Incarnation. Why? So what?

Transfiguration, Mesa

1^st Sunday after Christmas

Year C, 2015

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

Psalm 147:13-21

Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7

John 1:1-18

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

So reads a poem by John Shea, which was included in some of my required reading in my last year of seminary.[1]  Personally, I tend toward a rather melancholic attitude.  Years studying religious violence and genocide will do that to you.  But I love this poem. It powerfully speaks to me of total joy in simple, yet profound, faith.  Total joy is rare for me, but I continuously return to this poem as a meditation of joy.  In fact, the book that contained this poem was close to my heart when I made the decision to name the campus ministry I started Incarnation.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “Incarnation”?

What do you think is the good news of the Incarnation?

I’m going to begin with a claim:  We live in a world in which the larger cultures we inhabit, and quite a bit of Christianity, under-appreciates the radical nature of the Incarnation.  Many who believe in God are probably more properly called theists than Christians.  The difference between the two is that for the theist God is in Heaven, transcendent, and if not wholly transcendent, is only present in the world as some vague ground of being.  Christians, likewise believe in God, but also in a God who is incarnate.  The Christian God is also transcendent, is also the ground of all being, but—importantly—also has a physical body on earth.

What this will mean practically is that the good news of God goes beyond the notion of a deity who abstractly loves us and is in general pulling for us here on Earth, but joined us in the mess of our existence and can love us within our own specificity.  The full implications of God joining us on Earth probably go unrecognized by many.  And before I begin to sound too proud of myself, let me also say that I do not and cannot recognize the full nature of the incarnation.  Suffice it to say that we all fall short of comprehending God to the fullest, and there is no shame in admitting that fundamental difference between our finitude and God’s Eternal being.

So, to manage some expectations here:  this sermon will not fully explain the incarnation.  (Whew, I feel better taking that pressure off of myself).  But I hope to give you some glimpses of why the incarnation is an important concept and why it matters to the life of faith. 

The incarnation is the central mystery within all of Christianity, undergirding everything else.[2]  Before there could be a ministry of Jesus, before there could be a crucifixion and resurrection, God’s son had to enter the world.  Incarnation derived from the Latin (in-carnus), literally “in flesh.”  As John puts it today:  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”  Not that the Word became a visible apparition, a disembodied perfection of God that showed the way but never entered into a polluting physical form.  No, the Word became flesh.  God joined the human race in a body, and subjected himself to all of the problems and joys that come from such a joining. 

Now, some might bristle at this and think that I am downplaying the crucifixion and resurrection.  But consider this:  Without the fall of humankind, there would have been no need for an atoning death.  The Fall gave a particular mission and a necessity to the incarnation.  However, it is possible to believe that even if there had not been a Fall, a perfectly loving God would have chosen to become enfleshed and inhabit the very Creation God called Good.  “God’s taking our humanity is to be understood not only as an act of restoration, not only as a response to [our] sin, but also and more fundamentally as an act of love, an expression of God’s own nature.  Even had there been no fall, God in his own limitless, outgoing love would still have chosen to identify himself with his creation by becoming [human].”[3]

[Note: the footnotes more fully develop this line of thought, which is commensurate with the Eastern Orthodox notion of the End of humankind--theosis as salvation.]

Are you with me so far?

There is good news here:  God did not send his son begrudgingly into the world simply to fix our mistakes.  The loving nature of God makes it likely that the incarnation—God’s willingness to dwell in the very materiality of His own creation—would have happened beyond humankind’s rebellion.  Still more awesome is that God showed this love in response to our sinfulness.   

As it is, the fall did happen; and yet Christ still bridges the gulf between us and God. 

And so the way the incarnation plays out is colored by the reality that we live in a creation marred by death, decay, and sin.  As John puts it, “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

“There is a story of a four year old girl who awoke one night frightened, convinced that in the darkness around her there were all kinds of monsters. Alone, she ran to her parents’ bedroom.  [Does this story sound familiar to anyone?] Her mother calmed her down and taking her by the hand, led her back to her own room. Where she put on a light and reassured the child with these words: “You needn’t be afraid, you are not alone here.  God is in the room with you.”  The child replied: “I know that God is here, but I need someone in the room that has some skin.”

