Preaching While the Roof Falls In

Mark 13:1-13

November 18, 2018

William G. Carter

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

“As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Of all the tough things Jesus said to his disciples, that had to be the worst: the Temple would be tossed down. It was inconceivable. Those upcountry fishermen probably didn’t get down to Jerusalem more than once a year. It was a straight thirty-five hour walk each way, probably done over at least three days. There were certainly no buildings that large back in Capernaum. The main section of the temple was over a hundred feet high. Who would ever think it would be coming down?

The Jews of that day meant it literally when they spoke of the Temple as God’s House. God rules from the heavens, but the Temple was where God touched down on earth. The scriptures speak of it as the Lord’s footstool (1 Chronicles 28:2). So what did it mean to declare that no one stone would be left standing on another? Did that mean God had left the building? Or worse, that God was powerless to stop the destruction? I’m sure the disciples were shaken by what Jesus said.

It was hard to imagine the central shrine of Jewish faith to be torn down and destroyed, even though that had happened about six hundred years before. In 587 BC Nebuchadnezzar began a siege on the city that lasted for over a year. His Babylonian army smashed through the city walls, captured all the city leaders to make them slaves, and pulled down the great Temple of Solomon.

This was the crisis that inspired about a third of the Old Testament. The prophets tried to interpret how this could happen to God’s House, among God’s people. Were the people being punished for doing something wrong? Had God decided to let it happen? Was God unable to stop it from happening? Or is this the shape of what it’s like to worship God in a world like this? All good questions, without any conclusive answers. A good share of the scriptures tries to make sense of this terrible disruption.

Now Jesus says the Temple will be torn down again. It was hard to imagine that, too. This was the second temple, a long-term rebuilding project going on about five hundred years, with a lot of stops and starts. In the day of Jesus, it was still the sanctuary when God was worshiped, the only altar where sacrifices were made, and the center of an entire nation’s faith and hope. Within forty years of Jesus’ prediction, again the walls came tumbling down, this time at the hand of the Roman Empire.

To this day, all that remains is a section of one wall, now called the Wailing Wall. The pilgrims go there to pray. They wash their hands in purity, cover their heads, and write down their prayers on slips of paper that they leave in the cracks of the wall. I was there eighteen years ago and wrote down the names of my kids.

What do you do when the central place in your life is no more? Maybe that’s a question you’ve had to face.

Someone was telling me about returning to the town of her childhood. She saw the familiar street sign, took a left, went down to the stop sign, and proceeded into the next block. She slowed down as she came around the bend, leaned forward to look, and nothing was there. The old house was gone. The maple tree out front had met a chainsaw cut down. Everything she remembered, or told herself she remembered, had disappeared. “It was profoundly disturbing,” she said, “and left me in a fog. When I tried to recall how it looked, that was gone too.”

Do you know how she feels?

Progress is progress, I suppose, but progress is overrated. A couple of years ago, I drove down Emmons Drive, the New Jersey street where my seminary apartment was located. 312 Emmons Drive was leveled to the ground. It wasn’t a big loss; the place was a dump. The heating system was always goofed up and our cat had been infested with fleas. Good to see the place go!

But don’t say that to the elderly couple who no longer go to church. Once upon a time, they went every week. They met in the Sunday School, fell in love in the youth group, walked down the aisle to get married, had three children baptized in that sanctuary. Then the neighborhood changed, people they knew moved away or passed on, and there weren’t enough hands in the church to keep the lights on. So the church closed down. They tried to connect to other churches, but it just wasn’t the same. The couple stopped going anywhere.

What do you do when the sanctuary no longer exists?

Jesus offers an ominous warning. Perhaps it is true that no building is permanent, that no institution is secure, that no configuration of familiar people is everlasting. I’m not sure I want to hear that, even if it’s true. I love you people, I love this place. I can’t imagine if this building were ever to go away, or if our faith community would have to shut down someday.

I suppose it’s one of the hard realities of being human, of being mortal. Everything we love has an expiration date. After fifty-eight trips around the sun, I know that well. So I begin to think that abundant life may consist of claiming the opportunities we have here and now, of savoring the moment and enjoying the gifts.

It’s like the book of Ecclesiastes, which is a wisdom manual in the Bible written by somebody in the middle of a mid-life crisis. “I tried chasing after pleasure,” says the writer, “and I tried making a lot of money. I tried working hard and flying straight. I tried just about everything, and it was like reaching for a puff of smoke.”

