Begging to See

Mark 10:46-52

October 28, 2018

William G. Carter

They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

A number of folks in our church family have been reading the Bible as part of our Immerse program. It’s a wonderful addition to our education program. The participants read large sections of the Bible and then gather in reading groups to talk about what they have read. They tell me this is an enriching approach. They are getting a lot out of it. Our plan is to keep at it! If anybody would like to take part, we would love to have you join.

I like that they are reading pages rather than paragraphs. When we hear the Bible in a worship service, we usually hear it in paragraphs. But when we sweep through a wider section of scripture, we see more than if we selected a single verse or two.

This story of Bartimaeus, for instance. It sounds like any number of healing stories in the New Testament. The plot is fairly standard. There is a person who has an illness or disability. Jesus becomes aware of this person. After a brief conversation, Jesus heals the person. That’s the standard plot: problem-brief conversation-healing. But if you read more of the Gospel of Mark, you see a lot more.

Bartimaeus is the second sightless person to be healed in this Gospel. The first was in the village of Bethsaida, up north near the Sea of Galilee. They lead this man to the Lord. Jesus takes him by the hand and leads him out of the village. He applies the standard healing practice of the day, and asks, “What do you see?” The patient says, “I see people, but not too clearly; they look like trees walking.” So Jesus has to touch him a second time, give him a second dose, and then the man can see (8:22-26).

It’s a curious story because Jesus has to give him a second attempt, a second whammy. It’s not to suggest that Jesus isn’t strong enough to heal him the first time. Rather it seems to suggest that some kinds of blindness are persistent. They linger. They are difficult to heal. That story is back in chapter eight.

By contrast, the healing of Bartimaeus is at the end of chapter ten. This time, the sightless person has a name. He lives in Jericho, the oasis city down south, where he begs for a living. This time, the people in the crowd don’t lead him by the hand to encounter the Christ. Rather, the people in the crowd tell him to be quiet, to shut up, to keep still.

The blind beggar is sitting there, crying out to Jesus at the top of his lungs. With Roman soldiers all around, Bartimaeus is calling out for the “Son of David.” That’s revolutionary talk, Messiah talk. There’s a good chance the Jericho folk don’t want any trouble. They tell him to hush. And Jesus heals his sight, this time on the first attempt.

This is what we see if we read the full sweep of this section of Mark’s Gospel. Two blind men are healed. The first led by the crowd, the second hushed by the crowd. The first needs extra help, the second needs no help and springs up to leave his beggar’s cloak behind. As Jesus moved from success in Galilee to the cross in Jerusalem, a good part of his ministry is equipping people to see.

There is a healing of a blind person in chapter eight. There is a healing of a blind person in chapter ten. The most curious thing is that between the healing of a blind person and the other healing of a blind person, the twelve disciples of Jesus do not see a thing. It’s painfully obvious if we read between the parentheses.

Immediately after the first blind man is healed, Jesus says to the twelve, “I’m going to Jerusalem, where I will be arrested, suffer, and be killed.” The disciples say, “No, not you. That’s never going to happen to you.” From then, it goes downhill from there.

·         They stammer when Jesus is transfigured on the mountain, then say the wrong thing.

·         They are inept when they have the opportunity to do a healing on their own.

·         They argue about which one of them is the greatest.

·         They try to stop somebody who is doing Christ’s work but is not part of their little group.

·         They try to chase away the children that Jesus is blessing.

·         They hold on to the notion that earthly riches will save your soul.

·         They push and shove to get to the head of the line.

·         They argue about privilege.

In paragraph after paragraph, the followers of Jesus don’t see a thing. He says, “I am going to Jerusalem to give my life.” In the grand sweep of things, they don’t get it. Do you think this is true?

Somebody was telling me about going out to dinner with her husband on a Saturday night. It was a special celebration. They dressed up, went to a fancy place. Wine, appetizers, the whole thing. The evening was ruined, however, by an obnoxious woman at the bar. She was loud, she was rude. When the couple quietly complained, she heard about it from the waitress, and started yelling obscenities. The couple decided to leave after the woman fell off her barstool and needed to be helped back up. That was Saturday night.