“In essence, that story gives us the reason for the incarnation, as well as a definition of it.  God takes on flesh because, like the young girl, we all need someone with us who has some skin.  A God who is everywhere is just as easily nowhere.  We believe in what we can touch, see, hear, smell, and taste.  We know things through our senses, we communicate through them, and are open to each other and the world only through them.  And God having created our nature, respects how it operates.  Thus, God deals with us through our senses.  The Jesus who walked the roads of Palestine could be seen, touched, and heard.  In the incarnation, God became physical because we are creatures who at one point need a God with some skin.”[4]

There is good news here:  Christ in his incarnation shows God’s complete and total identification with humankind in its vast array of fallen experience, from the highest joys to the lowest depths of our existence.

Here was a God with skin who was born by a sexually suspect, poor, unmarried, Jewish, peasant woman in an occupied territory. A God with skin whose family became refugees in Egypt to escape the reaching of a genocidal king.  A God with skin who showed us signs of the kingdom to come by teaching and by miracles of healing and feeding.  A God with skin who endured betrayal, torture, and tasted death.

A God with skin who resurrected a glorious body, still bearing the deadly wounds that He ultimately triumphed over.

A God who tells us that he lives on within us, so that now we are the skin of God.

That last thing that Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew is that he is with us, even to the end of the age.  That is a powerful identification of Christ’s ongoing presence with us.  St. Paul, based on his experience of Christ, illuminated the relationship even more radically by showing us that the community of Christ—the Church—is Christ’s very body.[5]  This means that the incarnation did not end 2,000 years ago, but is still ongoing. God is still here, in the flesh, just as real and just as physical, as God was and is in Jesus. 

“This is not simply a truth of theology, a dogma to be believed.  It is the core of Christian spirituality [and discipleship]. If it is true that we are the Body of Christ, and it is, then God’s presence in the world today depends very much upon us.  We…keep God present in the world in the same way that Jesus did.”[6]

As scripture scholar Jerome Murphy-O’Connor puts it:

“The community mediates Christ to the world.  The word that he spoke is not heard in our contemporary world unless it is proclaimed by the community.  The power that flowed forth from him in order to enable response is no longer effective unless manifested by the community. As God once acted through Christ, so he now acts through those who are conformed to the image of his son and whose behavior-pattern is in imitation of his.  What Christ did in and for the world of his day through his physical presence, the community does in and for its world.”[7]

There are a number of implications to this reality of God’s continuing incarnation through us who form Christ’s body.  But I will focus only on one:  what the incarnation means for our prayer life.

What does it mean to pray as though we are truly members of the incarnate God, the body of Christ? 

It means that we move from treating prayer as a promise to woefully consider the problems of the world in obedience to a God who makes no claim on our individual lives.

It means recognizing that our prayers are just as much a commissioning of ourselves as Christ’s body on Earth as our prayers are a petition to a transcendent God. 

It means that prayer must move beyond asking for God to intercede, and become the time in which we name the need and listen for where God prompts us to put skin to prayer.[8]

And it sounds like a lot of work, but I testify that there is joy in becoming a conduit of God’s love to others. There is joy in finding that God put you in the position to be the answer to someone’s prayers.  There is joy in making real for someone else a God that otherwise seems far away and invisible.

And may it be so that we see the Christmas season and beyond as a prolonged exercise in bringing to others the gift of a faith made real enough to touch and taste. That, also, would be the proper response to the good news of the incarnation.

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[1] The poem is found in Ronald Rolheiser’s The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York: Doubleday, 1999) 71-72. Much of the following discussion of the Incarnation follows from this book.

[2] Rohlheiser, 75.

[3] Bishop Kallistos Ware, paraphrasing St. Isaac the Syrian (c. 700AD), (The Orthodox Way. Rev. ed. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995), 70). Edited to be gender neutral.

