Acting Like Wise Guys (and Gals)

Sermon delivered on Trinity 16B, Sunday, September 20, 2015 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of this sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.

Lectionary texts: Proverbs 31.10-31; Psalm 1.1-6; James 3.13-4.10; Mark 9.30-37.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week we examined what wisdom, beginning with the fear of the Lord, looks like on the ground. Specifically, we looked at what wise speaking looks like. We also saw that for James, evil speaking among Christians was simply unthinkable. Yet we saw how difficult it is to control our tongue and I was reminded of this truth this past week in my own life. I suspect many of you were reminded of the same thing in yours. Simply put, a pattern of evil speaking is indicative that we really haven’t been rescued from the dominion of darkness, even though we call ourselves Christian, and this is quite a sobering thought. Today, I want us to continue to look at this notion of wisdom. Only this time I want us to focus on our actions. What does James have to say about acting wisely? What does that look like and why should we care?

Before we proceed, let us remind ourselves what biblical wisdom is all about. Godly wisdom is always concerned about speaking and acting rightly. It assumes there is a standard of Truth that guides all our speech and behavior, a standard given to us by God himself through his Laws, and ultimately in and through the person of Jesus, God become human. Acting wisely is commensurate with our primary task of being God’s people. We are called to embody God’s presence to his broken and hurting world so that in and through us, God can bring his healing love to bear on folks. Only God can ultimately bring about his kingdom on earth as in heaven. But we are given the wonderful and mind-boggling honor and privilege of embodying God’s love to those in our own neck of the woods, starting with each other as fellow members of Christ’s body, the Church. To embody God’s love and Truth to others means that we must speak the truth in love and act in ways that are consistent with God’s high moral standards for us.

And here is one of the challenges of acting wisely for us as Christians. On the one hand, we are called to speak the truth in love to others. On the other hand, we must not be so eager to point out the wrongs of this world (i.e., how Truth is being violated) that we forget to proclaim that goodness and beauty exist in the world because these things reflect God’s glory. To focus on the negatives without proclaiming what is good and right with God’s world makes us appear to be chronic and ungrateful grumblers and turns others off. This should not be. We of all people have the Good News of God’s love for us in Jesus to share! That’s part of God’s Truth too!

With this in mind, we are ready to hear what James has to say. Are you wise, he asks? Then show it in your behavior. This is the ultimate litmus test for biblical wisdom because our actions always speak louder than our words, powerful as our words can be. We may say all the right things. You know, things like how Christ died for us and the need to love our neighbor as ourselves. We may be able to tell others about the virtue of acting humbly and the need for us to be peacemakers because that is what Christ commanded. But if our actions don’t match our good words, we are effectively rejecting God’s good and gracious rescue of us from sin and death in and through Jesus. Instead we show that we prefer to follow the ways of the world, ways that are opposed to God’s good will and purposes for us as his image-bearers. This means we are double-minded. We speak gracious words but act in ugly ways toward others.

None of this comes from God, James warns. Like evil speaking, it comes from hell itself. This goes back as far as the Garden where the great deceiver, Satan himself, played on our capacity to get it wrong to actually bring about evil. If there is envy and selfish ambition in you, James warns us, it is a sign that you are still sin-sick and in mortal danger because these qualities cause all kinds of quarrels and fighting. More about that in a moment. No, James says. This isn’t what wise behavior looks like. Wise behavior, i.e., God’s wisdom made manifest on the ground where it really matters, looks quite different. Wise folks act in ways that bring about peace and order to their lives, their families (church families included), and their communities. They will act gently toward others, not trying to make them feel insignificant or stupid. They will be merciful toward those who offend them, willing to forgive rather than desiring to strike back at the offender. They will be busy doing good things for others, like taking meals to those who are sick or broken. And they will be willing to yield to others when it is appropriate. These behaviors reflect the fact that their God is not a God of disorder but peace (1 Corinthians 14.33).