Imagine their surprise when they go to church on Sunday, open the hymnal to sing the first song, look across the aisle, and there she is, singing at full voice. At the door, they recounted the story, shook their heads, and said, “Some people don’t get it.”

Some of you know I spent last week with a group of mid-career clergy. As part of my responsibility to the wider church, I serve two weeks a year as a faculty member for a church conference on wellness. We delve into all the dimensions of what makes us human: spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, vocational. It’s a great program. But after attending the conference as a participant six years ago, and now serving as staff for six conferences, do you know why the emphasis is on wellness? Because so many of us are not well.  

The faculty at that conference has seen it all: fractured relationships, estranged children, teenagers with drug problems, college students with eating disorders, spending out of control, going into debt, emotions spiraling in every direction, serious obesity, anger management issues, loss of faith. And that’s just with the clergy. As one of my colleagues says, “Just like the congregations we serve.” All of us have wounds and scar tissue.

The thing that’s so fascinating is the level of denial, the inability to see. Ask the woman whose credit score is shredded, and she says, “I guess I should have paid more of my bills.” Ask the man with hypertension and diabetes who carries an extra two hundred pounds, and he replies, “I really don’t have a weight problem.” It’s astonishing what blind spots some people can have.

The only thing more astonishing is how easy it is to see the blind spots of others when we can’t see our own.

Jesus says, “What do you want, Bartimaeus? What can I do for you?” The blind man says, “I want to see.” It is a remarkable request. He has been sitting on that street corner for a long, long time. Every day he parks himself in a high traffic location. He rolls out the cloak to catch whatever donations people will give out of pity. He cries out for help whenever anyone passes by.

He says, “I want to see.” He doesn’t say, “I want your money.” He doesn’t say, “I want your pity.” He doesn’t say, “Give me a little something so you can assuage your guilt, hurry by, and put me out of your sight.” He says he wants to see, and Jesus honors that request.

Unlike the sightless person in chapter eight, we are never told that Jesus touches him. That’s interesting. It seems to suggest that the desire to see is the first step to seeing. No more denial. No more begging. No more pathetic ignorance. With complete trust, with determined clarity to stop living as he has, he throws off the cloak that captures the pity-donations and goes face to face with Jesus. Then he says, “I want to see.”

Anybody here want to see? Good question. The problem with seeing is you can’t pretend you didn’t. As one of my Christian Education professors once said, “Once you wise up, you can’t wise down.”

Just picture the husband who decides to see that his wife is drinking too much. He’s had enough of embarrassment at parties, or the legal bills at his wife’s DUI arrests. He doesn’t like that the kids hide from their mother, or that she shrugs off or argues about his concerns. He has decided to see it – to really see it. Now the question is, will he have the clarity and courage to take necessary steps to improve the situation, however he can? Come what may?

Or the school nurse, who sees evidence of neglect or abuse? Or the accountant who has a client with dark secrets? Or the Christian who is weary of words of defamation, acts of violence, and a hundred ways that the Christian faith is twisted out of shape by people who don’t look a thing like Jesus?

We live in odd times. Clear vision is a rare gift, and we need one another to keep our vision from going out of focus. One of my teachers is a Presbyterian minister who died last Monday. You have heard me speak of Eugene Peterson before, and you will hear me speak of him again and again. He is the mentor who taught that megachurches worship size and manufactured experience, rather than the Jesus who gives his life on the cross. Gene also said, “A pastor should never serve a congregation that is so big that he or she doesn’t know the names and stories of his people.” Good advice, Christ-centered advice.

In his obituary in the New York Times, he also had this to say: “American culture is probably the least Christian culture that we’ve ever had, because it’s so materialistic and it’s so full of lies. The whole advertising world is just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst instincts we have. The problem is, people have been treated as consumers for so long they don’t know any other way to live.”[1]

What he’s talking about is seeing people as children of God, and not as commodities to be plundered. What he’s talking about is loving every neighbor, not pushing them away. What he’s talking about is treasuring this wonderful gift of life and not cheapening it in any way. What he’s talking about is seeing ourselves as Jesus sees us.

