Which Way to the Heart of God?

 James 1:17-27

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Martin Luther and I both have trouble with the book of James.  Luther’s problem was that James is the “faith without works is dead” guy, while Luther, on the other hand, was the “justification by faith APART from works of the Law” guy.  For Luther, Justification by faith apart from works clashed with James and his “pure religion is to do works” stuff.

Now I wouldn't tell Luther this to his face, but maybe James was just saying that doing good things for our neighbors is a part of our faith in the same way that Jesus does in the parable of the sheep and the goats?  With that Lutheran heresy out of the way, I do continue to completely agree with Luther that the way we live in the world doesn’t MAKE God love us or FORCE God into “saving” us, BUT, I have to say I think James has a point as well.  When we live into the free gift of faith… a gift we’ve been given without condition by the Holy Spirit… we simply won’t be able to help ourselves but to care for our neighbors with real, tangible works out there in the real, tangible world.  

I just don't think the way to go deeper into our faith is an “either/or” sort of thing.  I think it's a “both/and” sort of thing.  It is not the toxic extreme that some proclaim, where by living a certain lifestyle, praying a particular prayer, or belonging to the “right” church gives makes God do whatever you want.  But neither is it the equally toxic extreme of being so fearful of ever doing even the smallest sort of “good work” that you refuse to volunteer to mow the church lawn!  You laugh but I’ve seen both!  

The reality is that our faith IS a completely free, no strings attached gift from God.  It’s been loved into us with the same powerful love that created the universe and raises the dead!  AND with the gift of a love that powerful, we will just not be able to help ourselves but to act like Christ and love our neighbors.  Sure, we never perfectly live into the gift of faith and sometimes we fight the idea of caring for our neighbors.  But the balance of those two things is one that Luther himself proposed!  That as we more deeply embrace the gift of faith, we become completely free lord of all, subject to none, AND at the same time, we a completely dutiful servant of all, subject to all!    

MY issue with James is that when James lays out all the good things we’re supposed to do… “be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness” he never tells us HOW TO DO THAT STUFF!  You tell me what to do, James, ol’ buddy, but I don’t seem to be able to get it to just magically come out!  I find myself more like Paul.  I do the things I don’t want to do and don’t do the things I want to do!  I’m a mess James, and just telling me to do better, frankly James… it’s not helping!  

The other option of course is that like Luther, perhaps I've gotten James wrong as well.  Maybe for James it was in the taking care of the widows and orphans… in the living day to day as Jesus lived… in the trying to listen more and speak less… Maybe for James, he found that it was in the doing those things out here in the real world, that he was finally able to more fully grasp the gift of faith which God has already planted within us?

Could it be then, that this too is yet another one of those both/and things which God seems to love so much?  Maybe God knows that some of us find our way deeper into the gift of faith when we start in our heads with the proclaimed Word which then transforms our hearts and leads to doing good things with our hands out in the world.  AND, maybe it’s also true that others find their way deeper into the gift of faith when they start with their hands and do the work of Christ in the world which transforms their hearts and leads to being able to work out ways in their heads to help others hear the Good News?  

Front ways or Back ways, right ways or wrong ways, that’s where I’ve landed this week.  Whether we start in our heads OR start with our hands… The truth seems to be that either way we will inevitably find the immeasurable power of God’s love at the center of it all!  So head to hands or hands to head.  Start at whatever end you find yourself at today and then move deeper from there.  If James and Luther are both right, I suspect from either end, you will inevitably end up, right in the heart of God.  Amen.  

Fertility god or Moses' God?

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.

Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”

Joshua asks the people of Israel “What G/god are you going to follow?”  The people wanted this to be a religion only question but what Joshua was REALLY asking, as the people stood ready to enter this new land with more readily available resources than they had ever even IMAGINED before, was “Which way of living with each other will you choose as you move into this new, incredible land?”

Each deity choice, you see, comes with particular requirements for how the people were to live in the world.  So this wasn’t just a decision about how they would spend just one hour, once a week.  This was a decision about how they would live together 24/7 and it affected literally EVERY aspect of their lives… social, political, economic and religious!  