But we want to protest. Why yield, why be merciful? we snort. Only gutless wonders back down from a good fight or forgive their foes. And besides, aren’t we supposed to defend biblical truth? Well yes we are, but James isn’t talking about defending biblical truth. He’s talking about lesser things. Of course we should not yield to those who argue there are many ways to God. We know better. Jesus himself has told us otherwise (John 14.6) and we believe Jesus to be the very embodiment of God. So no, we shouldn’t yield to arguments such as these. But more often than not, we don’t have these kinds of arguments. We’ve been shamed into silence or led to believe these kinds of things just aren’t that important, despite the fact that they are. Instead, we spend our time fussing about how long the sermon is or whether to cross ourselves at certain times during worship or whether it is appropriate to sing contemporary or traditional hymns. After all, we have our expectations and ways of worshiping, and God help those who differ from us. They’re just wrong and we are not afraid to tell them so. Pride anyone? Selfish ambition? This is the stuff James is talking about, not the non-negotiables of our faith.

We see a positive and negative example of James’ teaching in our OT and gospel lessons. On the positive side, consider the wise wife who is praised in Proverbs. Before we say anything about her, let us be careful to remember this woman is the ideal, not the reality. Who can find this kind of wife, the author asks? The short answer is no one can because she doesn’t exist. It is simply impossible, given all that she does. But that is not the author’s point. He wants us to see that her behavior is driven by a fear of the Lord and results in all kinds of humble and self-giving behavior for the benefit of others. That’s exactly right and reflects God’s glory.

On the negative side, consider Jesus’ disciples. Continuing our lesson from last week, once again Jesus in effect lays out for them the supreme example of living out God’s wisdom. He tells them he is going to give his life for the sake of the world (although he does not say this explicitly here) so that those of us who believe in him may have life instead of death. This will involve terrible suffering on his part. It will also involve one of the most extreme forms of humiliation known to humans. Think about it. What can be more humiliating than to be stripped naked and nailed to a cross to die a slow, tortuous death as a spectacle for all to see? But out of his suffering love and humility comes our redemption. The disciples’ response? Cluelessness.

But let’s not be too hard on them, especially out of some sense of smug superiority that comes from 20-20 hindsight. You see, they were starting to believe that Jesus was the real deal, the long-awaited Messiah of God, and in their minds that didn’t mean suffering and humiliation. It meant power and glory and honor. So they had argued about who would be Jesus’ chief spokesman. Pretty heady stuff being the King’s mouthpiece and/or right-hand man! Selfish ambition at its finest, don’t you think? And the thought of being snarfed out of that position by one of the others in the inner circle (envy anyone?)? Well that was more than they could take. The result? Quarreling and fighting. Jesus counters by telling them that anyone can be his spokesman, and the humbler the better. Truly humble people reflect real humanity and God’s glory.

This is exactly the point James is making. He apparently had seen folks in local parishes fighting and quarreling among themselves and condemns it in the strongest terms possible, something to which we need to pay attention. James is not talking about the healthy conflicts that should be expected in parishes like ours with growing ministries. He is talking about fights that break out as the result of envy and selfish ambition. Beware of those who are too eager to assume positions of leadership, he warns. That eagerness is a sign of a more serious and less obvious problem. We all know how this works. We start to hear grumbling about how money is being spent (or not spent) or that the service runs too long or that there’s too much singing (or not enough) or that there is not enough fellowship (or too much of it) or that it’s crazy to try to buy a building to worship in and serve the Lord (or it’s crazy not to). And of course, if only we were in charge. Things would be so much better! And so we gossip and backbite, which produces factions and unhealthy conflict. None of this manifests wise behavior, warns James. In fact, just the opposite. This kind of behavior (thankfully absent in large part here at St. Augustine’s Anglican) is more consistent with hell than God’s kingdom. And this, BTW, is one of the main reasons the so-called Nones—those who have either walked away from the Church or who are unwilling to become a member of Christ’s body in the first place—claim to be Nones. They hear us speak gracious things as Christians and then see us act in quite ungracious ways. As James would ask, how can this be? We should be asking likewise!

