One of the responsibilities I have had as the chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry for the Annual Conference is to be a part of the teaching team for the ethics training that we as clergy are required to do every four years. These trainings have taken place over the last few weeks.
My role was to introduce the training by beginning with our values. What we value makes a difference in our ethical choices and actions. As United Methodists we return over and over to our Wesleyan values. They are deeply connected to what we often call the three simple rules: Do no harm; Do good; and, Stay in love with God.
These are tied to the values of safety (do no harm), respect (do good), and faith (stay in love with God). We want all people to be safe and respected, especially in the church, so that they can experience and grow in faith.
Unethical actions take place when we give priority to other values first. One of the slides we used in the training had a beautiful picture of a tree with its deep roots exposed. We talked about how it’s often hard to see our roots because they are under the surface.
Metaphorically, these roots in our lives often cause us to prioritize things we don’t realize we value rather than the things we think we value. This happens particularly in our beliefs around power, authority, gender, and race. We do not realize how deep these roots run until they are challenged. In the midst of that challenge we can either begin to examine our attitudes and behaviors or we can stay on the surface and ignore them.
During this worship series, we have been looking deeper into the value of kindness. We have realized that it is more than doing a nice deed or offering a compliment. Those are good things, but kindness includes much more. It includes compassion, humility, respect, and love. These are the deep roots that anchor and help kindness to grow in our lives and impact our world for good.
We are doing this series during the election season because often while we say and think we value kindness, compassion, humility, respect, and love, we find ourselves thinking and acting in ways that don’t align with these values. We find ourselves judging harshly, being caught up in arrogant statements, disrespecting large groups of people, and listening to political soundbites meant to inflame more than the people we love, or who love us.
This week, as we are preparing for the election on Tuesday, and as we receive the results of it, I pray that we will truly value and practice kindness and all that it includes—compassion, humility, respect, and love. And when we encounter attitudes and behaviors within and around us that are counter to kindness, I pray that we will acknowledge and examine them and change them to practice Jesus’ teaching to “do unto others.”
Peace,
Pastor Suzanne