What this means for the incarnation is that it was not simply God sending his son on a 33-year long rescue mission on Earth. “The true image and likeness of God is Christ himself; and so, from the very first moment of [humankind’s] creation in the image, the incarnation of Christ was implied.  The true reason for the incarnation, then, lies not in [our] sinfulness but in [our] unfallen nature as a being made in the divine image and capable of union with God (Ware, 70).”  Christ would still have been made man in order to move us from the state of an unfallen Adam—in which we are made in the image of God—to be the bridge and show the way toward full union with God. This line of thinking conforms to the Orthodox notion of the End of humans being in perfect union with God—theosis, or deification.  As St. Athanasius put it:  “God became man so that man could become God.”

[4] Rohlheiser, 76-77.

[5] 1Cor 12:12-27.

[6] Rohlheiser, 80.

[7] Rohlheiser, 80-81.

[8] As St. James asks in his epistle: What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? … If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?(Jas 2:14-16) 

And what if we were to simply say “I’ll pray for you”?  That is not nothing.  But there may be something missing.

The Joy of Advent (and the Canticle of the Turning)

St. Matthew’s, Chandler

4 Advent

Year C

Micah 5:2-5a
Canticle 3 or 15 
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

We are beginning the fourth week of Advent, and so this may be a good time to recap what has transpired in the weeks before.  If the Gospel lessons from scripture have not seemed to be telling a coherent story, it is because they have not been telling a linear story.  In fact, the gospel lessons have been going backwards.

So— on the first Sunday of Advent, the lectionary gave to me: a full-grown Jesus preaching prophecy.  The 33 year old Jesus foretells his second coming and the troubles before his next appearance.  Advent is as much about the expectation of this next appearing of Christ as it is about preparing for the season of Christmas and the celebration of the Incarnation, when Christ came to Earth in the flesh.  

On the second Sunday of Advent, the lectionary gave to me: John the Baptist and Isaiah’s prophecy.  It was foretold that one would come before the Messiah to prepare the way, and call people to repentance.  This was John the Baptist, who would soon baptize Jesus before Jesus began his own three-year ministry.

On the third Sunday of Advent, the lectionary gave to me: John’s ethics and End-times prophecy.  This was a continuation of the week before. You might remember.  John:

…said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance… Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?" In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

"I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming…His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat…but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people.[1]

Wait, there was good news in that?

We’ll come back to this.

On the fourth Sunday of Advent, the lectionary gave to me:  Elizabeth extolling Mary.  Today, we hear about what happens right after the angel Gabriel visits Mary with the news that she will carry the Son of the Most High God. Elizabeth is six months pregnant with John the Baptist when Mary hurries to visit her relative living in the hill country just outside Jerusalem, and “Elizabeth no more than hears Mary’s words of greeting, and she knows what has happened. Luke tells us that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she cries out,

Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb…for as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”^[2]

At this point Mary cannot help herself.  She bursts out into song—not that “12 Days of Christmas” business—no! The Magnificat, or the Song of Mary! (“My soul magnifies the Lord!”)  We’ve heard at least one version today.

In these four weeks, we have come a long way.  From the haunting tones of “O come, O Come, Emmanuel” which always seem to me to speak of seeing the light of Christ from a great distance—as a single flickering candle at the end of a long dark tunnel—to this song of Mary that speaks of a reality so close that it seems at hand and present.

God has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

Mary and Elizabeth absolutely revel in the possibilities of a world turning upside down.  The joy with which they do so is also a key for understanding John the Baptist from last week.

John the Baptist sounds harsh.  All the prophets do.  In fact, Mary’s song has a harsh tinge to it as well, particularly if you think it unfair that anyone—particularly the rich—are sent away empty.  What is the good news here? 

The good news is that we follow a God and creator who loves us and cares for us.  We are not at liberty to say that God offers a blind eye or unqualified affirmation to everything humanity does.  The same loving-kindness that God shows to us is shown to all of creation. For if God offers an unqualified patience and affirmation to everything we do—even those things which harm others—then the Gospel holds no good news for the many who suffer for the sake of the comfort of a few.  There was and is need for the savior we are awaiting. 

And the prophets’ call to repentance is the reminder that we are not individually God’s sole project on this earth. The call to repentance is misunderstood if it is seen only as a project of personal improvement.  That is too small a glory for the Kingdom of God we proclaim as “on the way”—a Kingdom proclaimed by building communities that practice love in spite of our fears and our lusts for power and control over others.

