Ps 132:1-5, 13-18

25 August 2002

“Free to Obey”

            In November 2000, I attended a genetics conference in Pittsburgh, entitled “What Does it Mean to be Human?”  Most of the sessions were at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, but we had a couple of meetings at the downtown hotel where we stayed, and one at historic First Presbyterian.  We considered things like genetic engineering in agriculture and in medicine, the Human Genome Project, and lots of other things, including cloning.

            The presenters were people on the cutting edge of genetics (or close to it), from both the scientific and theological communities.  All the presenters were Christians (as I recall, at least half were Presbyterian), and they were especially interested in looking at the theological implications of genetics technology.  How can faith guide us as we enter these brave new worlds?

            One thing I learned about genetics is that I have a lot to learn about genetics!  I could follow along pretty well in the theological sessions, but in some of the scientific seminars, I was lost.  There’s a professor at Pittsburgh Seminary, Ronald Cole-Turner, who happens to be pretty good with the science of genetics.  He was one of the presenters at the conference, and this past April, Theology Today published an article of his in which he looks at our motives for pursuing genetics, or biotechnology.[1]

            Cole-Turner begins on an interesting note.  He points out how ancient biotechnology really is.  Bread and wine, for example, are cultivated through selective breeding and fermentation and then, in the church, given a sacramental value.  In celebrating the Lord’s Supper, we ask God to bless these products of biotechnology, elementary though they be.  Likewise, he recognizes the many benefits to be gained from genetic engineering, including cures for many diseases that currently plague us.

            Unfortunately, not all of our motives for developing these technologies are commendable.  If we dare to look, we’ll find some rather dark incentives.  Cole-Turner says, “No one knows now what we will learn to do, but it is pretty clear what we want.  We are anxious, competitive, offended by age and decline, unable to accept loss.  These needs drive our technology, shape its agenda, and ultimately pervert its moral meaning.  What begins as a technology to relieve human pain becomes a technology to relieve the pain of being human…At least in part, we want genetics because we are discontent with nature as we find it.”[2]

            Last week, I said that “one of the primary lies of advertising is that our lives aren’t worth living as they are.”  That’s one of the dangers of our growing technical ability—to alter nature in ways that are both dangerous and unjust.  It may start with something apparently good, like weeding out the gene that causes hemophilia or certain forms of mental retardation.

Still, who knows what in the future will be defined as an imperfection?  “The untreatable and the untreated (including the poor) will stand out ever more starkly as reminders that we cannot control everything, and perhaps we will see them as failed projects of our technology.”[3]  We’re still haunted by the ghosts of the eugenics experiments of early 20th century America and by the Nazis and their vision of a master race.

            This brings me to today’s theme, the last part in our series on discipleship, which is obedience.  I’ve taken this rather roundabout way of getting started to show that obedience isn’t merely some pious exercise, but it has life-and-death consequences.  If we answer only to ourselves, then ironically, we answer to no one.  Or more precisely, we answer to the boys with the most muscle.  Despite our best intentions, when we fail to obey the God of life, we wind up obeying the gods of death.  One way or another, we become compelled to use the heavy-handed methods of violence and force.

            Let me try to connect the dots I’ve laid out this month on Christian discipleship, which means seeking to be a follower—a student—of Jesus Christ.  Repentance, making the decision to turn, and actually turning, that’s where the Christian walk begins.  It’s true that we baptize infants; we receive them into the family of God, but each of us has to decide if we want to journey with that family.  For those who do, worship is the response of thanksgiving to God.  Understanding that God loves us first, even when we’ve done nothing to deserve it, inspires a sense of humility in us.  And in humble acceptance of our limitations, we realize that it’s in our best interests to adopt an attitude of obedience—a word that itself has problems, as we’ll see.

            Eugene Peterson, a name that should be familiar by now, says of Psalm 132 that it “cultivates the memory and nurtures the hope that lead to mature obedience.”[4]  He’s talking about the history lesson the psalm provides, as well as its confidence in the future.

            Psalm 132 first focuses on an event in Israel’s history.  It reflects on King David’s determination to bring the ark of the covenant to his capital in Jerusalem.  It had been lost in battle to the Philistines decades earlier.  After being recovered from the Philistines, the ark had been at various locations in Israel.  Considered to house, in some special way, the very presence of God, the ark of the covenant was obviously an important object.  (It was certainly important for Steven Spielberg’s career as a director!)

