Brett's Discernment

I might make an actual post later, but here I am posting something, mostly for myself so when I lose the CD it is saved on I know where another copy is.
Below is a talk that I gave as the Lutheran young adult representative at the Virginia LARC conference in Williamsburg in fall 2004. Bishop Mauney also spoke, and together we were supposed to give "the Lutheran perspective" on "how scripture impacts our decision-making," which would then be followed by the Catholic and Episcopalian views. I also gave this as a sermon in the spring of '05 at St. Stephen.

Good morning. First let me introduce myself. My name is Brett, and I am a senior here at the college. I have served as president of the Lutheran Student Association for two years now and it is my home, my family, and my refuge here at school. My other experiences I will come to later.

It took a lot of praying and reworking for me to decide how I was going to approach this topic of the scripture impacting ethical decision making.

I realized that all of my experiences with struggling with my walk and faith journey and ethical decisions have centered around one big thing that God’s trying to teach me, one of the hardest things to learn, humility. For me, the first thing the scripture does and Christ has done for me through several experiences is completely knock me down, make me realize that I am nothing. Now this sounds quite severe, but it is well attested in scripture. God humbles me every day and I will speak in a moment about how he has done this. But if I left it at this, I would be neglecting half of the purpose as I see it of the scripture, the glory of GRACE. So scripture directly bears on my ethical decisions because of how powerfully it humbles me and how upliftingly joyful grace is. You will notice that these are not specific scripture texts, but rather emotions and visceral feelings that you and I can receive from the word.

I believe that many college students approach scripture in this way. That we want to take in so much from the bible so that we gain a visceral feeling, and emotion, a reaction that internalizes itself and that we carry with us into every decision that we make.

So first, if we are going to internalize and emotively feel scripture and Christ’s presence in decision making, he has to humble us.

If there’s one undisputed scriptural interpretation of humans and their abilities, it is that we are all sinners. So as negative as it may sound, I think one of the most important things about the bible and ethics is that God already knows we’re going to make mistakes. He’s counting on it. The gospels and letters of the new testament are quite clear about this, especially in one of my favorite verses, John 15: 4-5, which I am sure you are quite familiar with, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”

God has worked very hard at teaching me humility. It’s one of those things, like patience, that my friend and fellow LSAer Leslie Short joke about, that you should never pray for patience or humility, because Christ will bring it right to you, I like to call those experiences baptism by fire in the truest sense.

This past summer I prayed for patience and humility, and it was the biggest humbling, baptism by fire experience of my life. I was a camp counselor at caroline furnace Lutheran camp, and I cannot even begin to tell you the wonders that Christ taught me and the power of outdoor ministry. Now I had training, and then six weeks of amazing campers. My campers shone Christ’s light at me in a blinding way. But let me get back to the humbling part. I had the WORST campers all summer. Of any counselor. I just had the luck I guess. I loved every one of them, but I had the most troubled and hardest kids I have ever known. They had issues I didn’t even know how to begin how to deal with.

Let me describe one of the more “humbling” weeks for you. I had five 13 year old campers. I was excited for the week, coming off one of my smoothest and easiest weeks, comparatively.

Now these five girls – two had lost their virginity by age 12, a third had an 18 year old boyfriend who had gotten another pregnant, this girl I caught with an eating disorder, and twins with a brother departing for Iraq. Almost all of these girls had tried or encountered alcohol, smoking, and drugs of various sorts. One was bipolar (whose medicine went bad two weeks prior) and had attempted suicide two months prior. No exaggeration.

All of this came out in the first day or two of the six days of camp? And what did I have to do? Bring Christ to them, keep them safe, happy, and help them enjoy being completely out of their element trying new things.

I think this was one of the hardest, most drained points of my life. Not spiritually, but physically, mentally, and emotionally. My ego was gone. I knew that I could do NOTHING for these girls without Christ. I was not spiritually defeated, but God had humbled me to my lowest extreme of this point. I had no ethical decision left to make because without the help Christ at this point, my hands were tied, I was silenced. Christ had me, I was his, he gave me the work and I was there to do it, but my decisions could not me made until I had been completely debased of my own ego and notion that I could handle this on my own.

Humility, part one. Christ breaks down that barrier quite effectively for me and all of us, he only asks that when we are at that low point, we realize how much we need him in our decisions, in our lives.

Scripture brought me back from that humility, uplifted by the visceral feeling of grace that fills the word of the Lord.

The best way to describe it is to read an excerpt from a letter a received. This is from a girl from the week I just described, who I caught with an eating disorder, had the 18 year old boyfriend and the brother going to Iraq.

“I am so glad . . . signing the letter faith and god bless.”

When I read this, two weeks after she had left me, I felt overwhelmed by the grace of the Lord and such joy in that I had not done this. I did not do any of this for this young woman. I was just so unbelievably enthralled by the emotion of grace poured into her problems. When I worked with these girls the rest of the week I relied upon the scripture, prayer, and giving up everything I had, everything I was, every desire of mine, to God. God used me and I am so happy with his grace.

A very key comment by Martin Luther I feel reflects the scripture’s summative opinion on ethics and decisions. I am sure a lot of you will find it familiar:

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness, but, as Peter says, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God's glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly--you too are a mighty sinner.

This passage is most often taken out of context just as the sin boldly issue, but it is a testament and a summation of the emotions that I feel of being wonderfully encompassed by grace and so humbled by the fact that as in Romans 3 that there is no distinction, that we are all the worst of sinners who all fall short.

The most humbling experiences of my life were those working for Christ in different capacities. This past summer was the most humbling experience ever. The harder I worked to expand my faith and heart to my campers, the more incredibly hard work the Lord gave me to do. The decision, based on the power of humility and grace in scripture, was to give everything to Christ, to pick up my cross, follow.

The scripture weighs upon me every day that the best decision, and essentially the only one, is to pick up our cross.

The cross of humility, when we bear it as Christians, presses us down so that we can see that we need Christ in the deepest way to uplift us and look at the bright grace ahead. These two components of scripture are what I carry with me day by day, into every decision that I make.