Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Mark 4:21-25

August 5, 207

And he said to them, "Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. If any man has ears to hear, let him hear." And he said to them, "Take heed what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away."

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Last Monday Pam and I spent a wonderful day at Acadia National Park. I've been wanting to go biking around the carriage roads ever since I moved to Maine, and last Monday all the stars lined up and we were finally made it happen. It's a wonderful thing to do by the way, if you haven't already. Acadia is spectacularly beautiful and riding around the carriage roads is one of the best ways to see it.

On the way to Acadia though, driving out of Ellsworth, we passed by a church that had a sign out front with a message. I'm always interested in the little quotes churches sometimes put on their signs. Most of them express a pretty conventional, evangelical theology, like, "Jesus is coming! Are you ready?" (Personally, I prefer "Jesus is coming! Look busy!" I think he would have appreciated the humor.) But this particular message really got me thinking. It read: "A clear conscience makes a soft pillow." Now to be honest, my knee-jerk reaction was to be offended. It's so easy to read this in a moralistic way. If you follow all the rules and do all the things you're supposed to do, be a good person and remember to wash behind your ears, you'll rest easy knowing that your place in heaven is secure.

Read that way, it's a fairly standard evangelical message. "A clear conscience makes a soft pillow" easily becomes "Do good and go to heaven." It's entirely possible that this is more or less what the pastor had in mind when he put it up. What I don't like about it is that this message too easily implies that we have to earn our way into heaven by being good, and if we're not being good we have every reason to feel guilty. I'm rather sensitive when it comes to this kind of moralism. Maybe you noticed. But talking it over with Pam, I began to realize I might just be taking offense for no reason. "A clear conscience makes a soft pillow." Although this we certainly could read this in a judgmental way, it doesn't have to be read that way at all. The more I think about it, the more it seems to be simply a statement of fact, cause and effect. There are lots of things we can get into that disturb our peace, our conscience, and if our peace is disturbed, we're not likely to sleep very well; cause and effect.

In the eastern traditions cause and effect is called Karma. We've been led to believe that Karma is a bad thing, that Karma is our fate. We're born to a particular station in life, with the sins of our past lives weighing on us. We're fated to live out lives that are mostly predetermined at birth and there's not much of anything we can do about it. This is a very common, but also mistaken understanding of the eastern traditions. What Karma is really about is cause and effect. If we behave in certain ways, we are likely to get certain results. If we're caught up in an unhealthy cycle of action and reaction, our lives become much like a merry-go-round we would just as soon get off. Karma is an unconscious habit of mind or body that leads us, repeatedly, into places we don't want to be but don't know how to get out of.

There are a million examples we could give, since to some degree we're all wrapped up in patterns of cause and effect. One good example though came from the last issue of The Week Magazine. It's a short piece. I'll just read it to you.

An Illinois woman who fell and broke her ankle while attempting to dance on top of a bar is suing the establishment for not stopping her. Amy Mueller wants more then $50,000 from the owners of Samy's Bar and Grill for "allowing [her] to climb upon the bar without a stepstool, ladder, or other device used for safety," according to her lawsuit. Mueller's lawyer, Frank Cservenyak Jr., assured reporters that "I wouldn't take a case I believe is frivolous. She completely shattered her right ankle. This isn't, 'I fell and bruised my back.'"

O.K. granted, she shattered her ankle. I'm sure it was painful and humiliating for her. And granted also, we don't know the whole story so we probably shouldn't pass judgment. Still, from what we do know, it seems very clear to me that, bottom line, this is a story about a woman refusing to accept responsibility for an accident that she herself caused. Not being much of a party animal myself, it seems to me that wanting to dance on a bar in the first place a good sign that it's time to call it a night. But, accidents can happen even when we haven't had too much to drink. I should know. The worst sprained ankle I ever had happened when I tried to jump over a small hedge. At the time, I was trying to demonstrate to someone that I was, in fact, sober enough to drive home. It was a painful and humiliating experience for me. It was not, however, anyone's fault but my own.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I am not being moralistic here, or at least I'm trying not to be judgmental. I'm not saying Ms. Mueller is a bad person. What I'm saying is, there is a clear cause and effect pattern to this story. Let's imagine (even though the story doesn't say so) that the woman had too much to drink, which caused her to want to dance on the bar, which set up the conditions for her breaking her ankle, which led to her filing a lawsuit. One thing leads to another. Cause and Effect. We could say she was just having a bad night, but it isn't hard to see a pattern here: not drinking responsibly, not responsible for climbing on the bar, not responsible for hurting herself, not responsible for bearing the costs. There is a pattern of irresponsible causes here that cycles from one poor decision to another, until there is a bad effect, which leads to yet more poor decisions and yet more bad effects. That is Karma. She's not a bad person, but she is trapped in a rut of irresponsibility that has become self-reinforcing. The more she refuses to accept responsibility for her own actions, the more irresponsible she becomes. Cause and effect.