“So,” says the sage, “all I got is this: eat and drink, find enjoyment in your toil, follow the commandments, and fear God.”[1] To put it in other words, love God and keep your head down. That is a time-honored way of getting through things.

But I do have to say the wisdom of Jesus is much more intentional. In the text today, he basically says three things: discern what’s going on, stay patient, and keep preaching. Let me say a few words about each.

First, and to quote Marvin Gaye, what’s going on? If we trace the long history of temples being torn down, we discover all over again that we are in the thick of an endless skirmish between good and evil. It’s not merely the people out there who oppose us that we must to worry about; it’s also what we are capable to doing to ourselves. The threats are both external and internal. The Roman Empire was the greatest and most luxurious empire of its time. Yet it built its affluence by brutality. It would eventually implode from moral rot. We can learn your lessons from that.

Similarly, I know a lot of churches that grew big in the 1950’s after returning soldiers had a lot of babies. The churches grew. They were tempted to indulge themselves, rather than give themselves. As the affluence in the society grew, the churches plateaued. As the cities wrestled with racial tension, the churches and their people moved out to the suburbs. As everybody in the culture became nominally Christian, there were a lot of nominal Christians and precious few followers of Jesus. When the communities changed, the churches weren’t nimble enough or self-sacrificing enough to change with them.

And so, “what’s going on?” Jesus said, “Don’t be led astray.” In our day, don’t be led astray by a false sense of comfort. We must read what is really happening. That’s the discernment.  

Second, add to that some patience, what my friend Ched Myers calls “revolutionary patience.” Ched says that, especially in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is telling us to hang in for the long haul. Don’t chase after the latest fad. Don’t worry about the crisis du jour. Dig in and stay faithful to God. If the world beats you up or puts you on trial, this is to be expected, because it happened to Christ first. We are part of that grand narrative of good versus evil. It’s been going on for a long time, and by all accounts we should expect it to continue.

Maybe you heard people ask the rabbi at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, “What are you going to do, after a gunman invaded your sanctuary?” He said, “We will keep worshiping the holy God and keeping God’s commandments.” What happened was a terrible thing, but faithfulness to God is expressed in perseverance. We keep going, knowing the world will do what it’s going to do, but we are going to do what God calls us to do. That’s the revolutionary patience. It’s more than “being patient.” It is staying patient, taking a long view, persisting in an eternal view.

And finally, he says to keep preaching. That is the command of Jesus. If the roof falls in, keep preaching. Or more specifically, keep proclaiming. That’s the word: proclaim. It refers to speaking, but it’s more than speaking. It is courageously proclaiming that our message is more important than we are. The Gospel is God’s announcement that sin is cancelled by grace, that hatred is washed clean by love, that death is defeated by resurrection. It’s the word that grace, love, and resurrection are finally going to win.

Frederick Buechner wrote a novel where a lot of terrible things happen. The main character is a Protestant minister who lost his wife in a car accident. He is raising two small girls with the help of a Jewish housekeeper. In a turn of events, he travels to a wayward church member and bring her home to her husband. The local newspaper makes more of this than he should and creates some rumors in his town gossip column. None of it is true, but some damage is done.

Shortly after he brings her back to reunite with her husband, a teenage prank goes terribly wrong. Nicolet’s housekeeper dies after her house catches fire. So at the end of the book, the whole town gathers around her grave. Nicolet read the familiar words from the end of the Bible: "And God shall wipe away all tears, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things have passed away" (Revelation 21:4).

He spoke for a few minutes, then concluded with a benediction. The people shuffled away in the rain. One turned back. It was the sleazy newspaper editor who caused the turmoil while Nicolet was out of town. "Good show," he said to the preacher. Then he pointed to the grave and sneered, "This supper of the great God . . . no more death, no more pain. Ask her."

Nicolet stood silent, his two daughters by his side. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to do. Suddenly his daughters did an unexpected thing.

They grabbed up some of the flowers that they had brought and started pelting him with them - orange hawkweed, daisies, clover - and stooping over like a great, pale bear in his baggy seersucker suit, he kept on lunging at them with his finger. Nicolet threw back his head and laughed as Poteat went lumbering off with the little girls after him. When he got as far as Nicolet's car, he turned around for a moment, and it was only then that they could see that he was more or less laughing himself.[2]

What do you do when the roof falls in? "You proclaim the kingdom of God," says Jesus our Lord. Even if life should turn deadly, we proclaim the power of God that is stronger than death. And preach and proclaim we shall, until the day when there are no more tears, when death has no more power, when grief is swallowed up in laughter.

