08-29-23

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
August 29, 2023
When you think about it, a lot of stuff in life depends on circumstance or experience. Right now, many of us are joking about a cold front coming when the highs will be in the mid-90s. Burr! I grew up in Nebraska, where winters were pretty cold, and when I was attending college in Oklahoma, I wore shorts quite often during the winter because it was only 38 degrees. Today, I need to bundle up and wear gloves at 38 degrees. Though one of the questions often asked these days is whether faith, ethics, and purpose are dependent on circumstance or experience. Utilitarianism is the ethical belief that one chooses the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Nations make many such choices, but choices on the macro level that produce the greatest good may not make sense when we are working one-on-one. The life of Jesus does not always provide us with easy answers for how we are to move between the micro and the macro, yet Jesus also called out people as hypocrites when one part of life did not match another. In fact, Matthew 23 tells us of Jesus speaking "woe" to the religious leaders who gave great energy and focus to the small things but seemed unaware of how such passion should also be applied to the community and the systems that controlled those communities. I’m not going to suggest an answer here, and maybe that’s part of the challenge—there is not a go-to answer. But I do believe Jesus continues to challenge us on what our faith looks like in our simple day-to-day encounters, alongside how we believe the larger systems, including economics, should be reflected in those same simple convictions.

In all the challenges of life that come before me today, O Gracious One, keep me asking the hard questions about the expectations the Jesus-life puts before me. Amen.