I can hear some of you now. Ah, Father Maney! Such an uplifting sermon! You’ve stated the obvious and acknowledged a dangerous problem within ourselves and for the Church. You’ve told us there’s not much hope of fixing it on our own. Such good news. How inspiring. Well, folks, can’t you allow a guy to have a little fun once in awhile? I mean really. But seriously, James (and Scripture in general) does not leave us without a message of hope or some good news. There is a remedy to the problem of evil that dwells in all of us and it is called God’s power and grace. Want to rid yourself of these mortally dangerous problems, James asks? Ask God! But the problem is you don’t ask God, either because you don’t believe God will deliver or because you really don’t want God to heal and transform you, strange as that might sound.

So here we see James issuing each of us an invitation and a challenge. The invitation is for us to humble ourselves before the word of God, i.e., to submit to its authority rather than try to twist Scripture to make it fit our own disordered desires, so that we recognize we have a problem. God cannot fix us if we don’t think we have a problem in the first place. Healing doesn’t work like that. Just ask any therapist. Once we recognize we have a mortal problem, James calls us to serious self-examination to identify exactly how our disordered thinking manifests itself in our lives. Then we are to go to God in prayer and ask God to heal us, expecting that he will, while simultaneously being open to exactly how that healing will occur. God loves us and has given his Spirit to us so that we are connected to him in a life-giving and organic way. And he will act to restore his image in us if we persevere in prayer. James isn’t talking about a quick prayer we rattle off before the business of the day overtakes us. He is talking about the kind of sustained prayer that results from a godly sorrow that stems from our knowledge that we are not the kind of people God desires us to be, a knowledge that can only come from humility. And therein lies the challenge. Our transformation is never easy or total. That apparently has to wait until we are made into new creations at the resurrection. But that should never stop us from pushing ahead because our transformation will come, maddeningly slow and idiosyncratic as that might be. That’s the “changed by God” part of our mission statement.

Likewise, James tells us to resist the devil, the source behind all our hellish behavior. This makes many of us uncomfortable because frankly, believing in the devil is just not very enlightened and we certainly don’t want others to view us as unenlightened, superstitious chumps. But if we are able to humble ourselves before God’s word, we will realize our reluctance to believe in the dark powers and principalities is quite foolish and life-threatening. Satan is real. Jesus knew he is real. He is behind much of the disorder in our lives. And one of the lies Satan tries to foist on us is that he is invincible. Not so, says James. Resist him by disciplining yourself, ensconcing yourself in God’s word, and persevering in prayer (among others), and the devil will flee from you. Every time we acknowledge that evil has been defeated on the cross of Jesus, every time we proclaim the strong man has been bound, the devil knows he is beaten and will flee. I experienced this truth personally a few years ago. I used to have a recurring dream that Satan (and man is he one bad dude, I mean really bad) was chasing me until one time I stopped and turned to confront him in the power of the Lord. I woke up before that scene played out but since then I have thankfully not had that dream again.

Yes, we are broken people who act unwisely at times. But it doesn’t have to be, say James and the rest of the NT writers. And so in closing, my challenge to all of us is this. Let us resolve to examine (or continue to examine) ourselves before almighty God and then persevere in prayer by asking God to cleanse and heal us, confident that he will do so. Let us also pay attention to our behavior, to how we treat and speak to each other, to ensure we are not being double-minded. Overall we do a good job in this department. Just look, for example, at the unbelievable response to St. Ann honey. I trust we will do likewise for Len and Sharon this week as Len goes under the surgeon’s knife a second time. Let us also ask God to make us zealous for doing good to others and to continue to turn us into his bright beacons of light for the world. Doing so will ensure that the second part of our mission statement, “to make a difference for God,” is accomplished. It’s hard work. But the rewards far outweigh the work and struggle involved. It is about living life as the fully human beings God created us to be, both in this world and the next. We have this promise of eternal life because we have seen and experienced God’s love made known to us in Jesus’ death and resurrection, and we have the very Spirit of God living in and among us, testifying to us that this is true, which means we really do have Good News, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.