John’s words to the rich, the tax collectors, and the soldiers to give to others out of their abundance, to not collect more than they are supposed to, to not steal from the people they are watching over— These are the habits of justice and mercy on Earth that prepare people for living the Kingdom of Heaven.  John’s preaching makes plain again that there is a God who cares about the weak, the poor, the needy, and the outcast—just like every prophet before him, just like the psalmists, just like Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary, just like Jesus and we who follow after. 

This is a hard message for the rich, the tax collectors, and the soldiers who have to give up the practices that enriched them, and learn a new way of being in the world.  This is a hard message today for anyone who finds they have the power to enrich themselves at the expense of others and act to do so or allow it to happen.  But this message that God cares and that God is acting to turn the world around is precisely what Good News looks like to those whose experience of love, justice, and mercy is wanting or nonexistent. And the good news for the powerful is that they are indeed invited into this turning of the world—to find that after the work of turning toward love, justice, and mercy, they will see the riches of Kingdom and regain their full humanity by learning to see God more clearly as well as the equal belovedness of those they had previously overlooked. 

With this turning of the world, in which the normal expectations of power and prestige and the problems borne from their exercise are turned upside down, and a Kingdom of perfect love and justice are realized as the lowly are lifted up.

And we follow a God who delights in such reversals.  Our expectations of God’s work he will shatter, and yet still fulfill. In a world in which the powerful are marked by being well-borne, with affluence and fortune, God will choose a different path.  Instead of a savior borne of impeccable pedigree, God will send his son to be born of a sexually suspect, unwed, poor, young woman, who could not even find a room at an inn—a son begotten from before time and through whom all things were made, whose first bed on earth will be an animal’s feeding trough.  This entrance into the world was not an accident. The creator of the universe could have had Jesus born into power.  

But God chose this young woman, marginalized in her own time, who yet finds sanctuary and hospitality with her cousin who is also pregnant under divine circumstances.  

And both hearts are so full that the only proper response is laughter and song! 

They know they are living in the good news of God’s confounding ways! 

There’s the joy of the season!    

How shall we welcome such a scene this week?  

How shall we prepare for the world to turn?

-----------------------

I requested that the Canticle of the Turning be sung by the choir for this Sunday; which is a song that highlights what is in plain sight in the Magnificat, but is somewhat muted in the song’s familiarity and Mary's meek and mild image.

My soul cries out with a joyful shout

that the God of my heart is great,

And my spirit sings of the wondrous things

that you bring to the ones who wait.

You fixed your sight on your servant's plight,

and my weakness you did not spurn,

So from east to west shall my name be blest.

Could the world be about to turn?

Refrain

My heart shall sing of the day you bring.

Let the fires of your justice burn.

Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,

and the world is about to turn!

Though I am small, my God, my all,

you work great things in me,

And your mercy will last                          

from the depths of the past

to the end of the age to be.

Your very name puts the proud to shame,

and to those who would for you yearn,

You will show your might,                          

put the strong to flight,

for the world is about to turn.

From the halls of power to the fortress tower,

not a stone will be left on stone.

Let the king beware for your justice tears

ev'ry tyrant from his throne.

The hungry poor shall weep no more,

for the food they can never earn;

There are tables spread, ev'ry mouth be fed,

for the world is about to turn.

Though the nations rage from age to age,

we remember who holds us fast:

God's mercy must deliver us

from the conqueror's crushing grasp.

This saving word that our forebears heard

is the promise which holds us bound,

'Til the spear and rod can be crushed by God,

who is turning the world around.

---

[1] Portions from Luke 3:7-18.

[2] Jan Anderson, (http://adventdoor.com/2009/12/13/advent-4-the-sanctuary-they-make-in-meeting/#sthash.5izj979b.dpu).

"Speech of substance, weighted with love"

Sermon, St. Andrew’s, Sedona,

Proper 19, Year B

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.  --James 3:1-12

Have you ever dealt with a bully before?  Not just from being bullied yourself, but suppose you were in a position of power, and had to deal with a bully.  Have you ever watched a bully try to get out of trouble?[1] One of the first things you might notice is that the bully will try to minimize the harassment.  You’ll recognize it immediately because of the language and tactics they use:

“It was just a joke.”  The use of the word just minimizes the impact and tries to paint the harassment as a small matter.  Calling the harassment a joke tries to frame the entire matter as if the person who was being bullied simply mistook the bully’s intention.  Or the bully wants you to focus on the intention, not the reaction, as a way of avoiding blame.

