A Season of Doing

James 17-27

Ordinary 23 Year B

Joint Service of First Clarksville and Harmony Presbyterian Churches

September 9, 2012

Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

 

          There is a great scene toward the end of the romantic comedy Moonstruck.  Having learned that her husband had been stepping out with someone else, Olympia Dukakis’ character begins to search for the answer of why he does it.  She finally decides he does it because he is afraid of death.  Later that night, sitting in the living room she waits for him to come home.  When he does, she looks him in the eye and with a deadpan look on her face she says, “Cosmo, no matter what you do, you’re gonna die.  Just wanted you to know.”

          No matter what you do, you’re gonna die.  It is a true statement.  We are all going to die.  One day each of us will shuffle off this mortal coil and go on to what we hope will confess will be our eternal rest with God.  It is our universal truth.

          And what is true for us is also true for congregations.  No matter what congregations do, they’re going to die. 

          One day. 

          Perhaps not today. 

          Perhaps not tomorrow. 

          But one day every congregation will die.  Just remember that every single church mentioned in the bible has been closed by its presbytery!

          Not what you were expecting this morning was it?  This is the good news for us today, we are, individually and corporately, going to die.

          For much of the 20^th century the western world was caught in a whirlpool of despair about this reality.  If there is nothing we can do to avoid it we may as well surrender to it.  Give up, give in.  And theology was no better.  There was a sense of underlying despair in much of the theology in the church of the 20^th century. 

          Thankfully, the last 25 or so years that has started to change.  Rather than focus in despair on the end, the church has learned to quit spending so much time looking at or beyond the unkonwn and started focusing on today.  Right here, right now.  We have begun to develop a vocabulary of present hope rather than future hope rooted in present anxieties.

          And that brings us to James. 

          The book of James has had a troubled history with Protestants.  Martin Luther called it the epistle of straw.  At one point, he became so enraged by it that he actually ripped the pages from his bible!  James stands in sharp and distinct contrast to Paul.  James writes that faith without works is dead.  Paul that faith stands alone.  For generations it was assumed that there was no way to knit together these two opposing ideas.  Theologians in the Protestant tradition have taught for centuries that the theology of Paul and the theology of James will eternally resist one another.

          They are like magnets.

          Have you ever tried to hold two magnets together only to have them resist one another, refusing to bond?  If they are similarly charged they resist each other, each pushing the other away.  But if you turn one around, and place the opposites together they form a tight bond.  The same is true with Paul and James.  When we try to cram them into identical categories and attempt to make them say the same things, they resist and push apart.  But when we let them come together as the opposites they are, as two perspectives on the same faith, they form a bond- they complement one another.

          Far from the irreconcilable forces Luther and others assumed, Paul and James are two sides of the same coin.  Each preaches the ethics of Christ- one from the perspective of how those ethics inform our lives of faith and the other how those ethics inform our lives of action.  Together they paint a fulsome picture of what it means to live in the light of Jesus Christ.

          In our reading this morning, James outlines his theological project in some detail.  The chapter culminates saying, “the True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us.”

          To our contemporary ears, that line is not terribly climactic.  Of course we should care for widows and orphans and anyone who is in need.  What, we ask, is so revolutionary about that?

          As with so much of scripture, to really understand what James is asking of us, we have to understand his context.  What did it mean to care for widows and orphans in James’ time?  It means if they are hungry, you take the food from your own table and feed them.  If they are homeless, you give them your bed.  There was no United Way, no Interfaith Service Network, no Rice Depot to do the work for you.  No agency to slip 20 bucks here and there.  To care for the widows and orphans meant doing it yourself; being hands on.  It meant literally giving the food from your table and the bed you make for yourself. 

          What is so extraordinary about this instruction from James is that orphans and widows were the least powerful and most vulnerable in their societies.  They had no recourse to change their station in life.  They were forced to rely wholly on the kindness of strangers.  This, James tells us, is how far into the depths of vulnerability we are called to reach in our work in the world.  We are called to reach into the depths of human need and help those who find themselves at the bottom of the social ladder and, when we do, we cannot help but encounter others as well.

          Reach deep in your works of generosity and care, James tells us.

          There is a second part of his instruction about what makes “True devotion” to God in Christ.  First we reach deep in our works of mercy and second, “keep the world from contaminating us.” 

          Keep the world from contaminating you.  An easy reading of this phrase might persuade us that James is saying don’t watch too much TV or follow the newest fad.  Or to use Paul’s words, be in the world but not of the world.  As a surface read, that is probably more right than it is wrong.  But I am not convinced that is what James is asking of us.

          This admonition to keep the world from contaminating us comes right on the heels of that command to reach deep in our works of generosity and care.  An honest reading of that whole verse forces us, I believe, to understand the two in tandem.  First, here is your ethic of care and second, don’t let the world corrupt you in the living of that ethic.  The call to care for God’s children and to create a world of nurture and care for them is our charge and nothing in this world should distract us from that.

          James gives us a roadmap for that calling.

          Care for God’s children and create a world of nurture and care for them and do not let the world distract you from your work.  Do not let the world distract you from that work.

          The word in Greek for something that gets in your way or causes you to misstep on your path is “scandalon.”  There are many scandaloi on our path of faithful living in the church. 

          God calls us to care for those who are right here right now, but we hear the siren call of the mega-church saying , “Bigger is better.  Bigger is more faithful.”  How often does the church fail to care for the ones who are here out of anxiety that there are not more here?

          God call us to live lives of benevolence without regard to whether or not the one in need is deserving or whether their need has been sufficiently vetted.  How often does the church fail to care for the hungry and the needy out of surrender to our political culture of exclusion and judgement?

          God calls us to live lives of faithful obedience and faithful engagement with God’s world not just when we are children but throughout our lives.  How often do we, in our individual lives, get distracted by our busyness and fail to take the time to engage God in study, prayer and worship?

          God calls us to be the church right here right now.  How often do we, in our corporate lives, become so anxious about the future and so envious of the past that we lose sight of the gift of God’s right now?

         Today, this day, God calls us to be congregations of action.  Is the future uncertain? Yes it is.  Is there reason for us to proceed thoughtfully and diligently as we prepare for that future?  Of course.  But what God reminds us through James is that though our eyes remain fixed on the horizon of God’s promised tomorrow, our lives must be lived in this moment… today.

          We are entering a season of not only thinking about the faith, but living it. 

          A season of doing as well as believing. 

          A season of demonstrating to the world that faith in Jesus Christ is not a faith that can be contained to the contemplation of the mind or the solemn traditions of the church.

          My challenge to each of us today is this.  As we embark on a new program year, find one thing new.  One thing you have not done before, one ministry you have not tried before, one faithful practice you have not observed before and do it.  Take the faith in your heart and put it into action in one new way.   There is no better time than the present to answer the call of God for faithful living in the world.

          Let’s be the church right here, right now; bold, faithful, hopeful, caring for God’s children in the world yet undeterred by the nay saying of the world.

          Let’s be the churches God is calling us to be; places of true devotion and active faith.

          Sola Deo Gloria.  To God alone be the glory! Amen.