration, “Love the Lord your God with your entire being. This is the first and great commandment. The second is similar. Love your neighbor as yourself. Or perhaps we could reference John 3:16. God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him might not die but instead have everlasting life.

But when we specify the circumstance and ask what is the most important Bible verse for this person in this specific situation, other verses may come to mind.

For kids headed off to college, I might propose Proverbs 23:29-30

Who has anguish? Who has sorrow?

Who is always fighting? Who is always complaining?

Who has unnecessary bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes?

Those who linger over wine.

I especially like the phrase: Who has unnecessary bruises.

I saw an article earlier this week in the Seattle Times about a group of mothers who are responding to sexual assault charges against their sons. These mothers asked the obvious questions: were their sons really guilty of the actions they were accused of. If they were guilty was the punishment—legal and social--appropriate. I was particularly struck by one incident. One of the mothers said her son had been expelled after having sex with a student who said she had been too intoxicated to give consent.

Later in the day when I was thinking back on the article that one sentence kept coming back to my mind. A woman charged a man with assault because she was too intoxicated to give consent. I wondered was the man too intoxicated to act responsibly? After asking that question and thinking of the trauma experienced by these two young people—the woman violated, the man shamed—I couldn't help thinking of the proverb.

Who has unnecessary bruises? Those who linger over wine. 

Or beer. If I could give kids headed off to college one Bible verse, this might be it. Guys, if you get drunk, you are likely to do stuff that is really, really stupid and maybe evil. You may bruise others. You may bruise yourself.

All the Bible verses about love and justice and mercy become useless in the mind of a person who has had too much to drink. If you are going to love your neighbor, you have to be reasonably sober to do so. Guys, if you're going to be with a woman, don't get drunk. The alcohol will poison your capacity to act in a noble, loving way. Gals, if you're going to be with men, don't get drunk. Because if you do you dramatically increase the risk of sexual assault.

If you don't want unnecessary bruises—whether those bruises are on your body or in your soul—if you don't want unnecessary bruises, don't get drunk. After a glass or two, alcohol becomes stupid juice. Don't go there.

Memorize Proverbs 23:29

Who has anguish? . . .

Who has unnecessary bruises? . . .

Those who linger over wine.

Don't hurt yourself. Don't hurt other people. Don't be stupid. Don't get drunk. That's Bible. :-)

I'm going to skip over the second scenario: a Bible passage we might cite as a slogan for public policy, a passage that embodies wisdom for those who are strong and smart and capable. I preach on the responsibilities we carry as privileged people nearly every week. Instead, I will consider the third scenario. What words of the Bible would we want to illuminate our minds when we face the end of our journey?

When I keep company with people facing the end of their journey, I come back again and again to the first words of Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd.”

The value of this picture is where it places the responsible action. Sheep are responsible for almost nothing. Which is a good thing because they are incapable of carrying out any responsibility. When sheep get sick because they have eaten some poisonous weed, we don't blame the sheep. We figure the shepherd was negligent or ignorant. It is the shepherd's job to make sure the pasture is safe. When a mama sheep rejects its lamb, it is the job of the shepherd to notice and rescue the lamb. If there are dogs in the neighborhood, it is the shepherd's job to make sure the fence is secure. If a sheep gets out, it is the shepherd's job to go find it.

There are times in our lives—lots of times—when we need to be reminded of our duties, our responsibilities. It is our assignment to do justice and love mercy and to walk humbly with God. It is our responsibility to love God with our entire being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are obliged to tell the truth. To speak graciously and kindly. To be faithful in our relationships. But everyone of us will come to the end of our abilities. We will not be able to do justice—or even injustice. We will not be capable of acting mercifully or unmercifully. The time comes when all we can do is receive.

At that time, the Bible offers these words of reassurance. The Lord is my shepherd. God takes on the responsibility. And because God IS a shepherd and is not merely a sheep owner it is not only his duty to feed us and protect us and sustain us, it is God's pleasure to do so. When we pass beyond the limits of our capacity to act and do, God is our shepherd. We will lack nothing.

Those are the best words I can think of, the most important words, to take with us on that final mysterious journey. And they are good words, indeed.

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.

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.