"The Word Within"

September 2, 2012

Epistle Reading: James 1:17-27

¹⁷Every 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. ¹⁸In 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.

¹⁹You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; ²⁰for your anger does not produce God's righteousness. ²¹Therefore 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.

²²But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵But 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.

²⁶If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion 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.

Sermon: “The Word Within”

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, five dollars - is sure to be noticed.”

This was written by the 19^th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.  He was a complicated man, determined to help distinguish Christians from Christendom, that is followers of Jesus from the homogenous establishment of the church in his time.   It is no accident that his favorite New Testament letter was the epistle of James, for James is trying to achieve the same thing: turn spoken and ritualized faith into everyday action that is infused with God’s Word.

Luther called this letter of James an “epistle of straw” because he did not feel it was theologically deep enough, but Kierkegaard is going to beat Luther this morning (like East Carolina beat App State yesterday).

We’re going to embrace this letter of James.  With an urgency born of a fragile, new church, James preaches:

“Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.”

It is a great hazard to forget what we look like.  But it is an even greater tragedy to never know what we look like in the first place.  To not know that we have our source in the God who spoke light into being and birthed us by the word of truth.  To not understand that being made in the image of this God comes with the call to recognize God in each person we encounter. 

Whether we forget what we look like or never know in the first place, the result is the same (exactly what James warned against): speaking before listening, feeling anger before compassion, neglecting orphans and widows, failing to care for our neighbor, thinking our voice is the most important, letting the Word of God be nothing more than words.

James doesn’t just say these sins are a tiny flaw in our mission efforts as Christians, he says that that they make our religion worthless.  That sounds a little harsh, doesn’t it?

Surely we all have times when life is too hectic to do much for others, when we’re doing well to even make it to worship on a Sunday, when we need to focus on our own needs before we can focus on the needs of others.

Of course we do.  But if we’re not careful, we can stay in that place forever.  Each small act of thinking our faith is about us first and others second, each harsh quip spoken in anger, each rationalization of our mistakes as being justifiable, each moment of isolating ourselves from anyone different from us can add up.  Quietly, subtly, we are changed, until someone holds a mirror up in front of us and suddenly we don’t even recognize the jaded, self-focused face looking back at us.

That unrecognizable face might look an awful lot like the scribes and Pharisees in Mark, who were so distracted by the disciples’ unwashed hands than they failed to see the untold good they did with those hands.  Rather than honor God with their hearts, they let their lips bear words of judgment and used God’s word with anger, lording it over people.  While criticizing others about unclean hands, theirs were the hands stained by this world’s principles of power.

We would never choose to turn into Pharisees.  But all it takes is one angry word, one moment of indifference, one little choice to worship earthly success instead of God, to lead us down that path of amnesia. 

This is a hard thing to hear.  James does not sugar-coat his letter to the church.  But even as he speaks out against talking the talk and never walking the walk, he calls those to whom he writes “beloved.” 

He desperately wants them to look in the mirror of their own actions and recognize themselves.  He wants them to remember who they are.  And though this letter was written to Jewish Christians facing persecution and conflict hundreds of years ago, its words hold the same power for us today.  They are a mirror, calling us to reflect on who we really are, and what that identity leads us to do.

We are not passive, indifferent, selfish people.  We are not.  We are the first fruits of a loving, creative God.  We are implanted—filled—with the Word of God that will save our souls and lives.  We are beloved, generous, doers of that Word.  

We are a people who follow a Savior who put the outcast and forgotten first, who always took time to feed the hungry and who poured out his life for all, and then took it up again so we would never have to fear death.  As Christ was the Word of God made flesh, so we are the words of Christ made flesh.  This is who we are. 

If we look in the mirror of our actions and we do not see this, if we hear our own voice and it is filled with more bitterness than kindness, if we feel we have quietly but devastatingly lost ourselves in this world, we do not despair.  To despair is to assume we are not capable of change.  Instead, we repent.  We stop talking…and listen to the saving Word within us that whispers and shouts, “this is not who you are.” 

That Word will call us to cast aside the worthless religion of selfishness and embrace the missional, active faith of Jesus. That Word will lead us from being the self-righteous elite to being the servant of all.  It will urge us beyond the comfortable and familiar into the lives of those right next to us at school, work or the grocery store.  It will call us to care for those on the margins, to reject anger and apathy and, in every moment, in every decision large and small, to be doers who embody God’s indwelling Word.  That Word will remind us that it is only in giving ourselves for others that we discover who we really are.

I agree with Kierkegaard.  It is tragically possible to lose ourselves when our religion never calls us to change or give or do.  But the good news is, no matter how unrecognizable that face in the mirror is, no matter how often we have spoken without thinking, hurt without caring, or given God lip-service instead of our hearts, God will never lose us.  The Giver of all good things, from whom every act of kindness and every deed of love grows, will never forget who we truly are.  Amen.