Today's Sermon

 

“Wisdom for Ordinary Time: The Watchfulness of God”

 

Wisdom for Ordinary Time: The Watchfulness of God

            We continue our series on wisdom for everyday living with a turn to ethical living as people of faith. How do we define ethical living? Put simply, doing what is right (let’s assume, for the moment, we can agree on that), what is most helpful, what is most loving or just, even when no one is looking. That last piece is our focus today because so much of functioning communal life relies upon self-governance, accountability, living into shared agreements. Rules and structures are critical, but enforcement is only ever partial. To be ethical is to hold oneself or community to a standard, to be faithful, to use religious terms.
            Listen to what a premium scripture puts on ethical behavior. This is Psalm 15:  

1 O Lord, who may abide in your tent?
    Who may dwell on your holy hill?

2 Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right
    and speak the truth from their heart;
3 who do not slander with their tongue
    and do no evil to their friends
    nor heap shame upon their neighbors;
4 in whose eyes the wicked are despised
    but who honor those who fear the Lord;
who stand by their oath even to their hurt;
5 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.

            This psalm was a prayer for pilgrims coming to worship in Jerusalem. It lays out the standard for entering the worship space, but can be extended as guidance for being a part of the faithful community. It describes what we expect of ourselves and one another: to do what is right, to tell the truth, to avoid slander, to not wrong a friend nor shame a neighbor, to honor God, to keep one’s word or oath even at personal cost, and not to make money at interest. Interesting that our modern economic system is built upon a principle strictly forbidden in the Bible, called usury. Finally, don’t take bribes, something we haven’t mastered either.

            How do we achieve these standards? They establish a pretty high bar. Do we really expect people to do what is right when they could get away with the opposite? Here’s a confession—I’ve noticed that on rare occasions I find myself driving with my clerical collar one—maybe I’m going to a service somewhere or a public event, maybe a hospital visit when the look helps you get in after hours—I notice I am extra careful how I drive. Not that I am prone to giving the one finger salute, but there is no way am I going to go viral for looking like a priest giving someone the bird. Wait ‘till they discover I’m married!

            It does make a difference in the way I hold myself when I am clearly representing the church and thus, by extension, Christ. It makes a difference to know people can see me. This idea of being watched immediately raises some ethical concerns. Surveillance is on a lot of people’s minds these days. One the one hand, security cameras and cell phones have caught innumerable crimes, including misdeeds by the ones who are supposed to keep us safe. As they say, the camera doesn’t lie, though when removed from context it can be misleading. On the other hand, there are serious implications of constant surveillance. 1984 was still required reading when I was in school. We are rightly wary of data on us being gathered and sold for marketing purposes and possibly far worse.     I can’t solve that for us today, other than to say a wise culture should put parameters in place to be sure a tool for safety isn’t turned into one for exploitation.

            Interestingly, there is a theological angle to this. Have you ever stopped to think about the fact we teach with an air of innocuousness that “God is always watching”? I ask a serious question: Is that good news? I suppose it helps to believe in a forgiving, merciful God, but if you really stop to think about it, are we comforted by the idea God is watching us all the time? Do we tell this to our children comfort them or scare them?

            I found a few pieces of research you might find interesting about the impact of people being watched. All these studies will be cited in the paper copy of my sermon on the web site and the racks outside the sanctuary.

            First, there’s the “staring eyes” phenomena. On one occasion, researchers experimented with placing two different sets of pictures in a university coffee shop—one of beautiful flowers and the other watching eyes. Customers exposed to the eyes were more likely to clean up after themselves. In another version, researchers placed picture of eyes over an “honesty box” at a coffee room where people could voluntarily pay for their drink. Three times as many people paid when they saw even the depiction of eyes watching.[1] Bicycle thefts dropped dramatically on a college campus when mere signs were posted saying, “We Are Watching You.”[2] I know there is a difference between the illusion of surveillance and actual monitoring, but still I don’t like the way this feels, though I’m considering deploying in my own household that an unnamed member might put their towel away.

