Do You Hear What I'm Doing?

Do You Hear What I’m Doing?

James 1:19-27

August 16, 2015 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Sermon Study Guide

I went to the doctor for the first time this week, mainly to get established as a new patient but also to get my existing prescriptions refilled. The doctor looked over my medications and asked about this one I had handed him that was shaped like a book. “What’s this for?” he asked. “Well, Doc,” I said, “that one treats an ailment I have suffered from most of my life. In fact, I find a lot of people suffer from it. But, if I follow that prescription every day, I find the occurrences of the disease are less.” The doctor looked skeptical and said, “But you didn’t tell me what it cures.” “Well,” I said, “it cures a lot of things, but right now, it’s mainly treating my ‘foot-in-mouth’ disease.” The doctor shook his head. “I can’t help you with that one,” he said, and wrote out the rest of my prescriptions.

Do you ever suffer from “foot-in-mouth” disease? Do you ever say something and then, just as soon as you said it, wish you hadn’t? I suspect, if we’re honest, we’ve all done that at least once—or, we’ve sent an email or a text that we wish we hadn’t. And then others post them online This one, for instance, reminds us to read the text before you hit “send” because sometimes autocorrect is actually not helpful. A Dad sent this text: “Your mom and I are going to divorce next month.” He meant to say “Disney.” They were going to Disney next month. Thank you, autocorrect! Then there’s this one, which might be a confession: “Do you have the schedule for the other half of our class for fall? I will be murdering the Kaplan rep on August 9th…” And then, a twist on the popular sick leave excuse: “I don’t think I can come to work today, I woke up with a terrible hedgehog. As soon as I feel better, I’ll go to work.” Maybe sometimes you feel like this lady does about technology, but now Google has the answer. If you’re a gmail user, you can “unsend” an email within a certain time frame. I bet there are some politicians who wish it were as easy to do that with their words these days!

The problem, though, at its core is not with technology; that certainly contributes and may even provide a laugh or two, but the real problems come when our words fail to match up with our actions—when we say things that don’t match the way we live. Many years ago, on my day off I went to the grocery store in a really bad mood. And shopping for groceries did nothing to improve my mood, so by the time I got to the checkout, I was ready to leave. I don’t think I was particularly unkind to the cashier, but I was not exuding Christian charity at that moment either. That’s when the cashier commented on the shirt I was wearing. “I really like that,” she said. I had to look to see what shirt I had on, and it was one of my old youth t-shirts that said, “Have you seen Jesus my Lord?” My attitude at that moment was not one that reflected Jesus my Lord. Sometimes we need those “reality checks,” where something or someone snaps us back to reality and reminds us that our lives are called to reflect our faith, our words are to reflect our heart—or, more to the point, that our faith is meant to be lived out in the real world Monday through Saturday, not just within these walls on Sunday. At the grocery story, at the gas pump, in the home and at the work place—people are listening to what we say but even more, they’re “listening” what we do and how we live.

For the next few weeks, we’re going to be seeing glimpses of what practical faith looks like as we walk together through the book of James. We won’t have time to look at every single verse in the book, so I’m encouraging you to read each week’s chapter at least once a day as we go through the book. James, you will find, is very concerned about our lives matching what we say we believe. In fact, some have accused James of being overly concerned about our actions, our works. Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer of the faith, called this little book an “epistle of straw” (Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter, pgs. 6-7) and believed it did not measure up to the rest of the Bible. Luther, you may remember from your history, was reacting against what he saw as abuses in the church of his day that seemed to encourage people to work for their salvation. By contrast, Luther re-discovered the wonderful doctrine of “salvation by grace,” particularly as Paul described it in the book of Ephesians: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). We are saved by grace, but we demonstrate our salvation by the way we live it out. We don’t do good works to get into heaven or to be accepted by God; we live our faith in gratitude to God for saving us. James is not, as Luther seems to have thought, in opposition to Paul. James is a counterbalance to Paul. James has a word for us when we think, “Well, I’m saved, so I don’t have to do anything else. I can just go to church on Sunday and sing and listen and live however I want to the rest of the week.” James says, instead, we’re called to demonstrate our faith to a waiting world. Our faith, James says, is a practical faith.