“You are being too sensitive.”  This is often a silencing mechanism that a bully uses.  It is a tactic that attempts to make the mistreatment normal.  “It makes it sound like there is some line [at] which it is alright to be sensitive, but that the current incident does not cross that line,” as interpreted by the bully, or others who share the bully’s worldview.[2]  It attempts to rest the problem on the person being bullied, who the bully tries to define as too weak to handle the real world or the supposedly objective truth that a bully claims special access to.

Relatedly:  “I’m sorry you were offended.” This is the great non-apology, right?  “The aim is not to atone for a wrong, but to reduce damage to the person’s image. Repentance is feigned or ignored, contrition held at arm’s length. Non-apologizers…are more likely to implicitly blame the [person receiving the non-apology] for getting upset, manufacturing offense, or interpreting the incident in a way that reflects badly on the wrongdoer.”  The person delivering it can move on, professing the matter dealt with—a routine step in self-mythologizing narratives [that will make them feel better about themselves—meanwhile] recipients of the unapology feel continued frustration, even disgust, at the failure to accept responsibility.”[3]

These are incredibly common sayings.  Even if you might not fall into the category of ‘bully,’ you might use this kind of minimizing language because it’s the cultural mess we exist within that conditions our reactions to things. 

And there is a difference between a bully and a person making a mistake— a difference between a genuine expression of remorse and an insincere fauxpology designed to get someone’s conscience off the hook.  The difference comes down to such things as acknowledging the offense clearly, explaining it effectively, restoring the offended parties’ dignity, assuring them they’re safe from a repeat offense, expressing humility (which shows understanding of their suffering, and making appropriate reparation).

But a bully will hold to the tactics above, and that is if they do not simply persist in abusing others with no attempt to minimize their acts.  There are also the people who proudly proclaim they are simply and always offensive, as though that is enough to excuse all manner of abuse they mete out to others.[4]

The minimizing tactic is interesting to me, as is the use of language and words as a weapon.  The use of minimizing language is an attempt by the person who uses language as a weapon—think of people who rightfully get called out on their use of racist, sexist, or homophobic language—they use it to distance themselves from any responsibility for the power and consequences associated with what they say or the words they use.

In other words, bullies know full well how powerful their choices of words are, but they try to deny that their words have any power beyond their mere existence.  Bullies choose words explicitly for the pain they know the words can cause, and then blame their victims when the words do their expected damage by claiming the victim gave the words too much power.  The bully counts on a simultaneous reliance upon and denial of the power of language, and gambles that bystanders will agree with the bully’s denial of the power of words.

This is part of the cultural context we live in.  We live with the knowledge of very public cases detailing how sustained campaigns of bullying have led to teens committing suicide—and leads many others to depression.  We live in a world in which we’ve seen how carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns against groups help create the conditions through which their mass murder becomes possible (think about how Germans referred to Jews as rats and Rwandan Hutus referred to the Tutsis as roaches for years before the slaughters began—a pattern of dehumanization).  

The very reason that the classical rhyme we learned as children—that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will never hurt us—the very reason that has to be a constantly repeated mantra is because it flies in the face of this truth:  our realities (even our obscured realities), the worldview we inhabit, our notions of our very self, are constituted and expressed by words and language.  “Every choice of phrasing and spelling and tone and timing carries countless signals and contexts and subtexts and more!”[5] That nursery rhyme may be helpful for a time in someone’s life—to help not take the hateful words of another as the truth.  But the nursery rhyme is dead wrong in trying to say that words have no power.   And this notion that our speech is so easily rendered useless is one that James, who wrote the epistle lesson we heard this morning, would have found disastrously untrue.

