Sermon Title: "Where's Your Moral Compass?"
Date: April 27, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Exodus 20:1-17

Sermon request:  "Remind us of our basic Christian moral issues."

A while back I received this forwarded prayer via e-mail.  I am always hesitate to use such materials in worship for three reasons:  1)  They are often unattributed.  Someone should receive credit.  2)  I sometimes question the veracity of what I am reading, even if it appears factual.  And 3), I figure many of you have already seen these things.

This purports to be a prayer offered by the Rev. Joe Wright to the Kansas State Senate.  Before I used it, I decided to check out the story, and printed in the bulletin the web-link for Snopes, which researches these urban legends, and tells whether they are true or not.

It turns out the Rev. Joe Wright (not to be confused with Jeremiah Wright), former senior minister of Central Christian Church in Wichita, Kansas, was invited to offer the prayer at the Kansas State House of Representatives.  What follows is the actual prayer he offered at the opening session on January 23, 1996, taken from the church’s web-site, which differs somewhat from the prayer floating around on the Internet these past dozen years, and beginning in 2005 to be attributed as “Paul Harvey’s prayer.”

But first, a disclaimer.  The prayer I am about to read is not my prayer.  It is the Rev. Joe Wright’s prayer.  Since my sermons are now posted on our church’s web site, both in print and podcast form, if any of you ever choose to run for president of the United States, I don’t want to receive accusations that I prayed these words; nor would I ever want you to be denied a fair chance to run for office because of anything I said from this pulpit.

Here’s Rev. Wright’s prayer to the legislature, all or part of which you may agree or disagree with:

“Heavenly Father, we come before you to ask your forgiveness.  We seek your direction and your guidance.  We know your word says, ‘Woe to those who call evil good.’  But that’s what we’ve done.

“We’ve lost our spiritual equilibrium.  We have inverted our values.  We have ridiculed the absolute truth of your word in the name of moral pluralism.  We have worshiped other gods and called it multiculturalism.

“We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.

“We’ve exploited the poor and called it a lottery.  We’ve neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.  We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.  In the name of choice, we have killed our unborn.  In  the name of right to life, we have killed abortionists.

“We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem.  We have abused power and called it political savvy.  We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it taxes.  We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.  We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

“Search us, oh, God, and know our hearts today.  Try us.  Show us any wickedness within us.  Cleanse us from every sin and set us free.  Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of the State of Kansas, and that they have been ordained by you to govern this great state.

“Grant them your wisdom to rule.  May their decisions direct us to the center of your will.  And, as we continue our prayer and as we come in out of the fog, give us clear minds to accomplish our goals as we begin this Legislature.  For we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

The prayer Rev. Wright used wasn’t entirely of his own crafting; it was a version of one written in 1995 by Bob Russell who offered it at the Kentucky Governor’s Prayer Breakfast in Frankfort, Kentucky.

Rev. Wright had been invited to serve as the House’s guest chaplain by Rep. Anthony Powell, a Wichita Republican who was also a member of Wright’s church.  Accordingly, Rev. Wright read the prayer at the opening of the legislature back in 1996 and departed, unaware of the ruckus he had created until his church secretary called him on his car phone to ask him what he had done.

Reportedly, one Democrat (not “a number of legislators” as this forwarded e-mail alleges) walked out in protest; three others gave speeches critical of Wright’s prayer; and another blasted Wright’s “message of intolerance.”

Rev. Wright said afterwards:  “I certainly did not mean to be offensive to individuals, but I don’t apologize for the truth.”  His staff stopped counting the telephone calls—some in support, some in opposition—that came from every state and many foreign countries after the first 6,500.  Wright appeared on dozens of radio shows and was the subject of numerous TV and print news reports, and his prayer stirred up controversy all over again when it was read by the chaplain coordinator in the Nebraska legislature the following month.  Wright later explained, “I thought I might get a call from an angry congressman or two, but I was talking to God, not them.  The whole point was to say that we all have sins that we need to repent — all of us . . . The problem, I guess, is that you’re not supposed to get too specific when you’re talking about sin.”

What to make of all the fuss?  Syndicated religion columnist Terry Mattingly probably explained it best when he wrote:  “The easy answer is that he read a prayer about sin.  The complicated answer is that Wright jumped into America’s tense debate about whether some things are always right and some things are always wrong.”

The reason I used this prayer story as a sermon-starter today is that I think it is a good introduction to what the sermon requester here asked about when wanted to be reminded of “our basic Christian moral issues”.  I suspect he or she meant moral “values”, not “issues”, although they are issues.  We each like to think we are tolerant, understanding, even accepting of persons of other religions, races, sexual orientation, political persuasions, lifestyles—yet we all have our own individual biases and prejudices, myself included.  We think less of someone who doesn’t fit into the particular mold we regard as “right and acceptable” to us.

And I think that is what causes much of the violence we read in the newspapers or see on the newscasts.  People are being shot, not in the bad section of Detroit, not just in Central L.A., but right here in Long Beach because someone looks like they belong to the other gang, or simply because they are walking to the donut shop in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Shootings happen in schools, not just in Columbine or Virginia Tech, but in Oxnard, because someone thinks mass violence is the solution to their own personal torments.  Students act out their intolerance of other students different from themselves in every manner from shunning them, publicly ridiculing them, making their life hell, or killing them.  A bunch of middle school girls in Florida repeatedly beat up a classmate, then post the video on You Tube.  Within two weeks, similar aged girls do a copycat beating in the Midwest and post that online also.

The other day I heard graduates speak of a respected educational institution (not in this area) that has been hit three times by staff embezzlement.  The same day, driving home from that meeting, I heard a radio news report of a raid on a swingers’ sex club in an industrial park in Orange County.  It seems some people will do anything to get what they want, by whatever means they can to get it, immoral, illegal, and in the eyes of accepted customs, just plain wrong.

When Chris read the introduction to the Ten Commandments today, he mentioned the court cases we’ve seen in recent years about whether their posting should be allowed on the walls of various American courthouses.  Long ago I said from this pulpit that if people of any religion, or no religion at all, could live by the latter six, those that deal with human relationships, most of the laws we have on our books would not be necessary.  They deal with prohibitions against murder, adultery, stealing, perjury, and coveting, which often leads to stealing.  Couldn’t most judges, attorneys, and any of us who have ever sat on a jury find that the majority of the court cases dealing with individuals are a breaking of one of those commandments?  If we accepted them as part of our basic Christian morals, then much of the awful news we see in the newspapers would disappear.  We’d just be left with awful stories about rising gas prices, escalating food costs, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the falling value of our homes.

Underneath my sermon title in the bulletin I did not select a portion of today’s lesson as I usually do, but instead listed two statements of Jesus.  One says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39)  The second says, “Love one another as I have loved you.”  (John 15:12) 

I daresay that over the past 35 years, more of my sermons have dealt with that one theme than any other.  I don’t mean passionate love, romantic love, erotic love, married love.  And neither did Jesus.  Loving one another means accepting another for who they are, wanting the best for them, and a willingness to do what friends do for one another.

That is my very simple and basic foundation to the Christian moral values we need to live by.  Certainly, as people of faith, we also build on the first four commandments honoring God, but if we can honor others, revere the value of each human life, respect their property, and seek to love one another as Christ loves us, the whole human race would be in much better shape, and this world would be a better place in which to live.

Further information about the story of Rev. Joe Wright’s prayer may be found at http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/wright.asp