The God behind curtain number one was the God of Moses.  This God had provided them food and protection for decades as they wondered the wilderness.  Out there, manna, quail, and water had been OBVIOUSLY worth the price of living the way THIS God had required.  It was a way of living that required an “All In” commitment to justice… making sure everyone had enough… food, shelter, dignity, purpose AND it also required an economy that FAVORS the weak and vulnerable… not just throws them a bone every now and then, but FAVORS them!  But now they weren't in the wilderness any more.  Now they were looking into the land of milk and honey so Joshua knew that in THIS place, they had another choice. 

That other choice was behind curtain number two.  These were the local fertility gods.  The gods of self-made wealth and power and they actually blessed people who got rich and powerful and didn't worry about their neighbor and here, unlike out in the desert, these fertility gods made sense.  Here it was easy to believe, “I don’t need that wilderness God with His boring manna and His sissy, “take care of others” ways.  HERE I can scoop up MORE than I could ever need all by myself and these local gods actually BLESS that way of living!"      

Joshua's people were actually hoping they could pick a little from curtain one and the rest from curtain two.  They hadn't fully forgotten the God that took care of them out in the desert so they were hoping they could make that one their "official" God.  Do a little something for that One for maybe an hour each week, but then follow the ways of the local gods for the rest and get RICH!  Because, hey, these local gods didn’t just let greed slide, these local gods proclaimed greed was a blessing!  Bigger wealth, bigger power, bigger fertility symbols… ALL of it was a blessing!  When I get rich taking advantage of you, that just means the local gods are using me to punish you for who knows what and, honestly, that’s between the gods and them and not my problem.  

Joshua knew his people wanted it both ways and let them know THAT was NOT an option.  Following the God of Moses meant following that God’s way of living full time, NO MATTER what the surrounding landscape happened to look like from one day to the next.  Joshua also knew God required this way of living not to make life hard, but because THIS way, was THE way that led to lasting LIFE for individuals and the community as a whole!  Joshua knew that following the local gods' ways of living would inevitably lead to the exploitation of the poor and the weak and the accumulation of wealth at the expense of their neighbors.  That sort of “religion”… that way of living in the world… living without a commitment to social justice… living without self-giving care for your neighbors… living without an intentional preference for the poor and weak... living that way always, always, ALWAYS leads to the eventual downfall of the community.

This is clearly not JUST an old story about a long ago decision made by an ancient people.  This is our choice too, and one we are asked to make every day.  We too, as Walter Bruggemann points out, are confronted with this decision every day in every aspect of our lives.  It's even right in the middle of our Pledge of Allegiance as it promises “justice for all” and “liberty for all”  both at the same time.  If Joshua heard this pledge I think he would press us now as he pressed his people then, reminding us we can not pick both.  He would remind us that justice for all is in conflict with the idea of a personal sort of liberty and we must choose either one or the other as the way we will live in this world and with that choice for living, the G/god we will follow as well.  

Like the people of Israel, none of us will really make that decision with the confessions we say or the words we pledge.  We will make that decision, every single day in how we choose to live together.  Will the ways we live this day be the ways of the God of Moses… the God of social, economic, and political justice with a bias toward the poor and weak?  Or will the ways we choose to live this day be the ways of the fertility gods who insist there is no amount of wealth and power that is too much for me, myself, and I alone? Every day, it is the way we live that particular day and the way we plan that day for the next proclaims which G/god we will follow.  Each day we must choose.  May we all choose well.  Amen.  

Lady Wisdom and Four Horsemen

Proverbs 9:1-6

Wisdom has built her house,
she has hewn her seven pillars.

She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table.

She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town,

“You that are simple, turn in here!”

To those without sense she says,
“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.

Lay aside immaturity, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”

In Proverbs, God, personified as Lady Wisdom, pulls out all the stops in a desperate effort to get the“willfully ignorant” to turn in to the feast of wisdom and live.  This past week I was in a high transmission part of the country, but one where almost everyone… even families with little kids… wandered the grocery store without masks.  I wanted to tell Lady Wisdom to yell louder!  It actually felt even more ominous to me than that, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were pushing their carts down the aisles beside them and they were completely oblivious!  Times like these tend to stir up those cryptic and sometimes creepy sorts of biblical imagery.