But, just quickly before we get into this first chapter, I want to spend just a moment and ask who James was. He identifies himself at the very beginning of the letter as “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). We don’t have any other real idea who this James was; after all, James was as common a name then as it is now (Wright, The Early Christian Letters for Everyone, pg. 4). There are at last two men named James among the disciples, and another James who was the father of a disciple. But historically, this book has been identified with James who was the half-brother of Jesus. James, who was probably part of the “brothers” who came with Jesus’ mother, Mary, when they heard Jesus wasn’t even taking time out for lunch. They thought he was out of his mind, so they came to take him home, and Jesus shut them out (Mark 3:20-35), even saying that his real brothers were those who did the will of God. James, one of the brothers who we’re told by the Gospel of John, did not believe Jesus was the son of God (John 7:5). And I can’t blame him; they had grown up together. I mean, if my brother suddenly declared himself to be the son of God, or if people started treating him like that, all I would be able to remember are the times we’d played together or shared a meal around a table or the times we had argued. It had to be hard for them to see Jesus as someone other than who they thought he was. But somewhere along the line, maybe at the Resurrection, James (and perhaps the other brothers) had come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, the Savior of the world. James, in fact, became the leader of the church in Jerusalem. While Peter and Paul traveled the world winning converts and starting churches, James stayed home and faithfully preached and pastored the believers in the home city. And, perhaps from there, he writes this letter to help believers all around the world live out practical faith (Cedar, Communicator’s Commentary: James, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, pgs. 12-14; Wright 4).

So as he sits down to write, he reminds them of their calling, their faith, and the great blessings God has given them. And in the latter part of the chapter, which we want to focus on for the remainder of our time this morning, he talks about a theme that will repeat in this letter: the importance of our words, of listening, and of putting our words into action. He wants the world to not just hear what we believe but to see what we’re doing as proof of our faith.

James doesn’t waste any time in starting to meddle in our lives as he begins this section with something he wants us to “take note of:” “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (1:19-20). There is a lot in that sentence, especially the part about listening. Two weeks ago, I attended a training for coaches in the Annual Conference; not sports coaches, but ministry coaches. And that is a task that requires, first and foremost, listening. Well, preachers are used to speaking, to talking, so it was a struggle for all of us to practice the skill of listening. We think that should be easy, but it’s not for very many of us. We live in a noisy world and listening has become a lost art. There are people today who will hire a counselor not because they have deep problems but just because they long for someone to listen to them! In our work with Revive Wabash Valley, one of the things that is a focus is to listen to other people. Listen. James says we must be people who are quick to listen; so are you? Or do you, like most people today, spend your listening time trying to think of what you’re going to say next? It sounds counter-intuitive but Christians should be people who listen first, because how else can we know what needs our neighbors have if we don’t listen?

James says be quick to listen, and slow to speak. I have to tell you I become so disheartened sometimes when I see the way Christians respond to social issues or news items. Social media has only made it worse because every person has a voice, whether they actually know anything about the situation or not. Often as I scroll down through ranting or obnoxious posts, I wonder if our words are so loud that people can’t hear us. Today, more people know what Christians are against that what we are for. A study done just a few years ago found that young people, in particular, have very negative views toward the church and Christians. Those findings were published in a book called unChristian, which revolved around five strong perceptions. Among young people today, 91% believe the church is hateful toward homosexuals, 87% believe Christians are judgmental and 85% believe we are hypocritical. In addition, 75% believe Christians are too political and 70% believe we are insensitive in general (qtd. in Hamilton, When Christians Get It Wrong, pgs. 3-4). Why is the church not known for love and grace and making a difference in the world? Sometimes it may not be what we say, but how we say it and the ways we fail to do what James tells us to do: be quick to listen and slow to speak.

He also says we should be slow to become angry. Here, James is calling us to become more like the God we serve, because “slowness” to anger is a characteristic of God. We read that in several places in the Old Testament, but God describes himself that way in Exodus 34:6, when he is proclaiming his name to Moses: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness…” The psalms tell us in at least two places that God is “slow to anger” (103:8; 148:8). I believe this is a much-needed word for us today, as we live in an extremely angry world. Drive on the roads for about five minutes if you doubt me. “Road rage” is a growing epidemic. Or read the internet for about three minutes. People are angry. Some anger is justified; Jesus was angry when people were being abused or taken advantage of. There is such a thing as righteous anger. But part of righteous anger is that it doesn’t come on quickly. Righteous anger takes the time to understand what is going on and makes a goal of being angry only at the things that make God angry. How can we know what makes God angry? It sounds simple, but the Bible tells us so. Injustice, poverty, people being abused and mistreated, murder, adultery, and so on. The things God tells us not to do, the things we do so often do to each other—those things break God’s heart and, to use Old Testament language, kindle God’s wrath.

