Generous Acts

Sunday, September 24th, 2006
Ordination to the Deacon Ministry of Soozin Mullin
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
James 1:17-22

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.

In going through the Epistle of James over the last couple of weeks we’ve been seeing that the idea of faith being a concept – an idea ALONE is about as far from the point of the gospel as one can get. James’ point, throughout his message to the church at Jerusalem, is that Christian faith is NOT ONLY about thinking and dwelling and meditating and pondering and internalizing the message of Christ, it is about putting the message of Christ into ACTION.

That is NOT to say that we should NOT study and meditate and internalize and “think on these things”, but it DOES mean that our activity surrounding our faith should not stop THERE. Christ tells us in Mark 12:30 “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” He goes on to say “love your neighbor as yourself.” And we’ll come back to that in a minute.

The very first Student Mission Conference I attended as a college student in Kentucky was at Southern Seminary. I remember it was wintertime, either late January or early February. I drove up to Louisville in my car with fellow students from the Baptist Student Union from Western Kentucky University. In some ways I felt like I had an inside track with the whole ‘missions’ thing. After all, I WAS the son of missionaries, I had LIVED overseas, had spent my life around missions, I was on a first-name basis with Keith Parks, the then-president of the then Foreign Mission Board (he was “Uncle Keith” to any MK), so … of COURSE I knew what missions was about, right?

What I found was that, while I might have been familiar with the terminology and had the right words to talk about missions, it still boiled down to this. And it was the theme of the conference: “Be Doers of the Word”. And that was something that I needed to figure out all for myself, along with everyone else that was at that meeting. I remember sleeping on the floor in one of the seminary student’s dorm rooms. If memory serves, it was in the same dorm that I ended up living in while I was in seminary, just on the lower of the two floors.

Over the intervening nearly twenty-five years, there have been people who have shown me what being “doers of the word” looks like. Dr. and Mrs. Paul Parks showed me what it meant to be pillars of the church in the fullest sense – they both gave not only of their finances, but of their time and their insight. Dr. Parks taught one of the college and career classes for years – both before and after I attended First Baptist Church of Bowling Green Kentucky. He was the man who introduced me to Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline.”

Phyllis Parks, Dr. Parks’ wife, taught me how important and meaningful even the most menial tasks performed in love, can be.

Herbert and Jackie Shadowen took me in and made me a part of their family, even letting me live in their home while they spent the summer on sabbatical. They fleshed out for me what the gift of hospitality looks like.

Truman Smith taught me about trusting God to work in and through someone, even when, in man’s eyes, there might seem to be something lacking.

Kelly Spears taught me about standing up for someone when you think they have been treated wrong, about being an advocate for someone with no voice.

Phil Brown taught me about perseverance.

Claude Drouet taught me about generosity and graciousness of spirit.

I hope that as I’ve gone through that short and incomplete list of people who have walked with me in MY pilgrimage as a Christian, that you had a chance, or that you will TAKE the time, to go over in your mind who has been pivotal in your life and growth as a Christian

Looking back over those experiences with those people, I CAN really say, as James did at the beginning of the passage, that “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” These were all people who not only believed their faith, but lived it.

When James digs in and says ‘Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves’ he is addressing a situation with which I’m afraid we are all familiar. He’s talking to people who had figured out how to hear Christian teaching without really listening to it. It basically went in one ear and out the other. He’s addressing the mindset that says “I go to church on Sundays, I sit through the sermon, and I’m done. That’s as far as it goes for me – that’s all I NEED to be a Christian.” The thought that what is learned, or heard, in Church might have some effect on the actions one takes in daily life is foreign to them. That is the deception James is talking about; people who have deceived themselves into thinking that the Gospel ends at the walls of the building.

What we see over and over again in the Gospels, in Christ’s ministry, in his preaching, and in the history of the early church, is that it is what is done THE REST OF THE TIME – away from church, away from worship, away from fellowship with fellow believers, that defines whether or not we are truly followers of Christ.

So we come to this point in our life as a church, where we recognize and affirm a person’s living out that discipleship, that following of Jesus, that calling, that carrying out the ministry of service, so what we do here as a church is rejoice in that, affirm it, bless it, and name it. We call it the diaconate. The Servants. Those who are set aside originally were set aside based on their “good standing”, on their being “full of the Spirit and wisdom.”

