MORAL ARCS AND ELBOWS
Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Judges 19-21 (selections); Luke 13: 31-35
The man tearfully told me why he had left his village in what is now Montenegro. Tito hadn’t been so great but he had held the country formerly known as Yugoslavia together. They had all been part of a grand experiment patched together by the aftermath of World War I where Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians could share power and a country. But collective memories play with history and the Serbian leader Milosovic created a myth stating that it was the last bastion of the Byzantine Empire against the expanding Ottoman Empire, which it was not. The Balkans in the 1990s was very much like lands that Israelite tribes and indigenous nations struggled over in the period of the Judges.
The choices were much the same as well except this man had not thrown his wife to the mob crying for satisfaction. Instead, he packed her and their half Bosnian children and headed for the United States. He was one of the lucky ones; he managed to get documents that got him on the plane but he did not clear the inspectors at the airport. He and his family were fortunate because they arrived here one month before the United States began opening detention centers for asylum seekers.
His reasons were simple: He had married a Bosnian woman and he was not going to follow orders and kill her or her family. He was not going to be conscripted into an army that engaged in human rights abuses. Denied by the new bunch of so-called experts called the asylum corps, he was referred to Immigration Court where the judge granted asylum to him and the family.
In his sermon “Justice and the Conscience,” Theodore Parker wrote that the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice. The question is, of course, where the elbow is. Parker, grandson of John Parker who commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington, was a staunch abolitionist, sheltered fugitive slaves in violation of the law, and kept a pistol on his desk in case anyone tried to kidnap one back into slavery.
Parker, whose congregation included people such as Louisa May Alcott, William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, among others, believed that it was our duty to shorten the distance by bending a few elbows.
Unlike many of the peoples of the world, our memory tends to be incredibly short. The advantage of a short memory, of course, is that usually we do not carry national, ethnic, or religious grudges for centuries. The disadvantage is that we tend to believe that our current situation – such as our current political mess -- is the worst mess in our national history.
If any of you listen to our elected so-called leaders, you would think that the rising gas prices at the pump was the most important issue we face in America. Yes, we pay more, lots more, but nothing compared to what the Ukrainians are paying. The combination of domestic and foreign issues piles up on us and it just seems overwhelming. Like Jerusalem in Jesus’ time, we have a habit of killing off the prophets who call for us to repent and get our act together.
Our social conflict is fueled by the inner conflicts most of us have. These are not just conflicts about whether to obey unjust laws or what is the best “fix” for our health care mess. These are also conflicts about how we see ourselves as the people of God in this place at this time. They are conflicts that exist over our personal choices.
Now, fortunately, none of us will ever face the dilemma of the Levite -- and hopefully, none of us will ever be in a situation where we suffer a fate as horrible as did his concubine, who, like many women in Scripture, remains nameless. But each one of us through our daily choices does make a host of moral decisions. They can be as simple as buying toilet tissue made from recycled paper or as complicated as refusing certain types of medical treatment. Our decisions have moral consequences.
Resolving inner conflicts is not easy. Religious traditions suggest many different approaches in helping us to resolve the inner turmoil we feel when trying to resolve a conflict. Although prayer is certainly one way to resolve inner conflicts, especially the really tough ones, we need to learn how to set our minds and souls free enough so that when we pray, we are open to the direction prayer takes us.
Let’s think about what those steps might be. Clarifying our motives regarding a decision is a good way to start. Being honest with ourselves regarding the pros and cons of a difficult decision is not easy because sometimes, in fact, I would venture to guess, most times, our decision, whatever it is, has either a direct effect or a ripple effect on someone
else. We have to clarify our motives before we can purify them.
Secondly, I think we need to distance ourselves from our own self-interest. Now this is even more difficult than being honest with ourselves about the motives. The Levite knew what his motive was in throwing out the hapless concubine; it was to save his own skin, or at least his sense of manhood. What he could not do was to distance himself from his own self-interest in making the decision. Obviously, we don’t have concubines running around to be thrown out to the proverbial wolves, but we do have self-interests that often control our decisions, sometimes without us even being aware of those interests. That’s why the first step has to be to clarify the motive.
Distancing ourselves from our self-interests is not easy. In fact, I daresay that it is the most difficult thing to do. Our self-interests control how we live in all the little things as well as the big ones. Role models are important here. We don’t live in a bubble; we all learned from someone else -- and we can continue to learn if we choose good role models. We need to get some inspiration somewhere and from people who conquered their inner conflict and still had a good resolution.
There are times, however, when we finally make a decision on a conflict that the resolution doesn’t look so good to someone else. But, remember in these situations, it’s your inner conflict, not someone else’s and once the turmoil is resolved in a manner that does not conflict with your conscience, it is a good resolution. Worse yet is to make a decision that goes against what you know you should do in satisfaction of some short term interest.
We need to be honest with ourselves during this process and when self-interest clouds our judgment that can be difficult. Sometimes we need to talk a decision out with a trusted friend or a spouse, someone who will tell it like it is. Sometimes putting down the conflict on paper is really helpful because it forces us to clarify our thoughts by bringing them outside of themselves into the world, as it were.
As I said earlier, our decisions have consequences not just on ourselves but on others. The consequences could be personal; we could help or hurt a friend. They can be broader, such affecting a group or a community; and they can be what some of us think as abstract, like the environment. But all of our decisions have consequences. We don’t have to live in perpetual crisis in order to realize this. Just look at the world around you The moral arc of the universe is long. May we bend the elbow to speed the path towards justice.
Let us pray: Gracious One who has given us minds and hearts as well as consciences and choices, help us think through our choices with moral clarity and purpose. In the name of the One who clarified choices for himself, even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.