I may be reading way too much into this story, but I'm doing so to make a point. It's not like we don't understand cause and effect relationships. We see them all the time. Go out in the rain - get wet. Step on the gas - the car moves. There's a cause and effect relationship built into nearly everything we do. But what happens when we get into the habit of refusing to notice the role we personally play in the things that happen to us? What happens when we make a practice of not accepting responsibility.

There's actually a lot of that going on these days isn't there. Never admit you were wrong. Never apologize. Never accept blame. Always have an excuse. Always be ready to point out how and why whatever happened is someone else's fault. There is a lot of this kind of thinking alive in the world today. Pam and I went into a restaurant for dinner the other night and had some of the worst service from the waitress we've ever received. After the meal, after a long wait, she presented us with a check that charged us for things we had not ordered or eaten. When we pointed it out to her, she explained at length that this never happens because she is so careful with people's checks. Then we had another long wait, after which she presented us with a bill for someone else's dinner, which was about half what we actually owed. By that point I was just ticked off enough to pay this incorrect bill and walk out. We didn't get far though. I knew there wouldn't be a soft pillow for me that night if I didn't clear my conscience. So I went back and explained that she had given us the wrong check and we wanted to pay what we owed. While she was correcting the bill, she treated me to a veritable litany of excuses. As it turns out, the cash register, the boss, the other servers and her boyfriend were all jointly to blame for our mistaken bill. I didn't bother commenting on how remarkable I though all that was.

I know you've heard it before, but responsibility is the ability to respond. If we're not responsible, what we're saying is, there is no response we are able to make, we have no control, we have no power, we are helpless, we are the victims of cruel fate or someone else's cruel actions. And unfortunately, that seems to be one of the fundamental operating assumptions today. The refusal to admit responsibility is everywhere we turn, but the consequences of this refusal are also becoming obvious.

Another article from The Week Magazine talks about a "self-injury epidemic" that is currently underway in our country. A recent study found that fully 46 percent of teenagers responding to a survey admitted to "engaging in one or more self-mutilating behaviors" including seriously cutting, burning or biting themselves to draw blood. We went through this with our own daughter, so believe me, I know first hand how awful it can be, at least from the parental side. But listen to this. When asked why they wanted to hurt themselves, "Some teens explained that hurting themselves gives them some sense of control over lives that feel out of control." It sounds to me like they feel helpless, that they have no ability to respond. Of course, it's too simplistic to pin all this on any one cause. I'm sure it's much more complicated than that. But, if we're teaching our children never to accept responsibility for their actions, and if the example we set for them is that no one is ever held accountable, we probably shouldn't be surprised when our children begin to feel out of control.

I used to have trouble with this morning's scripture passage. "The measure you give will be the measure you get…. [T]o him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away." On the face of it this sounds grossly unfair. It reminds me of the old line from the song by, Blood, Swear and Tears: "Them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose. God bless the child that's got his own." I like that song, but I don't really like the message. I know that's the way the world works sometimes, but it sounds so much like, "every one for themselves." Society can't long survive if that's what everyone believes.

I've come to understand though, that this isn't what Jesus was trying to say. When he said, "the measure you give will be the measure you get," he was simply pointing out that good causes tend to lead to good effects, and bad to bad. Cause and effect. It isn't moralistic, or at least it doesn't have to be. We don't have to point a finger and make people feel guilty about the choices they make. But neither should we imagine that our actions don't have real consequences. We can't have a society that's fair and just if people don't behave with fairness and justice. The one comes from the other. Cause and effect. The ends do not justify the means, no matter what we may prefer to think.

But far from being a bad thing, learning to accept the consequences of our actions is actually empowering. We can't do anything about something over which we have no control; something in relation to which we are helpless. But when we have the ability to respond, then we have power. When we accept our fair share of responsibility, then we can take action. We may think we're protecting ourselves by dodging responsibility, but the end result is that we back ourselves into a corner of helplessness.

When we accept our "fair share" of responsibility - and that's important because there are some people who accept far more than their fair share - when we accept our fair share of responsibility and teach our children to do the same, the effect of that cause will be healthier, happier, more self-confident children, and a less chaotic society. It's not prophesy. It's not a pie-in-the-sky dream of the future. It's simply cause and effect, or Karma if you prefer. The simple truth is, whether or not it's a message we want to hear, a clear conscience does indeed make for a soft pillow.

Amen.