James is quickly becoming one of my favorite books of the Bible, in spite of Luther's insistence that it was an "epistle of straw." My September 2nd sermon talks about being "Doers of the Word" and echoes Jame's famous and controversial statement that "faith without works is dead." The text for that day was James 1:17-27. I hope you like it.
Doers of the Word
In an old box in my closet, I have
the world’s best skipping stone. I found down at the lake when I was about
twelve, and took it home with me. It’s a slate grey stone about the size of a
sand dollar. It’s perfectly round, except for a little notch where my index
finger fits so that it can really put a lot of spin on it. It’s slightly
concave, shaped sort of like a plate, so that when it strikes the water it’s
edge will always be upturned a little bit to give it good lift as it bounces
across the water. I can usually get 6 or 7 skips even with an imperfect rock,
so I imagine that with this perfect skipping stone, I might be able to skip it
clear across a lake, if the wind was right. But of course I don’t know that.
It’s so perfect I’ve never been willing to throw it. And until I do, it will be
nothing but a plain old rock. A skipping stone isn’t worth much of anything
unless you do something with it.
Faith is the same. It isn’t worth
much of anything unless you do something with it. We are great at talking about
the Bible, but not nearly as good at doing it.
And the book of James has some
harsh words for those who talk a good game but don’t put that faith into
action. He says that they are merely deceiving themselves. That they are like a
person who looks at himself or herself in the mirror, and then immediately
turns and forgets what they are like. This seems like a ridiculous thing, that
you could look in a mirror and then immediately forget what you look like, but
when it comes to our actions its far more common than you think.
I was watching stuff on Youtube the other day, and I
stumbled upon a strange game show, called Moment of Truth. Before the show, the
contestant takes a lie detector test on a series of sensitive questions, and
then for the show, they are asked these questions again, this time in front of
friends and family (and of course a live audience and millions watching at
home), and then they win money each time they tell the truth, and lose if they
are caught in a lie. And there was this one girl, I think this clip came from
one of the most extreme episodes, and she had just been awful to people that
loved her, and now she was being forced to face it.
“Do you ever take your wedding ring
off to pretend that you’re single?” the host asks.
“Yes.”
“Have you ever slept with another
man since you’ve been married?
“Yes.”
“If your ex-boyfriend asked you to
get back with him today, would you leave your husband?”
“Yes.” With each successive “yes” it was just a little bit
more heartbreaking to see her struggle with the way she’d treated people she
cared about. She took a hard look in the mirror, and she was obviously ashamed
of what she saw. And then they asked another question that caught me off guard.
“In spite of all this, do you
believe that you are a good person?”
And she stopped and thought for a second. And she said, “You know, I
have to be honest. Yes.”(I can't seem to find the original clip I watched. A summation of her answers can be found here, but be warned it is still very painful to watch).
Now my first thought when I watched this clip was, “How
could she think she is a good person, after all that she’d done?” And I thought
in my head, “I thank you, God, that I am not like this woman. I prayed just
like the Pharisee in Luke, who thanks God that he is not the tax collector, who
tore his garments in shame and truly understood what God’s forgiveness meant.
But as I’ve thought more about it,
I’ve realized that I have looked in the mirror and forgotten what I saw more
times than I’d like to admit. Every Sunday we have a prayer of corporate
confession, and then a period of silence, and I do my best during that time to
look in the mirror at my own sinfulness, and confess it honestly and in
repentance I ask for forgiveness promising to do better next time. And when I
think back to what I prayed this week, and what I prayed last week, I realize
that it’s almost always the same sins that continue to trip me up.
O
God, I was lazy this week, and gave you less than my best. O, God someone hurt
me, and instead of turning the other cheek I lashed out in anger and hurt
someone else. O Lord, there was someone who needed me this week, and I did not
go to them. Every Sunday I look in the mirror during that time of silence, but
come Monday I have completely forgotten what I look like. I don’t think I’m the
only one with this problem. I bet if we were to write down our confessions each
Sunday for a year we would discover that over and over again, we are confessing
and committing the same sins.
It’s
not just us as individuals that have this problem, but our whole church, it’s
our whole faith has come down hard with do-nothing syndrome and recurring
talk-itis. There have been studies in the past few years, of young adults, on
what they think of the church. Probably you have heard that the church is not
doing well in this demographic. When asked to describe Christianity today, 84%
of unchurched young adults said that “judgmental” seemed to fit very well. 79%
of them said that “hypocritical” would also be a good term to describe
Christianity. Among young Christians the response was better, but not terribly
so. More than half of them believe that the church is “judgmental” and
“hypocritical” came in at 49%.