Bartimaeus asks to see, to truly see. As somebody notes, right before this paragraph, two of Jesus’ own disciples “wished for status and privilege; Bartimaeus simply asks for ‘his vision.’ The one Jesus cannot grant, the other he can. It is Bartimaeus who is told to ‘take courage.’”[2] Courage is exactly what he needs – and what we need. For if his eyes are opened, he will see Jesus. And if he sees Jesus, he will need courage to follow him.

Remember how the story ends? Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately Bartimaeus regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way.  He followed Jesus all the way to the cross…because he could see him.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/obituaries/the-rev-eugene-h-peterson-dead.html

[2] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1988) 282.

Lover's Quarrel with the World

James 4:1-10

October 14, 2018

William G. Carter

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

The title of today's sermon comes from a tombstone. I had heard about it for many years, and one day was traveling through Bennington, Vermont. Old First Congregational Church is on the corner as you enter town. On the left side of the building is ancient graveyard. A few steps in, there is the grave of poet Robert Frost. The epitaph under his name reads, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

It's an evocative phrase, and not only for a poet who had a way with words. By all appearances, Robert Frost loved the world. He made all the difference by taking the road last traveled and could enjoy stopping in the woods during a snowy evening. He knew to question the wisdom of his country neighbor, that "Good fences make good neighbors." Yet as deeply as he loved the world, Frost also contended with it.

This is a theme that recurs over and over with the Christian life. How much should we love the world, and how much more should we love God? The world can be a beautiful place, full of mountain vistas and blue lakes.  That maple tree across from my house is turning bright red; I wait for it every year. Yet the world can also be a place of temptation, corruption, and ultimately destruction. A lot of Christian people have a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Garrison Keillor reminisces about the struggles of his fundamentalist Christian upbringing. He says he grew up in a tiny Christian sect, so small that “only we and God knew about it.” His family taught him to be suspicious of the world, especially those who were outsiders, those who lived in cities, and those who flirted with activities that were quickly dismissed as evil.

In his Lake Wobegon memoirs, he tells about the day his family went to a restaurant in the big city of Saint Cloud, Minnesota.  They didn’t want to do it, but they had to do it. Saint Cloud is where their little congregation met, and it was too far to go home after morning worship and get back in time for the Sunday evening service. So they went to a place called “Phil’s House of Good Food.” He remembers,

The waitress pushed two tables together and we sat down and studied the menus. My mother blanched at the prices. A chicken dinner went for $2.50, the roast beef for $2.75. “It’s a nice place,” Dad sad, multiplying the five of us times $2.50. “I’m not so hungry, I guess,” he said, “maybe I’ll just have soup.” We weren’t restaurant goers…so we weren’t at all sure about restaurant custom: could a person ho had been seated in a restaurant simply get up and walk out? Would it be proper? Would it be legal?

The waitress came and stood by Dad. “Can I get you something from the bar?” she said. Dad blushed a deep red. The question seemed to imply that he looked like a drinker. “No,” he whispered, as if she had offered to take off her clothes and dance on the table. Then another waitress brought a tray of glasses to a table of four couples next to us. “Martini,” she said, setting the drinks down, “whiskey sour, whiskey sour, Manhattan, whiskey sour, gin and tonic, martini, whiskey sour.”

Suddenly the room changed for us. Our waitress looked hardened, rough, cheap – across the room, a woman laughed obscenely, the man with her lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke – a swear word drifted out of the kitchen like a whiff of urine – even the soft lighting seemed suggestive, diabolical. To be seen in such a place on the Lord’s Day – what had we done?[1]

His mother stood up, announced they were leaving, told Phil the owner that they were in the wrong place, and everybody in restaurant watched them step outside. The children were feeling embarrassed, humiliated. Why can’t we be like regular people? Mother’s response was to quote scripture, “Be not conformed to this world…”

How much should a Christian befriend the world? Some of us were raised in families that kept asking the question. Today, we hear the letter of James give his answer: not at all. As he says, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” 

It sounds harsh. It sounds like James is saying we must make a choice. What’s it going to be? God or the world? God says one thing, the Bible teaches one thing – and the world pushes against it. Whom will you follow? Which Voice will you hear and obey?

