You may not have noticed this. If you didn't, I am probably making a mistake by bringing it to your attention. That doesn't mean I am guilty.
On the contrary. That I am bringing this to your attention, rather than your bringing it to mine, is, in fact, clear, demonstrable, evidence that I am innocent. Besides, if I were guilty, I would not draw attention to myself with a sermon entitled, "Trial by Jury." I would choose instead a subject that would distract you, something like: "Give Peace a Chance," or "Love is All There is." I am not guilty, of course, so I don't have to hide behind sermon titles.
You may be wondering what all this is about. It is about the Unabomber. You know about the Unabomber, the environmentalist who blows people away with letter bombs. His 35,000 word manifesto just made it into the papers. I have a problem with this. If every character-disordered terrorist who has something to say can demand space by extortion, we are in trouble. "Print what I say, or die." I would almost rather die. I know, it's not that easy. This particular terrorist wants to make the world a better place. I also want to make the world a better place. In this respect, the Unabomber and I are one. We are also one in another respect. We have the same initials. The unabomber signs himself, "FC."
For those of you who have been secretly wondering whether I, in fact, am the Unabomber, let me take this opportunity to assure you, I am not. Among other things, I am less powerful than the Unabomber. My latest book, which I just finished this week, has not all that many more than 35,000 words and yet the Washington Post or New York Times wouldn't think to publish it in its entirety. Even if I threatened to hold you all hostage. We wouldn't even make the first page of the Metro section.
Which brings me to my subject for this morning's sermon. Agreat ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary, once said that every minister should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. This past year it is probably good that not all of us religiously follow his advice. Otherwise, nearly every sermon preached over the past fifteen months would have to do with the O. J. Simpson trial. On principle, I only refer to the O. J. trial from the pulpit every six months. But with final summations in the offing, this morning seems opportune for a farewell visit.
Actually, since my own observations concerning the so-called trial of the century are just as banal and embarrassing as everyone else's, I shall save them for a boring dinner party. What interests me is something this trial brings to mind that has to do with all of us. It is the question not so much of guilt and innocence, but appearance and reality.
Consider first, if you will, the extent to which each of our lives, in a way, might be viewed as a trial by jury. Day in and day out, evidence is presented to a jury of our peers, evidence reflecting our character, motives, accomplishments. Some of this evidence is flattering, some really quite damning. But almost all of it is open to interpretation.
I read the new Dick Francis novel this weekend. I like Dick Francis novels. In this one, the hero, a retired jockey turned gumshoe, discovers that a well-known and much-admired friend has committed a series of heinous, apparently senseless, crimes, cutting one foot off a number of thoroughbred horses. When our hero presents his evidence to an incredulous world, he suddenly finds himself on trial. Even the horse owners who have retained his services turn on him, rejecting his findings as ludicrous and seeking a motive, perhaps jealousy, for his insane accusations.
In little ways, this sort of thing happens all the time. Since none of us can see the whole puzzle, whenever we put in a piece, even a piece that fits, others may insist that it goes elsewhere or doesn't belong in the puzzle at all. To confound things further, if life were a puzzle it would be an interactive one, with each piece changing the shape of the others, and the picture itself changing even as we put it together. And like that optical illusion of two faces and a vase, even when things begin to become clear, two people could look at the same picture and see very different images.
Which brings us back to the trial. If each of us were given 8 million dollars to defend our lives, and any accusers we may have given a like amount of money to prosecute us, by the time our trial was over there would be so many different versions of reality presented to the jury that almost any verdict might be plausible. As it is, this happens every day. Judgments are made about us, by our loved ones, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, sometimes even absolute strangers, on partial evidence, further compromised by the way in which it is presented and affected by the context in which it and we are made known. New evidence may alter others' judgments about us, or be dismissed for not fitting into preconceived notions they have developed over time. Sometimes we get framed. We can even get framed for things we have actually done -- right crime, false lead -- inviting almost comical self-righteousness. This happens at home and at work. In our lives, the jury is never out. Its judgments are sequential, sometimes spontaneous, often capricious, and multiform. We play to the jury. Sometimes we participate in our own defense, sometimes we leave our case to others. And, simultaneously, we ourselves sit on a thousand other juries, weighing evidence, making judgments, sometimes as severe toward others are we are offended by their occasional severity toward us.
If the American justice system is flawed, the human justice system as it exists in the tribunal of our minds and the minds of others is even more erratic. Hearsay rarely gets thrown out. Secondary evidence often becomes primary. And since each of us is simultaneously judge, jury, witness and defendant in our simultaneous life trials, there is no such thing as an objective opinion. Among other things, this should temper our own tendency to leap to judgment, for we are as likely to be on the receiving end as we are to dish such judgment out. That is a sermon in and of itself. This morning, I wish to focus on a different aspect of our trials by jury. Let's look at appearance and reality in terms of judgment and conscience.
