Character matters. If this sound old fashioned, I don’t really care– as a pastor, I’m comfortable advocating sincerity in a cynical age.
Character especially matters for people who have power and responsibility, whose behavior and decisions can have a big impact on other people’s lives.
Now, we all have powers and responsibilities, to some degree, whatever our station in life. Being a driver on the road carries powers and responsibilities, right? Being someone who is in any kind of relationship with others, being a friend, being a spouse, a partner, a parent, a child, a sibling, uncle, aunt, any family relationship, carries powers and responsibilities. Being part of a community, many communities, part of a church, part of a neighborhood, being a citizen, especially in a democracy. Whatever our capabilities, whatever our roles, whatever our stations in life, we have powers and responsibilities: Just being somebody who has a body one can use to help or to hurt, who has words one can use to lie or to tell the truth, to soothe or to enflame, to promotes beauty or brutality. We each have powers and responsibilities. It is important to name this and claim and care for this.
At the same time, we know that some people have much more power and some people have much less. Some people are in roles of great responsibility and great power, including having power over other people, where there’s a lot at stake in one’s decisions and one’s behavior.
To say that “character matters” is not just quaint or idealistic. It can be in fact a matter of life or death. Of chaos or calm. Of success or failure. Of war or peace.
We all probably can think of situations we’ve been in where we’ve relied on someone and it turns out that they, shall we say, did not exercise the virtues of good character. That may be putting it mildly. In our families or friendships or relationships or workplace or neighborhood, church, community, town, city, nation – the cost of someone not being virtuous with their responsibility and power can be very harmful, and bitterly disappointing.
Sometimes it turns out that the person who did not exercise good character is ourselves.
It’s important that we, as Christians, return to the virtues and values that can guide us and shape us as those who know God’s grace through Jesus and who seek to walk in Jesus’ way.
We are all flawed and faulty, of course. Yet we’re also astonishingly capable of good. And we all can in fact grow and mature morally, learning from the mistakes of the past and seeking to do better today than we did yesterday.
With so much at stake in this hurting world, it is important we hold ourselves accountable and hold others accountable – especially those with great responsibility and power in a democratic society – accountable to the virtues of good character set out by the wise and holy people who have come before us.
This is not for the sake of some kind of moral purity or scrupulosity or self-righteousness. A lot truly is at stake – it can be a matter of life or death, of flourishing or suffering – in whether we and others use whatever power we have responsibly or irresponsibly.
This week and next we’ll explore some of these virtues it’s important to name and claim and care for.
Virtues!?! What does that actually mean?
The writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt put it well, in her book “Rooted: Life at the crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit”:
“While virtue may sound somewhat prim and moralistic,” she writes, she looked up its meaning in an old guide to Benedictine monastic life and found it defined as:
“The power to realize the good.”
We each have that power, in different ways. We all need each other to be calling on that power and directing it toward the good.
In our scripture readings for today, Jesus has some very clear teachings about the virtues that should guide us our approach to power and responsibility, so that power is directed to realize the good.
Jesus’ disciples, before they were shaped by his instruction, seemed to have an attraction to power that was not for the sake of good, but simply for the sake of status and ego. It’s a recurring theme in the gospel stories that Jesus’ disciples had a way of falling into jockeying against each other for position and bickering with each other about which of them is better than the others and who should be in charge.
These stories speak to something that so often comes up in human life together, right? The struggle for power can get ugly quick – whether or not it’s a “king of the hill” style brawl, or warlords of competing royal bloodlines or racist invaders asserting dominance, or if it’s a contest for votes in a democracy, the it’s an issue for every generation in every society. It can easily become simply a bitter and bruising ego battle divorced from a sincere pursuit of the greater good.
Jesus makes it clear that to follow his way means we are to bring very different values to the issue of power than our society often teaches us.
Those who would be first must make themselves last. Those who be a leader must be rather a servant, and not just be a servant to some, but a servant to all.
What are some virtues we can name at work here?
There’s an organization called The Virtues Project, which has mined the world’s religions and wisdom traditions, and psychological research, to identify dozens of virtues that traditions around the world value. Take a look at the website. Which virtues speak to what Jesus is teaching his followers about leadership?
Being open to every lesson life brings, trusting that our mistakes are often our best teachers. Being thankful for our gifts instead of boastful.
Doing helpful things that make a difference to others. Investing excellence in everything we do. The contribution we make is the fruitage of our lives.
Having an attitude of caring and mercy to all people.
A giving heart, a generous way of viewing others and caring for their needs.
Giving tender attention to the people and things that matter to us. Listening with compassion, helping with kindness.
Self-respect and quiet confidence. Accepting praise with humility and gratitude.
What are other virtues that strike a chord for you, or that feel like a challenge or invitation?
My friends, let’s take this to heart. Especially in these coming weeks where we can exercise some of our powers and responsibilities as citizens, and tensions are high, let’s remember those virtues that our faith calls us to represent.
I’m so grateful for the teachings and example of Jesus. I’m so grateful for the Grace of God he manifests, especially when it becomes clear how flawed and fallible we can be. I’m so grateful for the calling of hope Jesus represents, that, despite our human failings, we can work for a world that is more virtuous – we do have powers to realize the good.
Thanks be to God.
Delivered Sunday, October 13, 2024, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge. You can watch video of this sermon here.
Image: “Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet,” Ford Madox Brown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. This image depicts Jesus’ humble leadership – it does not accurately depict Jesus’ ethnicity
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