James 2:1-17
September 8
David A. Davis
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A parent has to learn early on how best to respond when a child hits their head, has a fall, or gets a scrape. It is that balance between necessary and appropriate love and care and not overreacting so as to further frighten the young one already in tears.

When I was young and on the receiving end of my parent’s aid and response to me getting banged up, my father’s response was pretty consistent. To this day, I can hear my father’s voice in my head. “Run it out! Run it out!” Occasionally it was “rub some dirt on it,” but “run it out” was his go-to. Whether I took a knockout in the yard, fell on my bike, got hit by a pitch in Little League, or was slow to get  up on the football field, my father would yell, “Run it out!” Where at home with just the family and a few friends or at a game with lots of parents or in a Friday Night Lights crowd of a few thousand, I could hear his voice, “Run it out!” To be honest, I am not sure that is the best parenting response but I confess to hearing myself say it to my children more than once over the years. Truth is it became something of a verbal meme in the extended family. Now with a span of four generations, it is mostly said in jest and understood as a word of encouragement. It is deeply ingrained. A sort of non-musical example of that earworm of a song that never goes away in your head. “Run it out!”

Here in the epistle of James, the biblical author provides a phrase now ingrained, or perhaps one that ought to be ingrained in the church and in the life of discipleship. It is here at the end of chapter two. “Faith without works is dead.” 

“Brothers and sisters,” James begins the chapter, “do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” He goes on to describe the reality of classism, power, and privilege so deeply rooted in humanity forever that the reader, the church, you and I really can’t bat an eye. “What good is it, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?” Well, actually, James, yes, yes it can. “For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God not the result of works..” The Apostle Paul, Ephesians 2:8. But James is just getting started. “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 no supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead”

And you and I, along with generations of theologians and the church in every generation start to squirm. Somewhere, the reformer Martin Luther shakes his head no and raises his hand. Salvation can’t be earned.  Grace alone. Faith alone. James doesn’t stop. “Someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” But what about the prison guard in the Book of Acts? He fell on his knees before Paul and Silas, asking “What must I do to be saved? “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.” Acts 16:31

James doesn’t stop for a breath. He points a finger into the chest of what would become the theological tradition. “You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren?” He tells of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham’s faith, in James’s words, “was brought to completion by the works.” He tells of Rahab whose works were evident as she welcomed strangers and sent them out by another road. “For just as the body, without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.”

Faith without works is dead. Faith without works is dead. The Epistle of James and a mic drop kind of phrase. James and his hot take. You can’t get away from it. Like irritating dinner guests who don’t read the room and drop the topic of conversation. James never lets it go away. The quote hangs in the air waiting for the response. The response of discipleship. The response of your life. It doesn’t seem to matter who says it, or where you hear it, or when it happens. Once you hear it, it never goes away. Faith without works is dead.  Whether you hear it from a co-worker who loves to toss digs at the church writ large, from a man sitting at the intersection with a handwritten sign, or your kid who came home fired up from a great conversation at youth group. Faith without works is dead.

Douglas Brinkley’s biography of Jimmy Carter focused on his life after leaving the White House. Brinkley tells that sometime in 1984 the former president spent a week on a Habitat for Humanity site in New York. At a press conference, he stood alongside the other volunteers covered with sweat, dirt, and soot. Asked to sum up his week-long effort, President Carter offered a simple conclusion that some may not have heard as a reference to the practice of his Christian faith. He said, “Talking about doing is one thing. Doing is something else.” At that point in that news conference somewhere in the kingdom of heaven, James said “Yes”. “Talking about doing is one thing. Doing is something else.” Yes a reference to Jimmy Carter’s life of discipleship and perhaps a lasting allusion to the perils of Christian faith and empty words. Faith without works is dead.