That’s how some of us were taught. I know that was how my church youth group was run. We got a new youth advisor when I was fourteen or fifteen. He was very strict, never smiled, never joked around. He heard that the previous year, the girls in our youth group made dinner for the boys and cooked up spaghetti. And then it was the boys’ turn to cook for the girls, so we cooked up some squid and got some chocolate-covered ants (true story!). When Tim heard about it, he said, “That’s never going to happen again.” No more joking around.

So he announced we were going to get together on Sunday nights and talk about sex. Specifically, we were going to talk about the Christian view of sex. Well, that got everybody’s interest. First night of the series, that youth room was packed. Teenagers are crowding in, sitting on the floor. Tim stood up, thanked everybody for coming, had a prayer – he had a prayer before he talked about sex – and then he gave the lesson. The summary of the lesson, as I remember, went like this: “No, not ever. Don’t even think about it.” That’s what he said to a room full of teenagers, for some of whom, that’s all they were thinking about. The room was very quiet.

Next week, we gathered again. A few people were missing. I was there, my sister was there, and that was pretty weird. We didn’t have a choice. I think our parents thought it was easier to drop us off then have a conversation about the topic. It was awkward. Everybody blushed. Nobody made eye contact. Boys were over here, girls over there, with a four-foot-wide frozen zone between them.

Third week, we gathered again. This time, right before the opening prayer, the minister’s son whispered, “Follow me.” So when Tim said, “Let us pray,” the two of us slipped out. We walked a block down the street to the theater, paid for a ticket, and watched a James Bond movie. When it was over, we walked back just as our parents were arriving to take us home. My folks never found out; the minister’s kid got busted, but I was free and clear. He had to go back for the rest of the series; I had had enough.

And one day soon thereafter, it was announced that Tim was moving on. He was joining a monastery on Cape Cod. I guess ministry with teenagers was too difficult.  

How friendly should we be with the world? To hear James say it, not at all. I’ve always struggled with that. Ever struggle with that?

My mom suggested I should go to a Christian college. When I discovered the one she had in mind, I said, “No way!” They had a list of rules ten miles long. One of my cousins went there, and quickly discovered they had a rule against playing Frisbee on the lawn. The college wanted to keep its lawns pure and pristine, just like their students. Cousin John and some buddies tried to keep the Frisbee on the sidewalks. Alas, one of his pals tossed it a little too far to the left, John lurched and caught the disc, put one foot on the lawn, and got a fifty dollar fine. He transferred to Clarion State the next year, and now he’s a professor there.

A lot of Christian people believe faith is merely a matter of making rules and keeping them, that the Christian life is drawing up a list of bad habits, and then enjoying not doing them. I guess I’ve always thought faith is about trust and life is about living.

When I landed at a state university, unprotected by any rules, I ended up with a Christian roommate one semester. He took one look at my music collection and declared that, when he became a Christian, he got rid of all his jazz recordings. “They are pagan, satanic, or worse,” he said rather piously, “so I burned them in a bonfire.” I looked at him and said, “Why didn’t you give them to me?”

You see, here’s my difficulty: God created the world. God put us to live within the world. The world is the only home that we have. “God so loved the world that he sent Jesus into the world,” the same world that was created through Jesus (John 3:16, 1:10). The Bible says that.

And yet the Bible also says, “The world came into being through Jesus, but the world does not know Jesus” (John 1:10). Sometimes when the Bible is talking about the world, it’s not talking about a planet. It’s talking about a system, about the “world” as a symbol. When the Bible talks like this, the “world” is everything God made that now resists the God who made it. It’s the people made in God’s image who now act and believe as if there are in it for themselves, that nobody matters except they themselves.

I went back and looked at the text from James. There it is:

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from cravings at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. You covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures (4:1-3).