 

I looked and saw a giant white horse blazing into the sky. Its rider carried immeasurable wealth and was given a victory garland. He rode off victorious, conquering right and left. Then another horse, this one red. The rider bringing violence to the earth, a 13 year old shooting another on their first day back to school.  The rider carried more guns than there are people to carry them.  Then I looked and saw a black horse this time.  Its rider carried a globe of the earth, engulfed in wild fire, heat, and cyclones.  And finally a colorless horse, sickly pale. Its rider was Covid, and the Anti-vaxers were close on its heels. Together the four were given power to destroy a fourth of the earth by way of gun violence, climate change, pandemic, and the wealthy devouring the poor.

The fact that both Proverbs and Revelation don’t seem too far off from our current news cycle doesn’t mean THE END IS NEAR.  What it means that we humans continue to make the same mistakes that humans made back in the time of Proverbs and in the time of Revelation.  We remain stuck as a species in a terrible, reoccurring cycle of self inflicted abuse.  The imagery, the language, and the costumes change over time but the plot to this same old story just seem to go on forever in reruns.  

All of which likely leaves you thinking:  Thanks for the uplifting, return-from-vacation-happy and refreshed sermon, pastor!  And you’d be right… if I stopped there.  But that’s not where the author of Proverbs left it, nor where John of Patmos left Revelation, and it can’t be where Erik of Sheffield leaves it either.  You see, people then and now write this way desperately longing for humanity to finally SEE what they are doing to themselves so that they can break out of it once and for all.  Freed from this horrible merry go round, people who write this way know that the world can be what we pray for it to be each week, “God’s Kingdom come, God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” … a world where everyone has enough.  Not some having too much and others having too little, but everyone, without exception, having enough.  Enough food, shelter, clothing, health, love, dignity, respect, and purpose.  

Which is why John of Patmos didn’t end his Revelation with the creepy horsemen and Lady Wisdom didn’t stop calling for the people to turn in and live!  Instead, both offered a path forward into a new way of living.  Lady Wisdom called that path following the Law… the Law which Jesus later summed up as Loving God and Loving Neighbor. “Walking in the way of insight” as Proverbs says, is just another way of saying DO what Jesus did!  John of Patmos called that path the Way of the Lamb.  A path of relentlessly living our lives as Jesus lived his.  In both cases, it is a life of self giving love for our neighbor… with compassion and an active hands-on, all-in sort of kindness and compassion for the least, the lost and the last of our world.  

  

So it is true.  There are indeed people“without sense” as Proverbs put it.  It is true.  The news does often look as menacing as four scary horsemen… AND there is HOPE.   Now, will OUR time be THE time humanity finally stops punching itself in the face?  No idea.  But there is something we can do while we watch and see.  We can walk the path that Proverbs and John remind us is our hope.  Live each day as if God’s Kingdom is already fully here.  Live each day walking in Wisdom.  Loving God.  Loving neighbor, putting the needs of others before our own.  That way of living does not deny the reality of our present, but it does defiantly proclaim that this present reality is not where the story ends!  Because whether “those without sense” choose to “Lay aside immaturity, and live” and finally choose to “walk in the way of insight” this time or not, God WILL get God’s way in the end.  God’s Kingdom WILL come.  God’s will, WILL be done, on earth as it is in heaven. God WILL get God’s way with this creation.  Our job is just to keep walking in that direction until God gets us there!

I don’t know about you, but I will need some help with that from time to time.  Sometimes I’ll need to be taken by the hand and coaxed into taking just one next step.  Sometimes I’ll have enough to fake it until I become it, and sometimes, in a glorious and inexplicable gift of the Holy Spirit I will be mystically certain that everything’s gonna be alright.  

You're probably better at walking that way than I am but then maybe you have those less than mystically certain days as well from time to time.  Either way, let’s pray for more days for all of us filled with the Spirit’s mystical clarity.  Let us celebrate together when we’re able to at least do a decent job faking it, and let us gently take each other by the hand when that next step is anything but clear.  And remember the REAL end of the story… God’s gonna get God’s way!  Amen.