Jesus said “by their fruits you shall know them.” These are our fruits.
So
at least for me, James’ message to us today hits home quite hard. It is a hard
truth. A call to arms. A challenge. But in the midst of this hard truth there
is good news. James tells us to welcome with meekness the implanted word that
has the power to save souls. Did
you hear that? The implanted word. God’s word has not just been told to us, it
has been planted within us. It has been written on our hearts. Listen to the
words of Jeremiah:“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of
Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I
will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my
people.”
And it gets better than that.
Because James tells us that if we do put our faith into action, if we do let
the word penetrate us and flow out from us, then we will be blessed. “those who
look into the perfect law, that law of liberty, and persevere, being not
hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.”
I
was talking with one of my friends in the ministry, and he reminded me of an
old and classic image of sin: Bondage. Sin traps us, tempts us, so that we feel
like we don’t have control over our actions. When James talks about the rank
growth of wickedness, I think about barnacles that can slowly grow around a
ship’s rudder if it isn’t used for a while and freeze it in place. We can get
stuck on that wrong course. Paul talks about sin keeping us in bondage. “For I
do not do the good I want,” he says,
“but the evil I do not want is what I do.”
And
so here is the good news. God’s law is the law of liberty. It is the law of
freedom from sin, freedom from desires that ensnare us, wounds that limit us,
from patterns of misbehavior that trap us. God’s law, forgiveness, grace, frees
us from the bondage of sin and gives us a new path to walk. One in which God’s
word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path and we no longer go astray.
When
I was in my third year of Seminary I worked at this church up in the Bronx, and
up there they had this practice, where once a month after the sermon they would
put up a microphone in the front of the table and invite people to come up and
give their testimony to what God has been doing in their lives. You wouldn’t
believe how encouraging for your faith to hear people come up one after another
and say, “My prayers have been answered.” We Presbyterians like to divide our
worship up into Proclamation and Response, and since it came after the sermon
it was technically response. But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a better
proclamation in my life.
And
on one particular Sunday, a woman stood up and said, “I have been holding on to
anger for most of my life. More than a decade ago, someone hurt me, and they
hurt me very bad. And I was so hurt I would sit and think about how much I was
hurt, and how badly I wanted to hurt him so that he could feel what I felt. And
it drained me. It was exhausting. I held on so tight to my anger, and my anger
held on tight to me, it pulled on my other relationships, it dragged me into
depression time and time again. And today I heard God speaking to me and
realized that I have let myself be captive to my anger, and that I want to be
captive no longer, I want to be free. As we were praying after the sermon I
bowed my head and I said, “I forgive you”. And it is the best feeling I have
ever felt. I am free. If any of you have done something wrong to me here in
church, I forgive you too. Whatever it is, whatever it was, as of today, I have
forgotten it. I will be a slave to my anger no longer.
And
all of us sinners sat around wondering what it was that someone had done to
hurt her so bad she held on to it for ten years, and wondering if it was us who
had wronged her in church, but not her. She was free. She never had to worry
about it again.
So
James tells us, if we will look into the law of liberty, and persevere, in
turning to God, in accepting the word which God has written on our hearts, in
being not just hearers but doers of the word, we will be blessed. We will be
blessed with true freedom, no longer captive to sin. We will be blessed with
true wealth, storing up our treasures not here on earth but in the kingdom that
lasts forever. We will be blessed with true faith, faith that is manifest in
our lives, and that bears good fruit.
Now
in order that you might bear good fruit, I invite you to think this week,
perhaps even jot down real quick, about one place where God is using you to be
quick to listen, slow to anger, or slow to speak. Where you can be not just a
hearer of the word, but a doer of the word, where your faith can be made
manifest in your life. For if you do you will find yourself blessed in the
doing, blessed beyond measure.
Let us bow our heads in prayer.
God
most high, we know that every good thing, every perfect gift comes from
you. And we thank you for the gift
of Your word, which you have written on our hearts to free us from the bondage
of sin. Make us quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, and guide us
to act out our faith in righteousness and love. Open our ears that we hear Your
word and lift up our hands to Your will that we find perfect freedom and
perfect love in Your arms and bear good fruit in Your name. This we pray in the
name of Your Son, who is the true vine, who lived and died that we might have
eternal life.
No comments:
Post a Comment