            Then there’s the “Princess Alice Experiment” in which two groups of children were given a rule-following task. One group was told they were in the presence of an invisible watchful person, “Princess Alice”—I don’t know how this is ethical—while the other simply trusted to perform the task. Both groups were recorded and you can guess that outcomes. Children who believed in Princess Alice, which wasn’t everyone who was told about her, were less likely to cheat.[3] Ugh, is our religion one giant Princess Alice ruse, and even if it works, how does that make us feel?

            From Princess Alice to auditory power to produce generosity, another experiment showed that wearing noise-reducing earphones reduced pro-social behaviors in gaming simulations.[4] If you can’t hear the presence of others around you, you feel less connected to them, and therefore you are less likely to work together with them or conduct yourself in a way that considers your impact on them. Okay, that’s a little less grim because it encourages not AI enabled security cameras but ways to keep us connected and aware of each other’s presence. I like that. After last week’s sermon when I was talking about my experience in Japan of people very aware of how to move in relation to others, one of you who is very well-traveled told me of the concept in Japan of “reading the air,” being so attuned to how the group needs to function it’s as if you can pick it up from the very air. That seems a good thing.

            Finally, for today there is The Hawthorne Effect, named for a famous experiment at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works plant near Chicago. At the plant, they set out to determine if workers’ productivity would go up if changes were made to their environment, such as to the lighting.[5] It did. When they brightened the lights, productivity went up. However, when they dimmed the lights, productivity also went up. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that what made production go up was the fact workers knew they were being watched as part of a study. They awareness of their observation made them increase in focus and effort. Here we go again with the eyes of Big Brother.

            What do we do with this? Is this the only way to ensure ethical behavior, the kind for which the Psalmist longs? Have we no choice but to turn on location monitoring not only for our children but our spouses, mouse and screen monitoring for our employees and so on and so on? Might that ultimately, in fact, degrade social fabric as trust is abandoned to the wind. In fact, research suggest exactly that, that the psychological and social costs show up more consistently than do the benefits to monitoring, this from a meta analysis of 70 studies on electronic monitoring of employees.[6] An analysis of over 90 studies reached similar conclusions and showed no reliable evidence of improved performance over any lasting period.[7] Watching people can really damage people as individuals and communities. This may not mean we dispense with body cameras for police because of the power differential, but it should mean we are thoughtful about how we deploy surveillance technology.

            What then it say to our faith and the way we talk about God? Where’s the wisdom for these everyday realities? Our second reading for today is, believe it or not, another version of “God is Watching,” but not in the way we’ve been talking about it. In fact, it’s a way I have found tremendously reassuring and helpful in my own life. Here is Matthew 6:1-4

6 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

            Here, Jesus is dealing with, on the surface, a pro-social activity, giving charitably. However, he mines the way it might be seen by others as socially or personally corrosive. Before we go further, we might make the opposite argument that allowing yourself to be named in a giving might inspire others to also give to something you believe is important. That’s a fair debate for another day. Jesus is addressing something far deeper than whether or not we give anonymously. He is trying to free us from captivity to the affirmation of others, not so that we can be free to do bad, but so that we trust all the good we do counts. It is seen, held, appreciated. Whatever good you do, God will see you, “your Father in heaven” if you will. It is the ultimate assurance and encouragement for ethical behavior. God knows.

            If you will allow it, this can be an enormous source not of pressure, but of release. My good deeds don’t have to be noticed by others. My goodness or righteousness even unrecognized by others, is not lost to some void. In fact, it makes the secret deeds or gifts even more rewarding, for the One we care about the most sees and knows and loves the good I do. If I make that my center, I feel the internal reward of my right doing. This only encourages it in me more. It’s not the “God is watching you” of threat, but the “God is watching you” of assurance. What you do matters, and nothing motivates us more to give than knowing it matters.

            So, see if you can carry into your life these next days a heightened attentiveness to God’s loving watchfulness and appreciation. See what treasures you will find as you contribute to the good.

            But, if you need a little external help from time to time, keeping in line, you are welcome to borrow my collar. You will never drive the same, but if you slip up, tell them you’re a Methodist.

            Amen.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1686213/

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13113408/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21377689/

[4] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005EHumB..26..245H/abstract

[5] https://catalogofbias.org/biases/hawthorne-effect/

[6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958822000616?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[7] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/peps.12514?utm_source=chatgpt.com