Our reading from James comes halfway through his letter—and his attention to right speech is one of the three marks of true religion that he lays out at the beginning when he writes that:

“If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”[6]

For James, an unbridled tongue is much more than a local problem characterized by a little gossip—though it can include that.  He considers an unbridled tongue to be an almost cosmic force set on evil. We see that in his conviction that the tongue is a fire capable of setting the whole cycle of nature ablaze.[7]  Given how speech can be used for significant evil—such as setting up the conditions for genocide, or quite literally bullying someone to death, or contributing of the marginalization of other groups (James is particularly concerned with the wellbeing and the mistreatment of the poor)—it is not so hard to see James’s point.[8]  Nor does it help that we may use words and language in such harmful ways, and try to deny that our words have any power.

We live as witnesses to a society that rewards significant attention to the most extreme voices. I don’t think I have to point to the election cycle as an example, but there it is.  We witness bullies use the most hurtful language they can muster against others while claiming that the fault for the reaction belongs to the person who was just insulted.  We witness promises being broken.  It is unfortunately not hard to find Christians who participate in this kind of behavior.  In cases in which there is an argument about removing a display of religion from the public square, you would not have to look very hard in any online comment section or letters to an editor to find a Christian issuing a death threat, or condemning an opponent to hell.

We witness the power of language, and we may lament that in so much of our discourse there is power to destroy, to divide, to berate.  We might actually prefer that words could be emptied of their power.  Sometimes it may even feel like we do that when we stop listening, seeking a break from the non-stop negativity, It may be tempting to fall silent, unplug, and retreat into shells we create for our own mental health.  There is some necessity in that, given how it helps to detox from the worst discourse the world can throw at us so that we have room to see the truth that God reveals to us more clearly.   It’s like recovering from drinking too much brackish water. 

But, there is something else we can do, something other than retreat.  While James has been interpreted to advocate silence, it is more accurate to say that the act of speech is a Christian practice and that careful attention to speech is important.  For James, The life of faith is one that integrates all parts of oneself toward perfection in God’s image.  That is what he means when he writes that it should not be the case that blessing and cursing comes from the same mouth, as fresh water and brackish water cannot come from the same spring.

James means that our progression into the life of God will be characterized by our ability to offer the world wellsprings of that which refreshes instead of that which sickens.  It means offering speech of substance, weighted full of healing and love.

Here are some ways that might look:

·        It might mean remembering the power of our own words, and not attempting to minimize their impact.  If we think we’ll have to walk back something we are about to say, consider whether those words need to be spoken. 

·        It might look like holding onto our own criticism of others until we can find a way to do so in ways that build others up instead of tear them down.

·        It will look like apologizing—actually apologizing—for when we hurt others.

·        It might look like holding a bully accountable for the power of their words and the harm they cause.  It means not buying into the lies they use to try to minimize the impact of their words.

·        Simultaneously, we must offer comfort and support for those who are bullied, so they might experience the reality of love, healing, and worth that bullies would deny to them.

Sisters and brothers, there is a thirst in this world for something better than our society can give.  So many people can tell stories of showing up with cups in hand, seeking a spring of fresh water, only to end up with mouthfuls of salt water.[9]  How might we be springs of refreshment in this world, offering refreshment borne of the love of God?  How might we, knowing the power of our words, offer speech of substance that heals the wounds and oppressions the world inscribes onto us and others?

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[1] Well, election season is upon us, so you’ll get some practice! 

^[2]  "You're Too Sensitive." Geek Feminism Wiki. Accessed September 11, 2015. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/You're_too_sensitive.

[3] Carey, Stan. "Sorry Not Sorry: The Many Names for Non-Apologies." Accessed September 11, 2015. http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/11/20/sorry_not_sorry_non_apology_fauxpology_unpology_and_other_names_for_hollow.html.

[4] They might introduce themselves by telling you they are an asshole.  You will most likely quickly find this is true.

[5] Munroe, Randall. "I Could Care Less." Xkcd. Accessed September 12, 2015. http://xkcd.com/1576/.

[6] Jas 1:26-27.

[7] My appreciation to Barbara Brown Taylor for much of this phrasing, and her quoting of Luke Timothy Johnson’s commentary on the “letter of James,” (in The New Interpreters Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998, 12:204)).  Bartlett, David Lyon, and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary.  Year B Vol 2. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.

