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Message from Pastor Hiller

Lessons on I-80

By Pastor Elizabeth Hiller

Scooting along I-80, returning from a Memorial Day celebration with friends in Iowa City, we noticed that traffic was going significantly slower than usual. In our 55-mile drive, we noticed over half a dozen state troopers, all of whom were enforcing speed or safety laws with the motoring public. We witnessed, at a very reasonable speed of course, the highly-effective campaign, “Click It or Ticket.”

According to the state trooper website, every year during this holiday period, law enforcement agencies across the country coordinate to encourage seat belt use and sensible driving, through extra patrols and vigilance on the highways.

“Click It or Ticket” is the most successful campaign ever at encouraging people to wear safety belts. In the past, the highway safety types have used a variety of formats to encourage people to buckle up. They’ve used carnage-filled accident scene photos. They’ve used the famed crash-test dummies. Yet these campaigns were not as successful as the simple message of “Click It or Ticket.” For the general public, avoiding a ticket seems to be more compelling than the possibility of winding up squished on the road.

Laws like speed limits have a great purpose. They’re meant to keep us safe — both from ourselves and each other. Yet, even knowing that some engineer somewhere figured out the highest safe speed for us to go on a particular highway and knowing that we endanger ourselves and others when we drive faster, the speedometer still inches its way up when there are no state troopers in sight. And, like being hit with a mallet on the knee at the doctor’s office, the brakes are tapped just a little when a squad car is spotted. Even with great purposes behind them, without the threat of a hefty fine, we are much less inclined to follow speed limits.

Though we push against the boundaries of laws, like speed limits, I would drive as fast as possible out of any lawless place. Laws encourage people heading in one direction to stay on one side of the road. Laws discourage people from stealing everything from each other. Laws keep people from cutting down all of the trees in Vander Veer Park for firewood.

While we have civil laws, laws instituted by the state, as Christians we also have the law of God. The laws that God gives us — like “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” and “Do not worry” — serve two big purposes. Law opens our eyes to God and to other people. “Love your neighbor” are three words that send us to God, asking God for forgiveness when we’ve been rotten to someone or something that God has created.

The law also prods us to ask God for the strength to ask our actual neighbor for forgiveness for a harsh comment or a quick judgment. Above all, law points us to the good Lord whose love in the Gospel of Jesus Christ continually offers us forgiveness and who gives us the power to try again when we inevitably shrug away the obligation to care for others.

Ultimately, God doesn’t threaten us with an $80 ticket for speeding. Jesus doesn’t steam, “Love your neighbor, or else!” Despite what those black-and-white billboards say, God doesn’t threaten: “Love! Or I’ll Shove!” or make rush hour longer for that matter. Through God’s Word found in scripture, and through our life together as a Christian community, we are encouraged to know and follow God’s commands and join others in 2,000 years of tradition that seeks to help people best get along with one another and to best know and love God.

Call it Christian ethics, or discipleship, or simply being a Christian. God gifts us with the right direction for being part of our world and total forgiveness when we fall short.

Pastor Elizabeth L. Hiller,

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