Because Integrity Matters Now--September 25, 2020
"O Lord, who made abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on your holy hill?
Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right,
and speak the truth from their heart;
who do not slander with their tongue,
and do no evil to their friends,
nor take up a reproach against their neighbors;
in whose eyes the wicked are despised,
but who honor those who fear the LORD;
who stand by their oath even to their hurt;
who do not lend money at interest,
and do not take a bribe against the innocent.
Those who do these things shall never be moved." [Psalm 15]
I have to confess to you--I am tired.
I am so tired in particular of hearing, "They did it first, so I can do it to them!" I am tired of the thinking that says, "Look, here is someone acting crooked, so it's fair game for all of us to be crooked!" I am weary of hearing, or seeing, "Ok, yeah, so my side wasn't truthful about this thing, but what about that time a long time ago when the other side did something bad--so I guess nobody can insist on truthfulness anymore!" I'm exhausted at how easy it is to suggest rotten stuff about the people you don't like, whether it is true or not, just knowing that it can hurt them to have the accusation out there that begins, "Well, people are saying..." And I am just done with promises that get made in one moment and then get dropped when it is difficult to keep them, or when principles that had been touted so fiercely are quietly set aside when holding them would be costly.
I think that's why I'm hearing good news these days in a psalm I used to really struggle with. As part of a new (to me) daily prayer discipline I've been in, I'm reading through the psalms one day at a time, and I have found myself coming face to face with a much wider range of emotions, situations, and needs than just the well-worn, "The Lord is my shepherd." This psalm is one of those ancient prayers that I have been rather standoffish about in the past, because for a long time I could only hear it as a list of rules of good behavior that you have to follow in order for God to accept you. I could only hear it as a checklist of morality for getting into God's presence (and that I couldn't help but hear also as a way of saying, "how you earn your way into heaven"), and everything in my Lutheran tradition's way of reading the Scriptures insists, "You can't do anything to earn your way into heaven, because it's all by grace!" So I was left with a psalm that seemed to be selling a self-help plan for self-righteousness that I had been taught to label as bad theology.
But... what if I was wrong, all that time?
(Okay, seriously, let me just take a moment and say what a difficult question--but also what a freeing question--that is to put into words. In a time where we are all just digging our heels in and retreating to our own social media and cable news echo chambers that only reinforce the things we already want to believe, it is a freeing and necessary thing to be able to ask, "What if I have been wrong?" and bear the idea of listening to others.)
Well, if I start pulling at that thread--that maybe there's more going on in this psalm than just a biblical version of Goofus and Gallant telling me to be a good little boy--something changes. Instead of hearing this psalm as a set of merit badge requirements to earn God's love, I can hear these words as an answer to my weariness these days. They speak to me insistently that having integrity does matter... that standing by your commitments is important... that people really are more important than making a buck... and that justice really counts in God's eye. Even if nobody else thinks it matters to be honest, to be fair, to do justice, and to look out for their neighbors' well-being, God does. I need that reminder that it's not pointless to think these things matter, because I am just so tired of all the noise around that says it doesn't because it's all a game of winning.
Because there is so much noise out there that is designed to make us angry or afraid rather than to think critically... because there is so much mud thrown around to give the impression that "Everybody has been crooked before, so there is no difference in anybody's character"... because there is so much cynical posturing to get us to think that the truth doesn't matter anymore, I need to hear the assured voice of the psalmist here saying, "These things do matter to God."
Maybe this was never about how to earn your way into heaven, but about our need to hear--in a time that seems focused only on how to get your side to win--that being honest, decent, just, compassionate, and fair people really does matter. It matters in this life--not merely as the price of admission for the next life. It matters to say, "I made a commitment, and I'm going to honor it even when it costs me." It matters to say, "I am willing to tell the truth, even when it means admitting mistakes and failures, rather than telling people they aren't seeing what they are seeing, or that everybody does bad stuff so none of it counts." It matters to make the choice not to take advantage of other people for your own benefit. It matters to live your life in a way that you can look everybody in the eye.
I want to be that kind of person, and I want to be the kind of person who brings that out in others as well. I want to be someone who is more interested in doing right by a neighbor than getting more for my own advantage. I want to be the kind of person who people know is reliable, even when it is costly. I want to be the sort of human being that doesn't immediately put the worst spin on what the people I don't like do, while only listening to the best spin on the people I do like. And I want to be the kind of person who knows that "Me-and-My-Interest-First" is a damned shame of a principle to build your life on.
There's a line from the movie V for Vendetta that sticks in my head all the time lately. The title character says at one point something like, "Fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words. They are perspectives." In a time when everyone wants to use those words, I am tired of hearing them used as empty vessel that can be filled with whatever meaning anybody wants to stuff them with.
And so on a day like today, I find myself unexpectedly refreshed by this voice from the psalms, because it says to me that God has always cared about the kinds of people we are, and that God isn't fooled by folks who just talk in those terms without living them. God has always been more interested in the ways we live out the things we say matter to us. Not as a way of earning a prize, but because we understand that being decent, just, compassionate people is a way of living in the love of God for all people. Being people of integrity--and of valuing integrity in others--is a way of being more fully alive.
May God bring us so fully to life today and in this season.
Lord God, make of us people of integrity, of honesty, and of justice. Make us fully alive, no matter how unimportant these things seem to the loud voices around us.
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