If you are person of faith who struggles to understand and so live as Jesus would have us live, if you are struck sometimes at how hard it is to live and be as Christian in the world, in the nation these days, if your head spins and your heart churns when you find yourself yet again pondering the genuine need of hurting people, if you shake your head wondering how on earth in 2024 kids in our community are starting going back to school and some of them go to school hungry day by day, if you ever find yourself overcome with weariness as you hold the gifts you have to offer in one hand and you try to grasp the suffering of the world in the other, if you find yourself lamenting deep down how often in the name of Jesus is invoked to reflect an interpretation, a policy, an opinion so contrary to the gospel that it makes your head explode, if you believe that all that we say and do when we are in this room empowers each one of us to help to make the world out there more like what God intends, then cling to these words from James not as some kind of theological conundrum but as words of encouragement. Faith without works is dead.

Faith without works is dead. You can’t get away from it because it really does matter. The way we live out our discipleship. What we do out there in the world and in here in the community of faith. The actions we take or don’t take. The decisions we make pretty much every day. Our ethics in the workplace. How we raise our kids. How we treat others. How we help others. How we spend our time and money and talent. How we behave when away from our parents, away from home. How often do we offer a kind word or display patience when waiting in line, speak up for someone who has been wronged, or smile at a server who is clearly having a bad day? Because faith without works is dead.

The decisions we make when the curtain closes in the voting booth. How we act and live with those we love most and those we don’t know but try to love. The example you set for teenagers around the house. What you do to welcome a new student at school or break the cycle of harmful talk about others in your grade or stand for the classmate who is out there on the fringe. How you wield your power and privilege in the board room, at a sales meeting, on the trading floor, in the classroom. How you choose to advocate for those pretty much the rest of the world labels as other or worse. It really does matter because faith without works is dead.

Rehabbing a house, marching for justice and ceasefire and peace, or just waiting in line. Faith without works is dead. We can go down the street to the theological seminary and argue the theology regarding faith and works until Jesus comes again, but you can’t explain it away because faith without works is dead. You can work to thread the needle when it comes to James, Paul, and Jesus, but you can’t explain it all away because faith without works is dead.”

Peter Gomes served as Plummer Professor of Christin Morals and Minister of Memorial Chapel at Harvard for a generation. He was one of my mentors in preaching. Peter told me one day of a conversation he had with a former president of the university in the president’s office. It was pretty well known around campus that the two did not get along all that well. In Harvard Yard, Memorial Church sits in a very prominent place directly opposite the main library. It is the backdrop for commencement as well. The president could see the church out his window. In this conversation, the president said to Professor Gomes., “I wish that blasted church was sitting right there in the middle of campus.” To which Peter Gomes quickly responded, “But it is there, isn’t it.” That’s sort of how it is with James and all that hand ringing when trying to figure out the relationship of faith and works. When it comes to “Faith without works is dead,” well, it is there, isn’t it?

My father had another phrase in his life ingrained in him. He would never shout it and was pretty private about it. It was his own word of encouragement in his struggles for sobriety. Words he held onto to the end of his life. It’s a verse of scripture. I don’t know how it came to him, who shared it with him. My father was not a student of the bible and didn’t memorize scripture. But somewhere in his journey of discipleship, the words found him and he never let them go. “I can all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13.

It is the better pairing really; a better pairing for Faith without works is dead. Better than stirring the pot with Paul and Ephesians and being saved by grace. Because the only way to fathom the work of our faith is through the grace and promise of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. You and I are called to bear the very fruit of Christ in our lives and into the world. Faith without works is dead. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Romans 12:9-13, 13:8-10
September 1
Andrew Scales
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The Apostle Paul wrote Romans as a letter to Christian communities that he had never met. He’s starting a conversation with them all the way across the Mediterranean Sea, hoping that they will welcome him if he comes to Rome. Sometimes his correspondents found what he had to say compelling, beautiful, and transformative. And sometimes they pushed back, argued with him, and challenged him to re-evaluate what he taught and believed. I find it refreshing to consider Romans as Paul’s invitation to fellow Christians into a dynamic dialogue about what it means to follow Jesus in their time.

In our readings from this morning, Paul exhorts his conversation partners in Rome to practice a love that is genuine. Genuine love builds trust so that members of the community can speak what’s on their heart and know that they will be heard and respected. Paul writes that genuine love shows generosity to the people you know well, and it shows hospitality to strangers. Genuine love makes space for people to be vulnerable and share their fears in the confidence that they will be supported and helped. Genuine love is more than a feeling or an idea, but a way of talking with and treating one another by which we continue growing into the Beloved Community.