Then he says it, “Whoever wishes to become a friend of that kind of world becomes an enemy of God.” Do you hear the context? The good and gracious God creates this planet, sets us within it, gives us everything we need – and we want more. God gathers by grace, teaches us how to live, sets us free that we would flourish in faithfulness – and we decide to go on our own.

Why is this? Contrary to what some folks believe, we are not up against restaurants, kissing someone on the first date, wild jazz music, or Frisbee on the lawn. We are up against ourselves. James calls it being “double minded.” The trouble seems to be when we forget about God and focus only on ourselves, when we throw off any restraint so that we can run ourselves into the ground, when we become addicted to grasping, and grabbing, and getting more at any cost that we end up losing what we value most. It can happen. It happens all the time. And it causes chaos and destruction.

I was talking to a bright young man at a wedding reception the other night. He’s smart and articulate. I said, “What do you do?” He’s an environmental engineer. He excelled at school and decided early that he wanted to make a difference, especially in a polluted planet. These days, he studies soil samples, detects contaminants, and works to ensure remediation. His passion is helping all of us live in a healthier environment.

He was telling me that a new firm is trying to recruit him. They want to pay his college loans, his car loan, and triple his salary. They offered to put him through graduate school. But here's the thing. They want to him to lie about scientific facts, cook up some junk science, and denounce well researched conclusions. They want him to manufacture some false data to plunder the earth, and they are willing to make him rich.

“I’m struggling with the decision,” he said. “The money could make it possible for me to go on and do whatever I want, but I don’t want to lose everything I believe in.” I thought of something Jesus once said, “What does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul?” (Mark 8:36).

That’s the question, isn’t it? Especially for those who are smart and capable. And we can’t have it both ways. Either we are friends of God or we are friends of something far less.  A lover’s quarrel with the world, indeed.

And I can’t help but remember a prayer from one of the saints: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” (Augustine of Hippo)

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days (New York: Viking, 1985) 109-110.

Those Who Make Peace

James 3:13-18

World Communion

October 7, 2018

William G. Carter

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” That’s one of the blessings Jesus offers in the Sermon on the Mount. And of all the traditions and speculations surrounding the New Testament, some think the James who wrote our scripture text was none other than the brother of Jesus.

We can’t say for sure. Somebody named James signed the letter and added, “a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” He hardly mentions Jesus at all, with just two glancing references to the Lord’s name. But they were more than a little acquainted.

The letter of James extends the teaching of Jesus to a wider circle. He offers practical advice about how to live a life that honors God. As we have heard as we’ve worked through the letter, he also offers his discerning observations of those lives that run counter to God. The brief paragraph today offers a little bit of both.

The destructive life is easy to recognize. It begins with “bitter envy” and “selfish ambition.” It is expressed in “being boastful” and a “liar.” It results in “disorder and wickedness of every kind.” Oh, my goodness; it’s as if Brother James has been reading our newspapers!

He nails it, because the wisdom he offers is timeless wisdom, God-ordained wisdom. At the heart, the wisdom is obvious: you will make a mess of your life, and of other peoples’ lives, if you have unsettled business in your own heart. The person who creates constant chaos is the person who has been living in chaos. The person who wrecks one relationship after another is the person who has never received a lot of love, and therefore cannot give a lot of love.

Some of this originates with “bitter envy.” That’s a pretty good translation of the Greek, but it’s more than merely wanting a fancy lawnmower like your neighbor has or desiring a bigger car like the people down the street. This is “bitter envy” – like the husband who fiercely interrogates the wife on the way home from a wedding reception because she was talking to another man. Or it’s the mom who spreads vicious gossip about the leader of her daughter’s cheerleading squad, simply because her daughter didn’t get picked to be the leader.

This is envy because of a deficit. Something is lacking. There is some emotional black hole in the soul that sucks out all the light and could collapse in on itself. When there is “bitter envy,” chaos and destruction are certain to follow.

Another problem is the “selfish ambition” that James mentions. It’s more than the desire to advance, more sinister than the climb to the top. It’s the desire to win at all costs, and to destroy whatever gets in the way. It’s the scorched earth plan of General Sherman in the Civil War, who decided he had enough of those Confederate rebels, so he would have his army torch a wide swath from Atlanta to the sea. It’s also the way that a victim of abuse, who courageously dares to come forward to tell what she can recall of her story, is publicly trashed by people who must win at all costs.