Which is why, I believe, James ends up where he does in this chapter. It’s easy to sort of disconnect the final statements at the end of chapter one from the rest of the chapter. In some ways, the final statements seem to come out of left field, but in reality they flow directly out of what he’s trying to tell us about living our faith. The last two verses in this chapter focus on two issues: keep a “tight rein” on our tongues (1:26) and practicing “pure and faultless” religion (1:27). It’s all one piece with what he has said about the way we respond to others. When we are quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to get angry (in other words, to get angry about the right things), we then are free to and able to “do the word.” James says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (1:22). He compares just listening to the word (by which he means the Scriptures) to looking in a mirror and then forgetting what you look like. In the first century, hard as it is to believe in our image-obsessed culture, many people had no idea what they looked like (cf. Wright 11-12). Rich and famous people might have someone make a statue of their likeness, or have someone paint a picture of their face, but the average common person didn’t have a mirror in their home. And if they did have a mirror, it was a poor reflection they saw. So they might catch a glimpse of their image, but because they didn’t see it every day in every place, they could easily forget what they looked like. The image didn’t get deep enough into their psyche or their soul for it to stick. James says while that may be fine for our physical image, we can’t let that happen to our reading of the Scriptures. Stare deeply into it. Let the Scriptures soak into your soul. Let these words change and transform you. Let them make you into a new person, one more like Jesus.

I have a good friend who used to tell me, almost weekly, that no one remembers sermons. It was good-natured ribbing, but there was also an element of truth there. Dr. David Mains used to say there was a sermon-sucking black hole between the pulpit and the parking lot. I experienced that myself when, at a Charge Conference one year, the District Superintendent asked the folks gathered what my sermon had been about that morning and was greeted by deafening silence! So my friend may be right—about every church except Mount Pleasant, of course! The truth is, it always concerns me if the only Scripture or the only interaction with the Bible someone might get is here on Sunday morning because that’s not enough. This is only a brief glance when what we need, James says, is a deep gaze into the “perfect law that gives freedom” (1:25). That’s what leads to blessing. Blessed is the one who gazes into the Scriptures all throughout their life and who allows these words to transform their lives.

But, again, we can’t stop there. Just gazing isn’t enough. Just reading and even memorizing isn't enough. James says we must be compelled by what we read to live it out. “What is heard in the holy place must be lived in the marketplace” (Barclay 59). First, by keeping a tight rein on our tongue. In other words, we don’t need to say everything that comes to our mind. Or, in today’s world, we don’t need to post everything we think of. Now, because James comes back to this matter, we’re going to look at that more in a couple of weeks. But it is tied to the way we live out this faith.

And so is the next thing James says. When we’re quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to get angry, we will be able to practice what James calls “pure and faultless” religion, or, as one translation puts it, “real, true religion” (VOICE). A couple of weeks ago, a pastor friend and I were eating dinner together in Indianapolis, and after stuffing ourselves, we walked past some stores, one of which was called “True Religion.” I asked my friend if we should go in and get some of that, but apparently, “true religion” in contemporary America amounts to jeans and designer clothes. James has another idea. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless [true] is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (1:27). The word translated as “religion” here might be better translated as “worship” or “liturgy.” It has the sense of an outward expression of what we believe, and both “worship” and “liturgy” are what we do outwardly to express our inward faith. Most of the time we think of those things as what we do here on Sunday morning, but worship ought to be done for more than just an hour or so one day a week. And it is more than singing songs or lifting our hands. Worship ought to be our lifestyle, our every day way of living. Worship is the way we demonstrate our love for God.