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

---

[1] Ecclesiastes 5:18, 12:13

[2] Frederick Buechner, The Final Beast (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1965) 276.

Peeking Into the Offering Plate

Mark 12:38-44

November 11, 2018

William G. Carter

As Jesus taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

One summer Sunday, one of our ushers didn’t show up. I don’t remember who it was, but there was some consternation in the back of the sanctuary. The list of regulars had been exhausted, and no fresh volunteers were presenting themselves. What I remember is the lead usher looked at me, with a smirk on his face, and said, “Maybe you could help us take up the offering.”

Well, I’m usually up for a challenge. So, after the sermon the offering was announced. Three ushers stepped up with four offering plates, as I stepped down to join them. I have to tell you it was a complete revelation for me.

I noticed what I can’t always see up here, that there are different styles of putting the money in the plate. There is the sideways subtle drop, to suggest this is no big deal. There is the grand flourish. And there is the family bargain gambit, familiar from my childhood, where the parent says, “The quietest child in the pew can do the honors.”

One poor soul hadn’t paid much attention until there I was. He looked up, saw me standing over him, and gasped, “Oh, it’s you.” He reached into his wallet and pulled out a little bit more.

The most difficult part of the job, however, was resisting commentary. I recall a prominent man in an expensive suit. He put in a buck. I wanted to say, “Is that it? Surely you could do better.” The lead usher caught my eye and shook his head, as if to say, “Don’t say a word.” In the next pew sat an older woman, known to be having a difficult time. She had four offering envelopes with a rubber band around them. Each one was stuffed full. I wanted to say, “Are you sure?”

The ushers decided to never ask me again. Some people squirmed with me stepping out of the safe zone of the chancel. Others said, “That’s not his job. I’ll be glad to volunteer whenever you need me.” The universal response, I believe, was a certain unease at having the pastor observe what they were giving.

So I’m interested in this brief story from the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus is watching people make their donations to the temple. “Many rich people put in large sums.” Is that an affirmation or a critique? Mark doesn’t say. He doesn’t describe how he knew they were rich. Was it the way they dressed or the way they carried themselves? He also doesn’t say how Jesus knew they gave “large sums.” In that day, money came in coins, not paper. I’m guessing the coins jingled and clinked when they dropped in the box.

They didn’t have offering envelopes back then. Nobody was tracking the donations for a tax write-off. And there wasn’t the cultural conspiracy of silence, where giving is considered private and nobody else’s business.

When my first congregation was invited to join in an ecumenical service at a Greek Orthodox church, a lot of them were shocked to walk in, and, even before they smelled the incense, they noticed the bulletin board by the door. Someone had posted a typewritten list of everybody in the congregation and how much they gave. My Pennsylvania Dutch folks were shocked. They were stunned. To have that information right up where everybody could see it – and they did this on purpose! It was horrifying and froze their German blood.

That kind of information can be disturbing. A new person is recruited to count the offering or post the donations on the computer. The finance committee will dispatch me to train them, saying, “Please, please, please, count accurately but forget the name attached to the gift.” Why? Because you might look at people differently if you see what they give. In the words of our most venerable offering counter, “I have the shortest memory in town.”

This can be important. When you notice that loudest and most savage critic is giving only a couple of bucks, you begin to see the hypocrisy. It may soften the effect of their criticism. Yet I can also tell you, after years of observation, that the largest givers to this congregation are not the wealthiest; they are the most committed. I recall the wise words from one of my mentors, “Bring people closer to Christ and their wallets come with them.” Everything comes with them – talents and abilities, time as well as treasures.