The Beloved Community. Maybe you’ve heard me or Len use that phrase when we’ve talked about the campus ministry we serve called Princeton Presbyterians. Every Sunday night during the academic year, we worship with undergrad and grad students in Niles Chapel at a service called Breaking Bread. We sing hymns together, pray for one another, hear a short sermon, and we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. Thanks to support from the Presbytery of the Coastlands, individual donors, and the generosity of Nassau Presbyterian Church, we are able to host a fellowship meal each week after worship. We laugh at each other’s stories, eat the good food Jose Cintron and his team have made, and share about what’s been tough that week. We grow together in understanding how deep God’s love is for us through the love we share for one another.

The Beloved Community. The phrase took shape in America through the work of Black civil rights leaders from the fifties and sixties, and it is rooted in a vision of life together that goes all the way back to the New Testament. I believe Paul was talking about the Beloved Community when he wrote his letter to Christians in Rome around 57 AD. And we believe in Princeton Presbyterians there’s a cloud of witnesses from our own time who remind us what it looks like to show others genuine love. We laugh together because some of our Catholic friends at Breaking Bread have reminded us that these witnesses sound an awful lot like their tradition’s concept of “patron saints.” They’re role models in the faith who inspire us to become our best selves. Like Paul, they are our conversation partners about how to be the Beloved Community.

Let me give you a few examples. We talk a lot about Mister Rogers, who reminds us that we can talk about uncomfortable and scary things, because “If it’s mentionable, it’s manageable.” Another favorite in our community is the one and only Dolly Parton, whose songs of strength, courage, and tenderness are backed up by generosity that funds covid vaccine research and has donated more than 150 million books to children all over America.

But perhaps my favorite conversation partner at Breaking Bread is the civil rights leader John Lewis. John Lewis grew up in Alabama under segregation, and began organizing sit-ins protesting segregation at restaurants in Nashville as a college student. He was one of the original Freedom Riders, riding buses throughout the South in defiance of racist policies that treated Black people as second-class citizens.

He nearly died when a mob attacked him and his friends at the Montgomery bus station, just as he nearly died when police officers beat him as one of the leaders of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965, demanding the right to vote. He represented metropolitan Atlanta in Congress from 1986 until his death from pancreatic cancer in July 2020.

John Lewis is someone whose life and work rhyme with the vision of Christian community that Paul wrote about in his letter to the Romans two thousand years ago. He was a lifelong disciple of nonviolent resistance to injustice. And as a disciple of non-violence, he also became a teacher of those principles, someone who invites the younger generation to take up the work now that he is gone.

When George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officers in May 2020, Black Lives Matter demonstrations emerged as the largest protest movement in history. At the same time, John Lewis was dying of cancer. His final essay for The New York Times was called, “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation,” and it was published on the day of his funeral. I’d like to read some excerpts from that essay now:

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars….

Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.[1] 

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can participate in the redemptive work God asks of us by practicing genuine love. Genuine love calls us to imagine dignity for ourselves, for our neighborhoods and schools, even for our enemies. Genuine love confronts harmful behaviors and invites us to imagine a different way forward. Genuine love draws upon our creative energies to make our community a safe place in a manner that acknowledges the breadth of humanity that comes through our doors. Genuine love in our time means saying “No” to violence and “Yes” to peace in a troubled season for America. Genuine love is a path that we walk together, listening to one another, helping each other, working toward a better future together. As the Apostle Paul puts it in this morning’s reading, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10).

Here at Nassau Presbyterian Church, we have been participating in that continuing conversation of what it looks like to practice genuine love in today’s world. As Pastor Lauren McFeaters shared during worship last Sunday, leaders of this congregation have been in conversation about how to make Nassau a safer community. Over the past year, there have been some unsettling incidents—unpredictable outbursts during worship—that have raised questions about how we respond in a manner that’s true to our deepest values and calls on us to be our best selves. Pastor Dave Davis convened a Security Task Force that has proposed new security measures that the Session, the elders of this church, have adopted.

