Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, the Gospel, and God`s Salvation Army

Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, the Gospel, and God`s Salvation Army
By Roger Lovette

[Dr. Roger Lovette is pastor of the Baptist Church of the Covenant in Birmingham, Alabama and is a frequent contributor to Christian Ethics Today.]

We could be undisturbed by what has been happening the national scene? I am just heartsick over recent events in Washington. For months this debacle has been building until it has reached a crescendo. The media have had a field day; and, apparently like most other Americans, I resent this and find them despicable players on this sorry stage. We are sitting around pondering a salacious account of tawdry misbehavior which even horny teenagers ought not to indulge themselves in, worrying about what we should say to our children and grandchildren, anxious about what it says about our country, concerned about what the world thinks about us. Never have I felt this way about my country, except perhaps that awful weekend in November of 1963 when a President lay dead in Dallas, felled by a cruel assassin`s bullets. Then, not knowing what to do, we gathered in front of our TV sets day after day. And on Sunday we filled the churches across the land. We came hoping for some word from the Lord, hoping somehow that we might make sense out of that violent madness. We came, as Unamuno suggested years before, to grieve together-to weep in common for ourselves, for the Kennedys, for our children, and for our country.

I feel some of those same feelings today. So I come here and open the Book, hoping on such an occasion as this that there will be some word from the Lord.

By way of introduction, however, and before I turn to the scriptures, I want to make several comments.

First, this is not a time to gloat, even you are a passionately partisan Republican. What has happened to the presidency and to the way Americans do politics is a sad thing, a profoundly sad thing. It will take years and years to recover. When we do recover, the way we look at the presidency and many other authority figures will be forever different. Mistrust in public officials is building and seems destined to escalate, just going on and on and on. This whole shabby matter distracts us from the business of working together for the common good where there is much to do. Grief would be a more appropriate response than gloating for the people of God in particular but for all Americans in general, bi-partisan grief, genuine grief that leads to authentic repentance for making the sorry loom that would weave such a sorry pattern.

Next, remember our history. Not only our national history, but our biblical history as well. The United States has been beset by scandals, major and minor, since our earliest beginnings. Our leaders have been frequently flawed. Seeing one more now with feet of clay is not the end of the world. By saying this, I do not mean to diminish the sadness or the seriousness of what has been going on. But we also remember that King David, Israel`s greatest king, once admitted his great wrong of adultery and murder only after he was confronted and rebuked by Nathan, the prophet of God. We need to remember that whole sordid affair was just one chapter in a long, long story. David, despite his defects, would become the yardstick by which every king of Israel in the future would forever be measured and judged. And today we still name our sons after this king, flawed as he was by adultery, murder, violence, and war. Human leaders are indeed prone to judgment failures and character flaws. Our country and our churches have survived many crises, and both are still standing. So, God bless America and God bless our churches.

Third, there are rules and standards that ought always to be observed. We break these at our own peril. All of the Ten Commandments still stand, including those pertaining to our sexuality and our speech. If you were to take a piece of cloth and tear it in two, you might be able to stitch it together. You might be able to mend it. You might even be able to reweave it. But it would never, ever be as it was before. All of us have to live with the consequences of our actions. We can hurt and we can maim and we can even destroy others when we break the rules and ignore the standards. This is serious business. That is why the Ten Commandments talk about these things.

Fourth, Jesus was much harder on self-righteousness than he ever was on sins of sex or speech. Isn`t that strange? Read the Book. I have had it with the self-righteousness of the media commentators and the Radical Religious Right Republican partisans who have piously taken out full-page ads to recycle renegade preachers but who have jumped into the present political crisis to call for the President`s resignation or impeachment. What they obviously would prefer would be to have his head on a platter. Al Mohler, who is the Fundamentalist president of the now Fundamentalist Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville has publicly called on the President`s home church in Little Rock to deal with its erring member. Who gave this young Pharisee authority? Authentic Baptists still believe in the autonomy of the local church and the priesthood of all believers. He said: "How can President Clinton claim to be a Southern Baptist and persist in this public display of serial sin? Only because the congregation which holds his membership has failed to exercise any semblance of church discipline. Southern Baptists will be watching the Immanuel Baptist Church of Little Rock to see if it musters the courage to make clear its convictions." The pastor of that church, Rex Home, needs a standing ovation. This is what he said: "The recent admission.. .by the President is grievous. His actions are indefensible and inexcusable. They are not, however, unforgivable. I pray the President will find the grace of God which comes upon confession of sin and the peace which comes from a restored relationship with our Lord." (These quotes are taken from the Religious Herald, September 3, 1998, "Differing Views," p. 5.) I keep remembering the story of the woman who was flung at Jesus` feet after she had been caught in the very act of adultery. Jesus did not focus on the sinner. He focused instead on those who stood in the circle with the pursed lips and the folded arms, wanting to know what Jesus would do. He said, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." It is far, far easier to deal with someone else`s sin and to ignore your own.