We engage in the laying on of hands – it is a ritual of consecration and appointment. By asking any who are present to join in this act, we recognize that it is this body of Christ, as a local congregation, that we bear witness to those who are called out among us to that service of the church, and while it is in a concrete sense a calling to serve this church, Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, it is in a broader sense a consecration to serve the church universal, because we are a part of that as well.

It is with profound joy that I ask Soozin to join me here at the front. I mentioned what Jesus went on to say a few minutes ago – that part about ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ – the water and the bowl and the towel remind us of one of the last acts Jesus performed for his disciples --- washing their feet. I want you to dip your hands in this water, and be reminded of that act, and understand that it was setting the tone and setting the precedent for what we do as servant leaders of the church.

Soozin’s witness not only since we’ve been here (Leslie and the kids and I), but over at LEAST the last two decades … you all can tell me more accurately how long it’s been the case – Bobbie and Doc and the rest of the family, yes? – has been consistently living out that ‘loving’ part, the caring that her life has reflected is more than enough to show that her heart is truly one that is after God’s own.

I would first ask that all ordained ministers and deacons present please form a line along the side of the sanctuary, and as you come by to say a blessing over or a prayer for Soozin, and after them, the line is open for any and all who would join us in consecrating and appointing Soozin to be a Deacon of Jerusalem.

Rudders of Our Souls

Sunday, September 17th, 2006
Proper 19 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
James 3:1-12

1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 4 Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. 7 For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8 but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

It strikes me as a little funny to have the first line of the text this morning say “not many of you should become teachers” after having just commissioned the incoming teachers for the Sunday School year just last Sunday, but then, it is probably an entirely appropriate note on which to dwell at the beginning of the new year. After all, what does a teacher use to instruct? Words!

So it is a good thing to periodically stop and take account of how we are doing with them – with our words – in relation to how we are doing with our relationship with Jesus.

Here’s a simple test. Three questions, true or false, you may want to keep the answers to yourself:

I have never hurt another person with my words
I have never repeated something about another person that I did not know for certain was absolutely true.
I never participate in idle talk about other people and their lives.

Now, I’d like to try an experiment together. Yesterday many of you were here to witness the wedding ceremony of Mark and Irma Haggerty. There came the point in the ceremony where they repeated words after me. We’re going to do something a LITTLE bit like that, but as we do, I want you to pay attention to how you react emotionally to what you are saying.

Okay, ready? Repeat after me: “I love you!”

Great! How did that feel? Good?

Now, ready for the second phrase? Here goes.

Repeat after me: “I hate you!”

Hmmm … not quite the same, is it?

Consider for a moment the power of speech. When we hear a word, the physical movement that enters our ear and then the inner ear activates 24,000 little nerves which react through the limbic system and results in the pituitary gland sending hormones into the body. Our whole physical system reacts when we hear words of care or condemnation. Have you ever heard something and it makes you physically ill? When we hear words that bring us pain or anxiety, the physical-chemical reaction may take as many as 72 hours to subside. Does that explain how some people live in a perpetual state of agitation and upset?

The power of the tongue, that is to say, the power of words, was clearly understood by James. Perhaps not in the detailed scientific way we just went over a minute ago, but in terms of what words can do TO the heart and what spoken words say ABOUT the heart, yeah, that part was clearly understood.

James is not only speaking about gossip in this passage, though gossip is definitely included in the family of words he is discussing. He is speaking about any untoward word, any unmeasured, uncontrolled utterance, anything spoken in anger, unthinkingly, or with no thought for how it will affect the listener.

It is to my enduring regret and shame to remember moments when the words that came out of my mouth were particularly harsh, especially barbed, and deliberately aimed to inflict shame or pain. There is nothing I can do to take them back. Nothing. I can only hope and pray that my actions since those words were spoken will work to dim, if not erase the memory of them.

It is an apt image that James draws – that of a rider controlling the horse with a bit in the mouth – it’s a piece of metal that is, what? Maybe 6 inches long? And it helps control an animal that weighs how many hundred pounds?

And the ship analogy – relative to the size of the ship, the rudder is miniscule! And yet, with a word from the pilot the rudder turns and the entire ship moves accordingly. Amazing to think of how much like those our tongues are. It’s actually a little eerie, if you ask me, how dead on those images are. The horse can be in perfect health, the ship can be functioning perfectly, no problems whatsoever, but if the horse is steered off a cliff, or the ship is steered towards a reef, what’s the result? Disaster. And all because of the turn of a relatively small piece in the whole system.