It has not been an easy conversation. It has revealed the deepest fears some members and leaders have about the possibility of someone doing violence to this community. The decision to hire a security firm that provides an armed guard at worship services has raised fears and questions from other members and leaders.

I am grateful for the effort and care that church leaders have already invested in this important question of making this place as safe and open as possible. As someone who has loved ones who have been traumatized by gun violence, this conversation has motivated me to learn more about the relationship of armed guards to the safety of institutions like schools, churches, and hospitals.

I’ve been reading studies by the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Association of School Psychologists, and resources from the PC(USA)’s Presbyterian Mission Agency. I’ll include links to these resources in the manuscript of this sermon when it’s posted on the “Sermon Journal” page of Nassau’s website later this week. My intention in doing this research is to express my resolve that I will remain in genuine, loving, truthful conversation with you.

Because this new security plan is such a significant change in our life together, Dave and Lauren have asked the elders of this church to be open to hearing people share their questions and concerns. I am grateful for that openness to dialogue, and for their promise that this will remain an ongoing conversation among the members of Session.

I love you so dearly, and I am proud of your witness in this community and the ways you love one another. I hope that you will consider sharing your thoughts with the members of Session. As you do so, I ask each of you to consider the people who have helped you grow in your love for God and neighbor. What would they say? How will you honor them with your words and actions? In this moment, my prayer is that we will be ordinary people with extraordinary vision as we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

Preacher’s Note:

As I mentioned in the sermon, I have included links to articles about gun violence, armed security, and their impact on institutions like schools and churches.

Blessings,

Andrew Scales

Resources:

JAMA Network Open, Volume: 4, Issue: 2 (2021) “Presence of Armed School Officials and Fatal and Nonfatal Gunshot Injuries During Mass School Shootings, United States, 1980-2019,” Jillian Peterson, PhD, James Densley, DPhil, and Gina Erickson, PhD

Federal Bureau of Investigation, “A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013,” Washington DC: Department of Justice, September 16, 2013.

NASP (National Association of School Psychologists) 2018, “School Security Measures and Their Impact on Students”

Larry Buchanan and Lauren Leatherby, “Who Stops a ‘Bad Guy With a Gun’?” New York Times, June 22, 2022.

Laura Esposito and Alex Yablon, “Do Armed Guards Prevent School Shootings?” The Trace, August 14, 2023

PC(USA) Presbyterian Mission: “Developing an Emergency Church Plan for Violence on Church Property”

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship: “Your Congregation Can Prevent Gun Violence”

John Lewis, “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation,” The New York Times, July 30, 2020.

Ephesians 3:14-21
August 25
Lauren J. McFeaters
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Some years ago when I was meeting with the Deacons, I asked the group about favorite childhood memories. Over and over again, what rose to the top were memories of visits to a family farm – usually small, contained, some  just getting by – but farms full of such goodness it took the breath away.

The best loved parts were learning to:

• feed the sheep,
• shell the snap peas,
• gather the corn,
• ride the tractor,
• can the beets,
• scatter the seed,
• and fill a trough.

For me, in Pickens Mississippi, was learning from my Aunt Hines, how to put kindling in a wood stove and make biscuits on top in an iron skillet. It was remarkable that out of 2 dozen Deacons, half had families that farmed.

Today, Paul gives us a prayer that says we are being rooted and grounded; burrowed and established in love. It is an agricultural metaphor isn’t it. Paul compares the Christian life to the experience of planting, nurturing, and harvesting –

• of canning the okra and putting up the huckleberries;
• of putting our hands to work and our hearts to God;
• of putting down the roots of faith that tunnel deep enough to spread to help other growing things to thrive, find it’s nourishment, and become securely anchored.
• To live, we must have roots. ^[ii] To live our faith, we must be rooted.

But here’s the thing. There will be constant moments throughout this day and week, when we’ll be tempted to unroot ourselves; to extricate and detach ourselves from our groundedness in faith. It often happens when we get distracted by the message that the core of our identity, underneath it all, comes not from God’s Spirit, but from what we can possess, own, acquire, control.