This is what “selfish ambition” does. It destroys a lot of lives. Eternally speaking, it will even destroy the lives of the destroyers. You might notice how Jesus never says, “Blessed are the brutal,” or “Blessed are the winners.” From the vantage point of God, he declares, “Blessed are the meek,” “Blessed are the merciful,” and “Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing what is right.” God is on their side.

In this moment of our national life, for instance, the destroyers are on every side. The new way to “win” is to fire up a small minority, convince a lot of other people to stay home and not speak up, and then set on fire everybody who disagrees. If that kind of divisiveness prevails, there will be no winners. None at all. What might have been exceptional about us becomes the laughing stock of everybody else.

Anybody want to live that way? I don’t want to live that way. I want to hear what James says about the alternative to “bitter envy” and “selfish ambition.” For this is World Communion Sunday. Jesus Christ, who blesses the peacemakers, wants us to live in peace.

So, what is the alternative? James offers up a basket of good words and phrases. The first is “pure,” in the sense of “fault free” and immaculate.” It’s the kind of word that they use on TripAdvisor.com to describe hotel rooms.  Did you ever stay in a dirty hotel room? There are whiskers in the sink, mold in the air conditioner, and bugs in the bed. How did it get that way? Because nobody was taking care of the place, nobody was paying attention, nobody was making the effort to scrub away the accumulated grime. It takes some effort to live a peaceable life.

Another word is “gentle.” It’s “gentle” as opposed to brutal, or pushy, or intrusive. It’s about respect and receiving people as they are, and not forcing them to size up to what you think they should be. “Gentle” is paired here with “willing to yield.”

This past Friday, I was thinking about that phrase on the highway between New Brunswick and Philadelphia. Nobody was willing to yield. Everybody had to push. In that survival-of-the-fittest environment, “bitter envy” and “selfish ambition” emerge. What if we yielded? What if we gave room for other people? Call it, if you will, a practical gentleness, “full of mercy.” It’s another way to make our way down the road, rather than laying on the horn or directing traffic with the gesture of one of our fingers.

Here is another phrase of James: “without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” Well, now, what would that mean? It means we don’t distinguish between people. It means God is color-blind when looking at people, because God made them all. It means the educated and the ignorant are loved equally. It means Merrick Garland and Brett Cavanaugh should both receive a fair hearing, “without a trace of partiality.” Anything else would lead to hypocrisy.

Beloved church of God, here is the bottom line: To live in peace is to love every neighbor as ourselves, no exceptions. This is the way to peace, and it is difficult work. It’s continuing work. It’s never-ending work, because “bitter envy” and “selfish ambition” are always threatening to sneak in.

James knows this. He has had to contend with it in his own congregation. In chapter two, he barks at the ushers of his church. “Why are you showing the rich folks to a good seat, and shooing away the poor folks who are already seated there? Why do distinguish between God’s own people?” God loves the poor, says brother James, and if the rich want a good seat, then they should get there early. They should also stop stepping on the necks of the poor.

It’s there in chapter two: “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law of God” (James 2:1-9). 

It is possible to live in peace. That is what this Table is about. In the mercy of God, the ancient words of the 23^rd Psalm come true. Remember the words? “You prepare a table in the presence of my enemies.” Well, here it is, the Table that our Good Shepherd sets among the people who have preferred to go their way rather than his way. The Table reminds us of our ongoing challenge, to set aside all the ways that the world has infected us, twisted us, and corrupted us – and to receive what is pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

We can live this way, with works “done with gentleness born of wisdom.” We don’t have to live at odds with one another, even if this makes us odd. We can live as Jesus lives – offering a place at the Table for every person. He receives all of us as we are, and offers us the grace to become so much more.

And he makes a special invitation for those who wish to live in peace, for those who are courageous enough to make peace. They are the ones he declares as “blessed,” and they are his sisters and brothers.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.