And in this context what ought to be said of the Republican effort to bring down the Democratic standard-bearer? What should be said about the forty million dollar publicly-funded partisan exercise designed to humiliate Clinton but especially orchestrated to influence future elections, consolidate Republican control of the Congress, secure the White House for a Republican in the next election, and prepare for future spoils of political victory? What ought to be said of illegally leaked grand jury testimony, of lavishly funded entrapment schemes, and of the corrosive "spirit of party" so abhorred by George Washington, which has reached a new low in the history of this republic. Is there a word from the Lord? Consider:

"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," and "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." America`s two-party political system is not perfect, but it is the best political system that humanity has thus far devised. The Republican Party is a conserving party with an anti-government orientation and the Democratic Party is an innovating party with a pro-government orientation. History has proven that both these orientations are needed for their checks and balances work together for our common good.

Fifth, the Bible admonishes us to pray for those in authority. Do you find it strange that the Apostle Paul admonished the churches to pray for the Roman emperor, the very one who spent a lot of his energy trying to destroy the church? Christians are to pray for those who are in places of governmental leadership, who are responsible for seeking to maintain public order, keep the peace, and promote the general welfare. This clearly does not mean for us to pray like the Congregationalist Samuel Eaton who disliked the Madisonian foreign policy so much that he prayed, "0 Lord, Thou hast commanded us to pray for our enemies. We would therefore pray for the President and Vice President of the United States." And I don`t think it means for us to pray like Henry Ward Beecher, a famous preacher of another day who, by the way, had his own sexual problems which made a great scandal later on. He prayed once after President Buchanan was gone, "Thank you, Lord, for removing rulers imbecile in all but corruption." Christians are to pray genuinely and earnestly for those is authority in government.

Perhaps that is enough commentary; It is time to get to the text. I have searched long and hard for something to say today, and I have found it in one of the Pastoral Epistles, which epistles are First and Second Timothy and the book of Titus. These letters were written to present Paul`s teachings to the churches and to safeguard them from wrong teachings and practices.

First Timothy, from which the text comes, was written to offer guidance for the administration of the churches. How are we to make this thing called church work with integrity? What does it mean to be God`s people and to follow principles of the gospel? Paul wrote to oppose false teachings which would lead little, fragile churches down side streets and dead-end roads. First Timothy, chapter 1 and verse 15 is the heart of what he is saying at this point: "This saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance." Five times in the Pastoral Epistles, the author says: "This saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance. What he is saying is that this is a serious matter. "The reason that Christ came into the world was to save sinners." This is what Christ is about. This is what church is about. The church is a salvation army. Outwork is to bring redemption to anyone and to everyone. I don`t care if we are talking about Monica or Linda or Ken or the President of the United States. The church is not in the judging, punishing, or self-righteousness business. We are in the salvation business.