[8] See Jas 2.

[9] I owe this image to Barbara Brown Taylor, ibid.

James! Finally!

Sermon at Transfiguration Church, Mesa

Year B, Proper 17

Have you ever spent time looking at pictures of yourself from 2 years ago?  5 years ago? 10 years ago? Longer?  What comes to mind for you as you look at those pictures?  Is there some surprise about yourself?  Perhaps you can remember the dreams you had for yourself or those close to you when the picture was taken.  Perhaps you remember the hopes that turned out to be dashed. The hopes that should never have been hopes in the first place. The forgotten dreams that brings regret once remembered. The fulfilled dreams that brought great joy. 

Perhaps you’ve even looked back at old journals?  Or old lists of goals stuffed in a book somewhere that you come across when it’s time to do a deep cleaning.  I wonder what folks think about when they read those lists.  I wonder if we remember something about a better part of ourselves that we may have forgotten.

Let’s come back to that later, but I’m curious,

What are your favorite books of the Bible?

Part of the genius in the use of the lectionary—the three-year cycle of readings that are appointed for use in worship—is that it gives us a systematic breadth of biblical material over those three years.  One advantage is that we are not simply subjected to the whims of preachers who may want to simply stay in their own comfort zone or only preach their favorite passages.  But sometimes, if the preacher is patient, their favorite passages come around.

So I am excited to be here with you this morning!  Not only because I have always felt so welcomed in this community, but because I get to talk about the letter of James— my favorite!—one of the most radical and one of the most slandered books in the Bible! 

Elsa Tamez, a Latin-American feminist theologian, once noted that:

If the letter of James were sent to Christian communities in certain countries that suffer from violence and exploitation, it would very possibly be intercepted by government security agencies.  The document would be branded a subversive because of the paragraphs that denounce the exploitation by landowners (5:1-6) and the carefree life of merchants (4:13-17).  The passage that affirms that “pure, unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows when they need it, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world” (1:27) would be criticized as a reduction of the gospel or as Marxist-Leninist infiltration in the churches.  The community that was to receive this letter would become very suspicious to the authorities.[1]

Tamez was speaking in the context of civil unrest and revolution, and oppression in many Latin American countries.  The disappearances. The torture chambers. The assassinations.  Her point remains. 

The letter of James has had to deal with similar interceptions over its history.  This letter has made church authorities suspicious since the beginning, and perhaps the only reason it made it into the canon of scripture was the hard-fought consensus that it may have been written by James, the brother of Jesus.  And at that point it’s included because, hey, its Jesus’s brother.  Even then, its position as scripture was not solidified until the 400s. 

Further, In the Reformation, the letter suffered more malignment.  Reformers like Luther downplayed James’s letter for two reasons.

1)      Western Christianity has in general been more interested in figuring out the philosophical underpinnings of the faith than the implications of that work.  The controversies in Western theology have been more invested in who Jesus is and the fully human and fully divine nature of Christ.  Important work, to be sure; but in the meantime, a letter about the implications of living a holy life loses its luster or importance in the mainstream theological debates of the day.

2)      The reformers were concerned with how salvation works.  Is it by faith or works?  James was seen as too focused on works as opposed to Luther’s faith by justification alone.  There is a definite preference for Paul among the reformers.

a.      And actually, Luther said “St. John’s Gospel and his first epistle, St. Paul’s epistles, especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians and St. Peter’s first epistle are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and salvatory for you to know, even if you were never to see any other book or doctrine.  Therefore St. James’s epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to these others, for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it.”[2] 

Harsh!

The malignment did not end at the Reformation.  With the ascendance of historical-critical biblical criticism in the 1800s-1940s, many commentators simply thought that the letter of James was “too Jewish.”  The anti-Semitism exhibited in the scholarship showed up as some argued that the letter is actually a Jewish letter with references to Jesus added in later.  So it seemed to many to be an un-Christian letter in the New Testament.  Remember this is the anti-Semitism that set the stage for the holocaust, so naming something as “Jewish” was a way to dismiss it.  Never mind that even though James does not talk about who Jesus is, it is chock full of what Jesus said.  

