September 2, 2012
Faith is a Verb
- James 1:17-27
- Rev Ruth Chadwick Moore
I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but last Thursday and Friday your staff went on retreat to Jerry and Sally Gray’s cabin on Lake Monroe. The group consisted of your pastors – Teri and me, John Wright our music director, Debbie Bulloff our Director of Christian Education and Julie Shannon our Youth and Young adult director. We have done this before and are very grateful to Jerry and Sally for opening their vacation home to us for our planning time. It’s a great place for us to relax, and to be able to talk and envision new ways of doing worship and programming at Northminster. We also spent some time on Jerry’s boat out on Lake Monroe and Debbie Bulloff has some pictures and videos of our water activities. If you would like to see a video of Teri waterskiing or John and I tubing you can make a donation to the building fund – a generous donation – and Debbie might show them to you. She has promised me that she will not post them to UTube.
I have performed 4 weddings in the last 6 months with 2 more coming up. And one of the things I have started mentioning to the couples I counsel is my conviction that love is a verb. I also tell them that I have listened to the new John Mayer CD that has a song entitled “Love is a Verb.” Now I mention this to them – and to you - so you will think I’m hip and listen to current music. But I also emphasize the song and the sentiment because I believe it is true. Love is not just about feelings or words. It is also about action – about showing someone you love them. How many times have I shared with you that I stay in my marriage to Mark because he makes the coffee every morning? That may not say love to you, but to get me moving in the morning coffee is essential. So that fresh pot of coffee shows me that Mark cares about me. Of course I stay married for other reasons too, but that is another sermon!
At our retreat we started talking about how so much of Christianity is a verb. Worship is also a verb – we participate in worship, we are active in worship, our worship is directed to God, not just inwardly focused. Loving each other and loving our neighbors as ourselves – an essential Christian commandment – is a verb. Being a Christian is a noun that requires some kind of action on our part. And now after reading our two passages of scripture today, I realize that our faith is also a verb.
Martin Luther called this Letter of James an “epistle of straw.” He did not feel it was worth much of our attention. For Luther, this letter from James was about earning our salvation, which we all know is a “no, no.” Our salvation is a gift – it can’t be earned. But if we ignore James, we miss out on some of the most real life, faith-in-action challenges in the New Testament. Maybe that’s why we keep James on the back burner – because he won’t let us get away with some of the things we like getting away with.
James’ first message in today’s reading is to remind us that every perfect gift, all good things, come to us from God. We have not done anything to deserve or earn these gifts. All we do is receive them. God is the giver and we are the receivers. Already we don’t like this because most of us are better givers than receivers.
And what do you do when someone gives you a gift? You say thank you. Saying the magic words “please” and “thank you” are the first words of courtesy we teach our children. One of the first steps in the socialization of children is learning to understand and say these words.
Sunday morning worship is our time to pay attention, to take note of the presence of God in our lives and for us to say ‘thank you.” But faith is not just about words. Just showing up and saying thank you is not enough according to James. The writer of this letter – and we don’t really know who he is – reminds us that it is essential to our faith to show God our thanks, as well as to show others what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ – because faith is a verb. And so James calls us to be “doers” not just “hearers” of the Word. If the truth of the gospel has been given to us, if we have incorporated it into our hearts and our lives, then we “do” certain things.
And James has very specific directives on what to do. Or in his words, how we can be doers of the word.
First he tells us to curb our tongues. In other words we are to watch what we say and how we say it. We’re to choose our words slowly and carefully. We’re to be our own first editors and to filter out hate, vitriol and vindictiveness. Notice that James does not deny the importance or strength of anger – something I am very appreciative of! He doesn’t tell us to swallow our anger. But instead he encourages us to transform anger into a virtue. Be quick to listen, James says, and slow to speak and therefore slow to anger. This is hard work and requires discipline but it helps us to “Rid ourselves of all sordidness and the growth of wickedness.” (v. 21)
But being a “doer” – making our faith a verb – also means we are to watch out for others. We’re especially supposed to watch out for the most fragile, the weak, and the helpless. James cites the Old Testament mandate to “care for orphans and widows in their distress.” Since orphans and widows had no male head of household to take care of them, they had no status in society. They could rarely work, poverty was usual and homelessness was standard. That is unless the community stepped in. If you want to say “thank you” to God for all the good gifts you receive, then say thank you by doing something – step in and take care of the vulnerable among us.
The Christian Century has an essay by Wallace Bubar who is a Presbyterian minister in Overbrook, Pennsylvania which is right down the street from where my parents used to live. He grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition and tells the story of the offering envelopes in his childhood church. The envelopes had the usual line for your name and the amount of your contribution – just like ours do. But they also had six little boxes underneath where you could put a check mark. The six boxes had six actions: worship attended, Bible brought, Bible read daily, Sunday School lesson studied, prayed daily, and the last box was for gave an offering.
Apparently someone at the Southern Baptist headquarters had decided that these were the six things that were important for a Christian to do on a Sunday and during the week. Notice that these were not the 10 Commandments, or the eight Beatitudes, or even the seven cardinal virtues. No, these six – worship attended, bible brought, bible read daily, Sunday School lesson studied, daily prayer, and giving an offering – these were the essential actions for a Christian.
Wallace remembers one time when visitors came to the church and they didn’t bring their bibles. Wallace was so shocked by this that he leaned over to his father and said, “Look at that, they didn’t bring their bibles.” Wallace’s father noticed it too, and leaned over and said to his son, “They must be Presbyterians!”
Even the size of the bible was important in Wallace’s boyhood church, and seemed to indicate something about the sincerity of one’s faith. Women toted them around in large quilted and embroidered covers. Men would open their study bibles on the pew in order to show everyone how dog-eared and underlined their bibles were compared to others.
Wallace took this bible business seriously. He brought his bible every Sunday and was proud that he could check off the six boxes almost every Sunday. He considered it his spiritual scorecard. He knew as long as he was doing these six things he would stay on good terms with the Lord.
But as an adult he started really studying this letter from James. He thought if he was doing the six things on the envelope he was a “doer” – until he read James and realized maybe he needed different boxes on his spiritual scorecard.
“Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” These words are a helpful corrective to our tendency to reduce the gospel to a system of beliefs or doctrines, or to a matter of personal piety or self-centered spirituality. As Wallace learned, Jesus didn’t just want people to hear him and understand him, but he also wanted them to follow him and to do the work of the kingdom. As our gospel lesson for today reminds us, for Jesus, what counts as clean and unclean is based on a person’s moral choices and actions – not on what he or she eats or reads or studies or carries.
There are no boxes on our offering envelopes for caring for orphans and widows – the vulnerable – in their distress. But for James, the ultimate check box or test of our faith is how we take care of the most powerless among us. The Word is important, but it is also important to take it out into the world. Apparently, then it’s not about whether you’ve brought your bible to church or not, but where your bible takes you.
Faith is a verb. And this congregation has so many ways for you to live out that truth – to be a doer. Check your parish notes, your weekly emails and the News and Views. Our officers and teams need volunteers. As we begin a new school and program year here at the church, this could be a time for you to step up and help, to make your faith a verb. And as James 1 verse 25 reminds us – doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing. May it be so. Amen.
Resources:
Feasting on the Word – Year B, Volume 4, Proper 17.
A great deal of the content of this sermon was taken from the resources below.
Sermons.com – “The Gratitude Salute” by Leonard Sweet.
The Christian Century – Living by The Word, Sunday, September 2 by Wallace W. Bubar.