As I have listened and watched, I have remembered the story that comes from a French novel by Pierre van Passen. The little, aged Roman Catholic pastor at Roudaire yearned for his people to love one another. He kept praying that they might just come to understand something of the mercy of God that had been poured out on them and on all of God`s children, and consequently that they might turn and give that mercy out to one another. But it was not to be so in that little place called Roudaire. So one day the pastor went down to the river to receive the drowned bodies of two illegitimate children, a brother and a sister, and it was just more than the pastor could bear. The brother was a huge, misshapen gnome, driven to suicide by the cruel taunts of unchristian members of the church parish. The sister, who was so distressed that the only person in all the world who loved her and whom she in turn loved was gone, that she threw herself into the river where she was also drowned. The pastor was destitute. He had worked hard and it had come to this. So he broke the rules of his church. He opened the doors and brought in the bodies of the two children, human beings the community and even the church called illegitimate, bastards. Suicides. Then he called the people together and said, "Come in. We are going to have a service." The congregation was furious. But they came with their anger and packed the house. Finally, when his time came, the pastor said:

In that day, the great day, when the Lord of all shall say to me, "Pasteur de Ia Roudaire, where are thy sheep?", I shall not answer Him. And If He shall say to me the second time, "Pastor of Roudaire, I gave thee sheep to guard; where are thy sheep?" then, I shall say, "They are not sheep, 0 Lord-they were a pack of wolves.

When we turn to the text, it is clear that Paul remembered his own background. He remembered that he was a sinner. This is where we start. Not in Washington. Not in the state capital. Not across the aisle. Not with somebody else. We remember ourselves. Paul called himself a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man of violence, the chief of sinners.

Paul never could forget the things that he had done. The word "blaspheme" comes from the Greek word bias which means stupid and from pheme which means speech-stupid speech. Paul is saying, "My words hurt a lot of people." The next word is blapto, having to do with persecution. He is saying, "I persecuted Christians, trying to grind into the dust those who disagreed with me." Then we come to the most serious word of all, hubris, a violent word, arrogant, prideful, sadistic. It means to inflict hurt and injury on somebody else. Paul is saying that he felt delight in the cruelty that he inflicted on others. "I have done all these things," he said, "and I am ashamed."

Then it is in verse 15 that he writes that he is the chief of sinners. But despite all the terrible things that he had done, he shares an intriguing word in verse 16. He says that Christ Jesus with perfect patience poured out mercy on this wretchedly wicked Saul and pointed him in a new direction. The New Testament language is especially interesting here. It says that the Lord Jesus Christ took a pencil and a piece of paper and began to sketch a picture of a new man. A new person. A picture not of the old, mean, proud, vindictive, cruel man who

enjoyed twisting the knife in others. Paul said that the Lord was drawing a picture of somebody he himself could hardly recognize. It was a new Paul. It was a changed Paul. It was the Paul who would rise to the occasion and march across his world saying, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am nothing."

Paul tells us why he was changed. It was because of four things:

Mercy. He uses this word twice. It is one of the great words in scripture.
Grace. God`s unmerited favor that overflowed until it covered him all over.
Faith. This is the confidence that the believer has ground to stand on so solid that nothing could ever, ever shake it.
Love. This is the love of God in Christ so measureless and strong that Paul could stand in awesome wonder and ponder its cruciform shape and then could share with us the length and breadth and depth and height of it all-mercy and grace and faith and love.
One of our favorite hymns in this country is "Amazing Grace." We sing it on all kinds of occasions. It never fails to move us:

Through many dangers, toils, and snares
I have already come.
`Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The man who wrote that hymn had been guilty of terrible things, John Newton. He finally sank so low that he bought a slave ship and became a slave trader who would sail his ship up and down the African coast, kidnapping human beings and cramming them into the hold of his ship and then hauling them to different countries to sell them like cattle. But then one day he heard of word of grace. He became a preacher of the gospel in time and over his mantel wrote in large letters:

"Thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondsman in the land of Egypt and the Lord thy God redeemed thee." John Newton composed his own epitaph, and this is what is on his tombstone today: "John Newton. Clerk, once an Infidel and Libertine, a Servant of Slaves in Africa, was Preserved, Restored, Pardoned, and Appointed to Preach the Faith he had so long laboured to destroy." He never forgot that he was a forgiven sinner.

Unamuno was right. We come to grieve together. We grieve for the President and his family. We grieve for the nation. We do not judge. That is God`s business. We remember that marvelous scene from First Timothy where the Lord Jesus, with a pad and pencil, sketches a new likeness for his church, his people. In that picture, if you look closely, you will discover mercy and grace and faith and love. God`s salvation army..

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