And what about Christ? There he sat, watching people put their coins in the offering box. Actually they didn’t have a single box, but rather many containers placed around the temple. These were not intended for outreach or mission work – but for operations, to keep the temple flourishing. The temple was a big operation; arguably, in Jerusalem, it was the only operation in town. It was the only bank as well as the central shrine. The income was enormous. As one historian reports,

There were bequests coming in from all over the world, the world-wide levy of a fixed tax (among the Jews), the animal sacrifices (and the purchase thereof), the redemption of vows, the wood offerings, as well as the produce of the land owned by the Temple. (The income) increased exponentially during the great pilgrim feasts. Every good Jew was committed to spending a tenth of the produce of his land in Jerusalem.[1]

With all that money coming in, Jesus sits down and watches the crowd. There were offering containers all around the Temple precincts. If you believed God was good to you, you could make an additional “thank offering.” Moses encouraged this, as a way of teaching thanks, of directing our gratitude to God who provides all the things. What the people gave depended, as it still does, on the measure of their engagement, the level of their involvement, the extent of their gratitude, and the expression of their values.

Jesus was watching. “The rich put in great sums,” says Mark, because they had great sums, But what Jesus notices is that they give from their excess. These are the leftovers after building a big house, eating a fine meal, purchasing nice clothes. Here’s the leftover, the remainder. If those people are financially blessed, they can tithe because they have an extra ten percent hanging around. It’s not a sacrifice.

But just imagine if you could be generous even if you didn’t have a lot of money. What if God had come into your heart, filled it with light, released you from all fear?

Just then, he sees her. Almost missed her, but there she is. Jesus says, “Look at that woman over there.” They are Jewish men; they’re not supposed to look at women. But there she is, no husband in sight. She is quiet, never calling attention to herself. She has no interest in getting her name on a plaque on the wall. She gives her last two coins, pauses for a brief silent prayer, and moves on.

As far as Jesus is concerned, he knows everything he needs to know about her.

Is it the size of the gift? No, it’s not the size of the gift. She is not going to pay for a single candle with her two pennies. Does he notice that she gives in proportion to what she has? Not really, she’s not giving a ten percent tithe. She’s giving a hundred percent, everything she has to live on. To quote Mark’s Greek text, “She gave her whole living.”

It is an enormous gift. Like the day when Jim was counting our weekly offering and called me over. “Look at this,” he said. There is a cellophane-wrapped lollipop in the offering plate with a note: “LOVE.” “Somebody made a sacrifice today,” he said. We stood in awe of the gift.

Throughout the ages, Christian preachers love to praise this generous widow. They praise her total reliance on God, not knowing where tomorrow’s income will come, but trusting her life to God. As somebody else’s sermon summarizes a lot of other sermons on the text,

Jesus is impressed by her commitment to give “her whole life to God.” At a critical juncture, the widow chooses sacrifice over survival. It should come as no surprise that Jesus highlights the widow’s example. Jesus is forever calling people to give their whole lives to God. It’s central to his vision of discipleship. Put your hand to the plow and don’t turn back. Leave family. Leave friends. Take up your cross and follow me.”[2]

I think I’ve preached that sermon with other words. It’s especially appropriate when we note that this story, the story of the widow’s sacrifice, is placed by Mark as an event from the last week of Jesus’ life. It happens around Tuesday of Holy Week, right before Jesus gives his life. He points out her sacrifice before he makes his own.

But there’s something else that I see when I hear the story this time. Jesus is watching the givers. Not just the woman, but all of the givers. He notices the act of giving reveals what is going on in the giver. Giving can be good for us, if it is generous and it empowers others.  

Thanks to my good friend Virginia Miner, I came across the wisdom of Maimonides. Ever hear of him? Maimonides was a 12^th century Egyptian Jew. He taught there are eight ascending steps of righteousness. Every step had to do with generosity.

·         The first step is taken by those who give grudgingly, reluctantly, or with regret.

·         The second: those who give less than is fitting but give graciously.

·         Third: those who give what is fitting, but only after being asked.

·         Fourth: those who give before being asked.

Then it gets interesting:

·        The fifth step: those who give without knowing to whom, although the recipient knows the identity of the donors.

·        Sixth: Those who give without making their identity known to the recipients. Anonymous givers.

·        Seventh: Those who give without knowing to whom, and neither do the recipients know from whom they receive. They are anonymous and give without strings attached.

·        Eighth: Those who help others by giving a gift or loan, thereby helping them to dispense aid to others.[3]

God is on the eighth and highest step of righteousness. So are those who give freely for the benefit of others.

So I bring this up on the week after we have dedicated our financial pledges for 2019. I don’t do that simply to nudge those who haven’t turned in a pledge card yet. Neither do I do this because the lectionary of Bible readings has scheduled this text for today. I do it because stewardship is not primarily about fund raising; it’s about soul-making.