            Towards the end, the psalm shifts from the past tense to the future tense.  We’re no longer looking back at a past act of obedience—now we see the future promises of God.  A series of “I will” statements lets us know the results of this obedience.  Peterson wants to make sure we understand the importance of history, “for without it we are at the mercy of whims.  Memory is a databank we use to evaluate our position and make decisions.  With a biblical memory we have two thousand years of experience from which to make the off-the-cuff responses that are required each day in the life of faith.  If we are going to live adequately and maturely as the people of God, we need more data to work from than our own experience can give us.”[5]

            We don’t do ourselves a favor by ignoring history.  Instead, like someone with amnesia, we become rootless, floating in a limbo in which we have no sure bearing—no way of knowing who we are.  People without memory are easy to manipulate.  And by the way, being manipulated and obeying God are two very different things.

            But Peterson’s not finished.  As the comedian Dennis Miller would put it, he goes on a rant.  “To remain willfully ignorant of Abraham wandering in the desert, the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, David battling the Philistines, Jesus arguing with the Pharisees and Paul writing to the Corinthians is like saying, ‘I refuse to remember that when I kicked that black dog last week he bit my leg.’  If I don’t remember it, in the next fit of anger I will kick him again and get bitten again…A Christian with a defective memory has to start everything from scratch and spends far too much of his or her time backtracking, repairing, starting over.”[6]  He says more, but I’ll stop there.

            A little while ago, I said that there are problems with the very word “obedience.”  It’s no surprise to anyone that it can easily be distorted.  Much like the word “humility,” it can conjure up images of slavishly following someone.  (“I don’t need you to think!  I just need you to obey!”)  That can be a problem inside or outside the church.  For John Calvin, the marks of the true church were the preaching of the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of discipline, which is closely related to obedience.  Most Presbyterians today probably wouldn’t include that last one!

            A church tradition that takes obedience a little more seriously is the Roman Catholic Church.  Banu and I recently had a good look at this at Mt. St. Benedict Monastery in Erie.  Last summer, Sr. Joan Chittister was invited to the Women’s Ordination Worldwide Conference in Ireland.  The prioress of the monastery, Christine Vladimiroff, had received a letter from Vatican officials who wanted her to prohibit Sister Joan from speaking at the conference.  They believed her participation would violate John Paul II’s decree that women will never be ordained as priests, and so, the subject isn’t open for discussion.

            Vladimiroff writes, “After much deliberation and prayer, I concluded that I would decline the request of the Vatican because to give such an order would violate the Benedictine model of obedience.”  She speaks of “the 1,500-year-old Benedictine tradition,” whose “primary purpose, as individuals and as community, is to seek God.”[7]  This wasn’t a decision made carelessly.  She consulted many within the monastery, as well as others outside, including canon lawyers and some bishops.

            I find it interesting, and enlightening, that besides seeking to be faithful to the work of the Holy Spirit and to the call of the gospel, Vladimiroff focuses on her history—on her identity.  She traces her lineage to the “Desert Mothers and Fathers of the fourth century who lived on the margin of society in order to be a prayerful and questioning presence to both church and society.”[8]

            True Christian obedience means that we will ask questions.  It means that we will question authority—both in the church and in society.  But we do that in humility; we do that in love.  Otherwise, we’re merely being defiant; we’re merely being rebellious, and there’s nothing creative or constructive about that.  We don’t ask questions to promote ourselves—but we still ask questions.

            Christian obedience takes seriously the apostle Paul’s statement in our epistle reading:  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Ro 12:2).  But that doesn’t happen automatically.  We have to make a conscious decision to pursue that.  And the ironic thing is that, by God’s grace, we can choose the obedience that makes us free.  As a very imperfect practitioner of the art of obedience, I can still say that the greatest freedom lies in obedience to Christ.

            We can be free from the habits of the old self, the unredeemed self.  For example, we can be free from griping and gossiping.  I realize that, in a world filled with injustices, they may seem pretty small in the grand scheme of things.  But griping and gossiping are still sins, and they can destroy us and this church community as effectively as anything else, even the most distorted forms of genetic manipulation!

            To be a disciple of Jesus Christ isn’t for the faint of heart.  Far from being the option of losers and weaklings, walking with Jesus requires immense reservoirs of strength and courage.  We will need to ask questions; we will need to do things we never dreamed possible.  But the good news—the great news—of the gospel is that Christ gives us his very life, out of unbounded love.  Our self-constructed prison walls are torn down, and we are set free to obey.

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