So, in essence, James is saying this: “The finest ritual and the finest liturgy you can offer to God is service of the poor and personal purity” (Barclay 61). And because God, according to the Psalms (68:5), is father of the fatherless and protector of widows, James tells us that we best reflect his nature when we care for the vulnerable in society. In his day, widows and orphans especially had no one to take care of them. They were vulnerable to abuse and neglect. Their lives were worth very little to the culture around them. They were, to use Jesus’ words, the “least of these” (Matthew 25:40). So who are the vulnerable today? To some extent, we can still say widows and orphans are in that category, though there are certainly more social protections available than in James’ day. But today there are single moms and dads who are often just on the edge of financial instability. There are the uninsured, the working poor, the children who live in poverty, the children who go unwanted because of selfishness and greed. In Matthew 25, Jesus names some folks who seem to always be on the margins, among the vulnerable: the prisoner, the sick, the stranger, the hungry and the naked. Those who are on the margins, those who seem to live without hope, those who have no resources of their own—James says if we really want to live out our faith, if we want to practice pure religion, those are the ones we are called to reach, to care for, to look after.

I am proud to serve a church that takes that call seriously. As you know, this past summer, we had two groups go to live their faith in very practical ways. One group went to Kansas City and the other went to Guatemala. I want you to have a chance to hear from both groups, just briefly, about what it meant to them to live practical faith. Take a listen.

There are several more videos of team members from Guatemala that we’ll post online this week. There’s also a podcast of their witnesses recorded last Sunday that you can download. Such stories remind us of the truth that we give of ourselves because no other way really leads to life (cf. Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Living, pg. 92). “In Christ, human suffering requires response” (Schnase 94). But you don’t have to go to Guatemala or around the world to care for those most vulnerable among us. Sometimes those trips, for me, remind me again of the great need and the call to serve right where I am. Right here in Terre Haute, you can serve kids in need through the 14th & Chestnut Center. You can serve those in the midst of a crisis at the Crisis Pregnancy Center, soon to be opening their new center. You can work at the Food Pantry, or you can bring food to the food barrel so that others can eat. You can visit in a nursing home or a hospital; Judy Hoover leads a tremendous team of people who, every week, are out visiting folks whom society tends to forget about. It might be the person on your street who has just lost their spouse and can’t deal with a house that is empty and quiet. They just need someone to have a real conversation with. Who are the vulnerable in your circle of influence? Who is Jesus calling you to care for, to “look after”? Because, you see, when we’re busy doing the things we ought to be doing, we won’t have time to get involved in the things we shouldn’t be doing. These two movements, James says, are linked: care for those who are vulnerable and keeping ourselves from being “polluted” by the world. And it all begins as we are quick to listen to the needs around us, slow to speak and slow to become angry. When we do that, then those around us will be able to really “hear” what we’re doing and see our practical faith.

Here’s the image I want to leave you with this morning. On two of my trips to Israel, we have stopped at the Dead Sea to go “swimming.” Now, you may know that the Dead Sea is the lowest spot on earth, and it has its name because nothing lives in this sea. The water begins fresh and clean on the top of Mount Hermon in northern Israel, flows through lush green areas in Galilee, then down through the Judean Desert and eventually dumps into this sea. Unlike most lakes, seas and oceans, though, the Dead Sea has an inflow with no outflow. The water does not leave. It piles up in the Dead Sea, where it is so hot that much of it evaporates, leaving behind a relatively little bit of water and a whole lot of minerals and salt. Sometimes it’s called the “Salt Sea.” The minerals are so thick in the Dead Sea that you cannot sink. Everyone can swim—or rather float—in the Dead Sea, even non-swimmers like me. And it’s fun for a while. Then the salt begins to find every nick and cut on your skin and get inside it…so then your skin begins to hurt and burn. That’s when you decide it’s time to get out of the water, except that you can’t. Not easily, anyway. The floor of the sea is so slick from all the salt and minerals that you usually end up falling down. After a few attempts, I just gave up and did what my friend called the “crawl of shame” as I tried to get out of that dead water (cf. Cedar 46). I always contrast that site with what the Bible refers to as “living water.” Living water is always preferred; when Jesus stood up at the festival, he called people to believe in him and he promised that, for those who did, “rivers of living water would flow from within them” (John 7:38). Living water is water that is flowing, moving, has both an inflow and outflow. Living water brings life. And living water is what we’re supposed to have. When we just “take in” or we just receive spiritual encouragement or just go to Bible study after Bible study, we become like the Dead Sea. Full of stuff and helpful to no one. What we take in needs a place to flow out. The grace we receive needs a place to go—and that place, James says, is to the least of these. So here’s the image: don’t be the Dead Sea. Be Living Water, because when you are, both you and the world will be blessed. Let’s pray.