I think of O. J. Simpson sitting day in and day out behind that table. His often impassive face is like a screen upon which so many conflicting images are projected. Star. Hero. Wife abuser. Murderer. Later this week, the beleaguered jury whose lives have been held captive these many months will, after weighing 16 million dollars worth of evidence, relevant and irrelevant, dramatic and painstakingly mundane, pass judgment on this man. One word: guilty or innocent. Case closed.
But what about on the other side of the screen? Inside this man's head, in his conscience, however confused his feelings, however angry he is with his accusers and their practices, however beguiled or sustained by his defenders' championing, he knows something no one else knows for sure. He knows what he has done or did not do. The rest is show, almost even a distraction from the lonely tribunal of conscience before which he, and each of us daily in our own lives, must present ourselves.
Conscience is something much more like the judgment of God than the judgment of others. But, ultimately, it is the only judgment that matters. Whatever the world sees, however rightly or wrongly it judges us, usually both, all the time, we finally must live with our conscience. Anything that distracts us from that distracts us from the presence of Truth with a capital T, the truth of God.
It's not that what the jury thinks doesn't matter. Of course it matters. It matters what people think of us, how they behave toward us, what they say about us to other prospective jurors, the judgments they bring down. But just remember. For every instance that we get judged falsely, in a way unflattering or hurtful to us, there is likely another, even simultaneously another, where someone or some group is judging us falsely in a flattering way, giving us credit where credit is not due. We cannot have one without the other.
I was falsely accused of lying the other day. It was something small, but it bothered me greatly. I mentioned this to my eldest son. "Why are you so upset about this, Dad?" he asked. "It's no big deal." "What about you," I continued. "When someone accuses you of something you did not do, how do you feel?" "Well, for one thing," he said. "There's usually at least some truth on both sides."
I didn't want to hear this. On this occasion there was no truth on the other side. But then I thought further about this. Though there was no truth to what I was accused of, it was a plausible accusation. And I also knew I had lied in my life -- many times in fact -- and not been caught. Got clean away with it. Mostly little lies. "I can't attend the reception because I have another appointment," that sort of thing. No big deal.
But here I was being accused of lying when I didn't, and I was in high dudgeon. It was unfair. I wanted to clear my good name.
Of course, my son was right. There usually is some truth on both sides -- even in this instance I had to admit -- if we will only look beyond the particulars of any given encounter to the larger picture. Spiritually, it is probably even good to be falsely accused every once and a while. It helps restore the balance for those other times when we got away with something unnoticed by the jury of our peers.
One of our members told me last year that every time someone at work blames him for something, even something he was not responsible for, he apologizes. Admittedly, this is a very self-confident man. But, even in practical terms, much of the time we spend defending ourselves is spent ineffectually. And given what the world's lens does to absolutely everything, it is almost impossible to get the record of our lives absolutely straight. Certainly impossible to do so at all times with everyone.
Besides, that is not what really matters. What really matters is whether or not we can manage to keep the record of our lives at least somewhat straight with ourselves. If we are at peace with our conscience, what the world thinks about us may prove inconvenient or nettlesome, but it is absolutely secondary. By the same token, if we are not at peace with our conscience, a thousand plaudits and flattering misimpressions will account us nothing. It can even hurt us. We may become too enamored of our own perfume. And what happens when we do? Our conscience is lulled. We fool ourselves, even as we have fooled others. And then, we magnify slights. We lose the compassion that arises most naturally from empathy. We lift ourselves above others. We lose the saving ability to walk or kneel beside our brothers and our sisters, as co-communicants of life's suffering as well as of life's joy.
So I have only this to say about the O. J. verdict. It would be a far better thing for this man and for his soul to be falsely convicted of a murder he did not commit and therefore to have to spend the rest of his life in jail, than it would be for him to be acquitted for a crime he did in fact commit and therefore get to spend the remainder of his life as a free man.
The one part of us that no one and no thing can take hostage is our conscience. A clear conscience is always free, no matter what the rest of the world may think of us. By the same token, a guilty conscience, the jury of one that will always have the final say, transforms even the most smiling, congratulatory world into a prison house, a living hell.
This said, just one more thing. We can also be imprisoned by an unnecessarily guilty conscience. We can accumulate a lifetime, or even a week's worth, of petty evidence against ourselves and turn it into a constitutional felony. This serves neither us nor our neighbor. All it serves is the futile cause of unhealthy self-absorption. Not only that, but until we can forgive ourselves for our humanity, we really shouldn't be allowed on any jury that may happen to be trying one of our neighbor's cases. For if we tend to be unfairly hard on ourselves, it stands to reason that we will be just as hard on others.
This is why, for most of our crimes I propose a new sentence. "Not guilty by virtue of humanity." Nine out of ten times, this sentence will prove eminently fair. You might even try it on someone whose case you are trying right now. Before passing judgment, you might remember, they are only human too.
Copyright, All Souls Church, 1996