How many of us have lived the consequences of letting our rudders take us on a wrong turn? Lead us down a path down which we should never have gone, said things we never should have said? And the end result was disaster?

The forest fire image could have been drawn directly from the news we’ve been getting from out west over the last couple of weeks, couldn’t it? How many of us have watched words spoken in ignorance, or haste, or worse yet, malice, spread like a wildfire through a community? Or have you seen it happen in a community of faith? It is hard to imagine anything worse than watching something like that take hold of a congregation and tear at its very heart. In times of stress, tempers flare, words are spoken or perhaps yelled, and feelings are expressed in less than loving terms.

That seems to be one of the things James was facing in the congregation in Jerusalem. They were living through persecution, of what kind we do not know, though we can imagine to a point. And in that time of strain, of challenge, of hardship, and even of outright danger, words I’m sure were said that need not have been.

So how do you deal with the aftermath of a word exchange that leaves people bleeding, internally? That leaves them wondering how the other person can even call themselves a follower of Christ and still sleep at night.

The first step is recognizing that what has been said was painful, harmful; to the individual, to the situation, to the group, to the community. There is an element of accountability that is involved in living in community, in being a part of a family of faith, of a local congregation, that calls us individually to become servants of all. That is a fundamental aspect of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Christ calls us to a life of service, and by definition, that pulls us out of the mindset that we intrinsically have a position within that family that is of a higher value than another.

I mentioned at the beginning that we just held our commissioning of the incoming year’s slate of officers and committees and teachers. On a human level, we almost automatically put ourselves in layers – this one is more important than that one, that one needs to answer and report to this one, and so on … yes, there is a scriptural basis for having leaders in the church, but what is it based on? Spiritual maturity. Not on wealth, not on family, not on positions held outside the church… while we hope for a happy coincidence when we look for folks to fill the positions that are available within our community, we may be doing ourselves a disservice by not first looking at the level of maturity in a person as a follower of Christ.

When James uses the word ‘perfect’ in verse 2, he is using it in the same sense that Paul does in his writings – it is in the sense of ‘mature’.

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Let’s ask some questions of ourselves:
How have we, with our words, in this past week, caused pain?

How have we, with our words, in this past week, torn down someone’s spirit?

How have we, with our words, in this past week, blessed someone?

How have we, with our words, in this past week, lifted someone’s spirit, provided comfort in a time of affliction, or encouraged someone in a moment of sorrow or difficulty?

How have we, with our words, in this past week, torn or mended the fabric of the cloth that we are weaving together that is called Jerusalem Baptist Church?

Let’s pray.

FaithWorks

Sunday, September 10th, 2006
Proper 18 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
James 2:1-17

We’re going to spend the next month or so away from John’s gospel. Since we just completed a five week series on the sixth chapter of John, I thought it might be good to delve into some other scripture passages. So for the month of September we’ll be looking at the epistle of James.

A little background on James: tradition holds that the letter was written by James the brother of Jesus, who after his ascension over the next few years became the leader of the Christian church in Jerusalem. During the nearly three decades after Jesus’ ascension, the church in Jerusalem underwent alternating periods of benevolent disregard and outright persecution, whether at the hands of the Romans or Jews, and eventually a severe persecution by Herod resulted in James’ being martyred in the year 62, just a few years prior to the Roman’s total destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70.

Many scholars believe that what we have in the general epistle of James is actually a combination of two things – at its heart, it is a sermon preached by James to his congregation in the midst of one of those times of persecution. It is also the result of a later Christian, who most likely knew and served with James, sitting down and expanding on the ideas and themes presented in the sermon. The resulting epistle is generally dated from between 80 and 90 as a point of information. It is ultimately a letter of encouragement and exhortation for Christ’s followers to remain true to their faith IN Christ.

Martin Luther didn’t have much use for it – he called it ‘the straw epistle’ – most likely because of its seeming contradiction of Paul’s view of Salvation only coming through FAITH that we find most clearly spelled out in Romans – and that was Martin Luther’s point of departure which sparked the reformation.

James, like Paul, doesn’t mince words. So let’s read together from the second chapter, the first seventeen verses:

1My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 2For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, 3and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” 4have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? 6But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? 7Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? 8You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 9 But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the
law as transgressors. 10For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. 11For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment. 14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

And there you have it.