But it’s not just in theology that James is not talked about.  The letter is frequently and historically cherry-picked in worship. We only hear it once for a few weeks every three years. Rarely is it preached upon.  In fact, missing from our lectionary are the first six verses of the fifth chapter of James, which read:

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

Throughout history, in churches where royalty, feudal lords, landowners, slave owners, corporate executives, and the richest donors to the church may be sitting in the front pew, few pastors have wanted to spend long commenting on that passage.  But it is a prophetic piece. And by prophetic, we do not mean just telling the future, but naming what is wrong in the community and larger society.  In essence, prophets are those who bring social critique, and in the Biblical sense; always point out when the poor are not being taken care of, which signals to the prophet that justice is not being served.  Because of this, James’ letter is in line with the prophets of the Old Testament (and Jesus!).                                                                                               

There are three angles through which to view the letter, and I commend these angles to you as you hear the passages from James as they are read over the next few weeks.  These angles are helpful in that they help illuminate in our own context the ways this letter still has much to say.

The Angle of Oppression and Suffering: There is a community of believers that suffers.  There is a group of rich people who oppress them and drag them before tribunals.  There are peasants who are exploited, Christians and non-Christians, by rich farmers who accumulate wealth at the expense of the workers’ salaries.[3]  There is a class of merchants who lead a carefree life with no concern for the poor.[4]

The Angle of Hope: The community of believers needs a word of hope, of encouragement, of reassurance concerning the end of the injustice.  James gives it to them from the very beginning of his letter.  We see hope in James’s greeting, his insistence on exhorting the community to faithful expectation and happiness in the face of unrelenting BS, in his words about God’s preference for the poor, God’s judgment against the oppressors, the anticipated end of that oppression, and the coming of the Lord.

The Angle of Praxis (practice):  The content of the letter is concentrated in this angle.  For James the denunciation of the present situation and the announcement of hope are not in themselves sufficient. Something more is needed: praxis [action, a practice].  He asks of these Christians a praxis in which they show a resolute patience; a consistency between words, belief, and deeds; a power with prayer; an effective wisdom; and an unconditional, sincere love among the members of the community that does not make distinction between members based on wealth [—or rather, to elevate the poor since the status of the rich so often guarantees that they will get respect.[5]][6]

This emphasis on the practice of faith is where James will concentrate for the rest of Chapters 1 and 2 in his letter, beginning with his admonition to “be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” 

This brings me back to the questions I started with.  Time has a way of dissolving one’s attention, intention, and resolve.  As James says, “if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.”  There are times in our faith that are like us coming to our senses, like looking up and breathing deeply of fresher air than the drudgery of life might normally allow, gaining a perspective so much greater than our own, only to then find our lives return to  tunnel vision in the act of existing.  But it’s amazing how soon the memory of our intentions can come back to us when we are confronted with it face-to-face.  That project you always wanted to do.  The commitment to spend more time with your loved ones.  Exercising the gift you offer to the world’s great need. The persistent sin that remains unaddressed.  How many times have you committed to something only to later discover much later that it had become forgotten?  How often have those commitments represented the better of your intentions and an impulse given to you by God through the Spirit?

James’s letter will cover a lot of ground in the next few weeks.  They are words well worth marking.  And it’s worth seeing that it is a letter that speaks to hope, oppression and suffering, and the shape of the holy life in ways immediately relevant to our own lives. 

I suggest that questions that confront us today are these:  Is there a greater purpose of your life that has been forgotten that needs to be recovered?  What is the thing God wants you to hold onto as your own precious work for the Kingdom we proclaim in word and deed?  How will you own this truth, and hold it as the gift it is in the days, weeks, and years to come?

May God bless us in both our hearing and doing, as we proclaim and build for the Good of the Kingdom.

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[1] Tamez, Elsa. The Scandalous Message of James: Faith without Works Is Dead. Rev. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 2002) 1.

[2] Wittenburg, 1522.

[3] Jas. 5.

[4] Jas. 4.

[5] Jas 2:1-6.

[6] This list of interpretive angles is found in Elsa Tamez, The scandalous message of James: faith without works is dead, Rev. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 2002), 11.