It is good for us to give and to be generous. It is good to think about others and to support the enterprises that we value. It is good to endow our commitment to the generations that will follow us. It is good to provide others a “hand up” and not merely a “hand out.” It is good to give ourselves away, in every possible sense, so that others may flourish, and God’s gift of life can continue beyond us. Jesus said as much: “What does it profit someone to gain the whole world and lose your soul?” (Mark 8:35)

So that is the Gospel’s invitation to all of us today: to live generously, to love abundantly, to give ourselves away to the glory of God. The mystery of Christ’s Gospel is precisely this: as we give ourselves away, we gain something that the world can never take from us. Even more than that, we begin to look like Jesus Christ.

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

---

[1] Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969) 28.

[2] Brad Roth, “By middle-class American standards, the widow’s decision is questionable,” The Christian Century, 9 October 2018

[3] Virginia Miner, “Don’t Touch the Chicken Until We See If They’re Hungry,” in Speaking of Stewardship, William G. Carter, editor (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1998) 112.

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.

---

[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.

Bite Your Tongue

Bite Your Tongue
James 3:1-12 (+ assorted proverbs)
September 30, 2018 

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 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. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 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. 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! 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. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh  

When I was a student preparing the ministry, I was home one weekend. My pastor read these words from the letter of James, then he leaned over the pulpit and addressed me by name. “Watch out, Bill,” he said. “James is talking about you and me, preachers as well as teachers. We work with words, we traffic with words, we get in trouble with words.” It was a dire warning, and it was true. 

“Not many of you should be teachers,” says James. He is not speaking about standing up in front of a class or working through a curriculum. His concern is public speech, particularly within the community of the church.   Those who stand up in front of a congregation must watch what they say, because they will be “judged with a greater strictness.” And you thought it was easy for us to find worship leaders on Sunday mornings. 

The number one fear of most people is public speaking, standing up, looking at a group of people, opening the mouth, and saying something. This is a tough thing to do. For some folks, it’s downright terrifying, even if the words are already scripted. And it’s true, even for the few of us who speak for a living.

It reminds me of those old black and white pictures of Iroquois Indians working construction and walking the high beams of skyscrapers. Anybody remember those? Apparently they had no fear of heights, or if they did, they could push the fear out of their minds. I think if they ever stop and thought about the risky venture of what they were doing, they would have stopped in their tracks. Public speaking can be like that. 

Sometimes it just happens. Open the mouth, the wrong thing comes out like a belch. Of all the verbal mistakes I’ve made, the biggest happened at my baby sister’s wedding. I stood before her in her beautiful white dress. He was in a tuxedo, his brow glistening with anxiety. They wanted me to preach, so I read the text, from the third chapter of Colossians: “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, and patience…” 

The words originated in a baptismal sermon, I pointed out. In the early church, the new Christians gathered at the river to be baptized. They shed their old garments, stepped into the water, were baptized, then stepped out of the river to be adorned with a white robe, representing how they cast off old habits and took on the new life. “So,” I said to them, “as nice as this gown and tuxedo are, I bet you can’t wait to get out of these clothes.” 

There was a snicker over here, a guffaw over there, and suddenly, like a wave, a ripple of laughter. She began to shake, he turned fire-engine red, and I couldn’t understand it. I looked at her and mouthed the words, “What did I say?” She said, in a voice loud enough for others to hear, “You just told us to get naked, in the middle of our wedding.” With that, the sanctuary erupted. My throat froze up. I forgot the rest of what I was going to say, and didn’t dare say it any way. My mother was glaring at me, my father was smirking. So much for the Kodachrome moment.

“All of us make many mistakes when we speak,” says the letter of James. All of us! That doesn’t let us off the hook. That’s not an excuse. It is a description. And it is well rooted in the wisdom tradition of the scriptures.

As we heard from the selection of Proverbs, the human tongue is deceitful, evil, malicious, slanderous, false, poisonous as a serpent, full of lies, crafty, proud, mischievous, naughty, perverse, backbiting, and flattering. There is also the possibility that the tongue an be kind, melodious, fair, just, wise, wholesome, and righteous. 

My mother-in-law Loraine passed away gently on Wednesday morning. Yesterday, as we remembered her at her funeral, I leaned forward when the pastor read a line from the final chapter of Proverbs: “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue (Proverbs 31: 26).” It was an apt description. 