“So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

Keep in mind, we, just like all those who have preceded us in the faith, need to hold that verse in a dynamic tension with the last several verses of Romans chapter 4 and the first two verses of chapter 5, where Paul says, concluding the argument he is presenting,

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”

What does it mean to hold two things in dynamic tension? It means that though on some level they seem to contradict each other, there is a necessity to continue to KEEP them together – kind of like a vinegar and oil salad dressing – they won’t always stay together, but shaking them up and mixing them together brings out the best flavor in the salad – that’s sort of what we are going for when we speak of salvation through faith versus salvation through works – of course we can all agree that the seed of salvation is found in faith, and that no, salvation does not come through works alone, but there is an undeniable connection, an association between what it means to have faith – to accept Christ as Lord of your life and follow him in his example of living, and giving, and loving, and calling, and offering the world what it so desperately needs, and what that means when we translate it into ACTION.

Though we have contemplative strains within varying Christian traditions, we are not called to examine our bellybuttons, as it were. In other words, our faith does not dictate that we gather and discuss doctrine and theology, what the best form of worship is, or what color our carpet should be, our faith DOES dictate that we are to SHARE the love of Christ by SHOWING it, by doing, by performing acts of kindness and charity in the name of Christ and for HIS sake in order to draw people TO him.

But here’s the rub. Remember the chapter from First Corinthians that I read a paraphrase of a couple of weeks ago? About doing all these amazing, honorable, noble, generous, benevolent, effective things even in the name of Christ … what was the catch? If I don’t have … LOVE, it’s all dross, it’s worth zilch, zero, nada, nothing.

Can we put those together? Can we do the dynamic tension thing and keep in our heads the idea that it’s not what we DO that saves us, but what we DO DOES SHOW whether we have THAT WHICH SAVES … IN us …?

What we’re approaching is a place where we begin to understand that what we do is born out of what we believe. What we do with our hands and feet reflects where we’ve placed our hearts and our heads. And what we live – the state of grace in which we carry out our witness—begins to show whose we are, and where we come from and where we are going.

What most distinguished the early Christian Church – the early JEWISH Christian Church – of which James was the leader – from the standard Jewish synagogue of the day was the absence of distinctions. It bears noting that in the passage, in verse two, chapter two, the word that we read as ‘assembly’ is the same word that elsewhere is translated ‘synagogue’.

Last Sunday we visited Harrisonburg Baptist Church, where Leslie attended while she was in college at James Madison University. We didn’t take dress clothes with us, since we didn’t know where we would end up when we set out on Friday, but it wasn’t really an issue. We looked up the church on the internet from the hotel, and found out that they have an early service on Sundays – they call it a ‘Caffeinated Service’, and the dress code is ‘come as you are.’ There was an iron and ironing board in the hotel room, so even though we were wearing casual clothing, it wasn’t wrinkled. J

When we walked into the foyer of the church there were several people standing around chatting, and I noticed one man in particular stood out. At first I wondered if he had wandered in off the street, but that thought went away pretty quickly by watching the way he interacted with the people who more seemingly ‘belonged’ there.

You see, from the looks of him, the man was homeless. He was wearing several layers of clothing, and a pair of ragged sneakers, and the suit that made up his outermost layer of clothes was pretty ragged. And he smelled – REALLY strongly. There were a couple of bags off to one side there in the foyer that probably contained all his worldly possessions, but in watching how he carried himself, and how the other people related to him, it became pretty clear that he wasn’t an intruder, and he wasn’t out of place, but what was most amazing was that he wasn’t unwelcome. He was a part of that family of faith.

What James was pointedly saying to the folks at the church in Jerusalem was “if you make distinctions based on the way someone looks, or dresses, you might as well go back to being what you were before you professed faith in Christ, because if your faith hasn’t changed the way you treat others, then it’s really not worth calling faith, is it?” that opening phrase could actually be translated as a question rather than a statement: “You are not having faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ when you show partiality, are you?”

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

How open are our doors to those who would seek the Lord?

How open are our hearts to welcoming the stranger?

How open are our minds to understanding that God really is no respecter of persons? That it really DOESN’T matter to God what we wear, or how we smell, or what we sound like, or where we sit, as long as we are thirsting after God’s own Word, that Word of life Jesus spoke of in the Gospel of John?

Let’s pray.