And then, by contrast, I watched the highlights of Thursday’s Supreme Court hearing. I found myself hungering for wise words and the “teaching of kindness.” 

We know what is at stake with our words. James looks out the window at a raging forest fire. It cannot be contained. The fire destroys. The conflagration feeds on itself and becomes all-consuming. James makes no bones about this: “The tongue is a fire,” he writes, “and it is set on fire by hell. How great is the damage created by the human tongue!” Destruction creates even more destruction. 

He even goes far enough to say that the human mouth cannot be tamed. Horses have their bridles, to direct them where to go. “But no one can tame the tongue,” says James. “It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it? 

James is aware of the contradiction. “Out of the same mouth comes blessing and cursing; with the tongue, we bless our God and Father, and with the tongue, we curse those who are made in the image of God.” That’s the paradox of having a voice. It can go either way. As followers of Jesus, the continuing question is how we want it to go. 

Now some would say, let’s watch our words, swallow our anger, and bite our tongues. James actually begins that way, declaring, “If you are perfect, you can guide your tongue.” But it’s also pretty clear that he doesn’t know any perfect people. Neither do we. 

A psychologist reflected on some recent public words. The context is not important, because it’s applicable to any number of situations. She quoted Sigmund Freud, who said somewhere that, when somebody is caught in a lie, or being exposed as a fraud, a dysfunctional person of low character will always respond to direct questions with an emotional outburst to avoid responsibility and place themselves as the victim. 

“Johnny, did you eat my cookies?” Mom, it wasn’t me. 

“Johnny, there are crumbs on your lips.” Mom, you always make cookies for my sister and never for me. 

“Johnny, why are you lying?” Mom, you are so unfair. 

And with those words, Johnny is ready to hold public office. 

James gives his warning: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes.” Do you see what’s at stake? It’s more than a mistake. It is the fraying of public trust. And if you cannot trust somebody’s words, you cannot trust their hearts, because words reveal what is inside us. They reveal whether we can be trusted. 

Make a mistake? Confess it, admit it, request forgiveness, make amends. That is Christian Ethics 101. We can move ahead with confession and forgiveness. It may take some hard, honest work, but we can move ahead. But if you lie, distort, deceive, misdirect, and blame somebody else? Do those things and you will be thrown out of the Garden of Eden. It’s that simple, and it’s that tragic. 

What James is pushing us toward is the honest life, the integrated life, the life of everyday holy wisdom. It comes from above, from the dominion of God. And there are ways to welcome the gift and cultivate the garden of God’s peace. I like what James teaches in chapter 2: “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefor 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.” (2:19-20) 

I like that, particularly the phrase, “the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” What word is that? It is the Word of God. If you have heard God speak, the Word is planted somewhere in you. It’s like a seed with the potential to bear abundant fruit. And the garden must be weeded, carefully removing the distractions and distortions of all the weeds. With time, patience, and faithfulness, the seed can grow. This careful gardening of the soul is one way to grow as a human being and a follower of Jesus. 

Another way is to fill ourselves with words that build up and brighten. Some years ago, the writer Kathleen Norris wrote about her struggles with depression. It would descend on her like a dark angel, she said, as if she was invaded by a shadow that grew when she wasn’t looking. Medication helped provide some balance. So did talking with a therapist. By far, the greatest medicine came in reciting words that didn’t originate with her. 

She found the Psalms in scripture, or rather, the Psalms found her. She would chew on them, small bites, sometimes chewing on a phrase for hours or days. “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Hope in the Lord.” The dark angel of depression tried to chase the psalms away, but as she stayed with the words from God, they grew inside her. As she stayed with them, they grew larger – and the demon drifted away.

We are not talking about a magic potion here, or some empty incantation, but dwelling in the Word that God speaks onto the written page. I ponder this sometimes. What if all of us spent more time with the Bible, not merely to understand it, but to let it in? What if we replaced all the negative words, the terrible words, with words about redemption, hope, and grace?  What if we chased away all the words of the devil with the Word-made-flesh, Jesus Christ? 

So, surely, we can all watch what we say, and listen before we speak. The world would be a better place if more people did that. But God’s mission is even greater. Each day, we are invited to welcome the Christ that he sends, the redeemer who is known as the One who speaks truth and grace.

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