We can’t check Insta or TikTok or email without a link to what will fulfill and satisfy us.

• It’s the lure of iPhone 15 Pro in Barbie Pink.
• Mercedes Benz says you can have a “Season of Dreams” if you purchase the E 450 4MATIC All-Terrain.
• The HP Z Book Fury Laptop Workstation might set you back $9000, but it promises that in using it, you can “expand and evolve.”

Our daily lives are now defined by daily links. This morning I received my message from Starbucks. I have been invited to forget my troubles and luxuriate in the aroma of roasting beans while I indulge my whims in new coffee paraphernalia. It’s so tempting to believe that an iced oat-milk latte will give me their promise of a sanctuary of peace.

And somewhere out there today you’re going to find out there’s:

• a microbrewery offering you the fellowship of the pub;
• a yogurt that will cure your gut woes;
• a deodorant that is going to make you feel better about your body;
• and Macy’s who generously invites you start your Christmas shopping.

Paul, however, would like us to cease the nonsense that stands in the way of rootedness in God’s grace. And he’s so relentless about this one thing: Our foundation in Christ, does not to deny the existence of the things of the world, but gives those things the perspective they deserve.

We’re not created for the things we want, or own, or have to have, are we? We’re not created for the things we crave or desire. We’re not created to be seduced into purchases and possessions. We’re created for what we’re rooted in – and we are rooted in:

the breadth and length and height and depth, of the love of Christ –

so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God, which is love.

You. You are being rooted and grounded in love.

Here’s where Paul offers us equilibrium to stand in everyday faith with our feet on the ground, our eyes to one another, our hearts to our Lord – and it’s a prayer:

I pray, according to the riches of God’s glory,

God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through God’s Spirit,

and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith– as you are being rooted and grounded in love.

You. You are being rooted and grounded in love.

One writer has called this prayer “the Holy of Holies in the Christian life.” Another writer called it “a prayer for the impossible.”  I’m very grateful there’s nothing timid about Paul’s prayer: nothing bashful; nothing retiring; nothing reserved. It’s simply one of scripture’s most powerful and commanding prayers, because it asks for everything: [iii]

• That the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ surpasses our fears and goes straight to our hearts;
• That we may be filled with all the fullness of God; filled – not with what we think we want and have to have – but filled with a prayer so potent that our very desires are embedded in acts of kindness and care;
• That we may be filled to brimming with all the completeness and wholeness of God;
• And that the Gift of Christ Jesus is a glory to all generations.

In these days of our world being shaken upside down and turned inside out, Paul comes to us with a prayer that convicts us to get down on our knees, asking God to fortify us. Root us. Ground us. And Love us into sanity.

I often tell couples who come to me for counseling, both the soon-to-be-married and decades-long-married that the most intimate moments in their life together – in any of our lives together – are the moments we are at prayer together.

• When was the last time you prayed with someone you love? It will change your life.
• When was the last time you sat beside a friend and laid a hand on them with a prayer for healing and comfort?  It will change both your lives.

• When was the last time you held a child’s hand and bowed your head and gave thanks? It will change a generation.

My friends, when you have experienced

the anchoring love of our God –

you can never be the same:

• that the breadth and length; height and depth

of that love will never leave your side;

• that you are bowled over in wonder,
• and that there is nothing left to do,

but to praise the Lord all your days.

Amen. And Amen.

ENDNOTES

[i] Ephesians 3:14-21:  For this reason, I bow my knees before the father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now, to him, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

[ii] Imagery inspired by a sermon by Cynthia M. Campbell. “Rooted and Grounded.” Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL, July 2003, www.fourthchurch.org.

[iii] Ronald Olsen. “Thinking and Practicing Reconciliation: The Ephesians Texts for Pentecost 8-14.” Word & World, 17/3. Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1997, 325.

Ephesians 4:25-5:2
August 18
Lauren J. McFeaters
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Eric Hobsbawm grew up as a Jewish orphan in Berlin and when he was 15 years old, he saw at a news stand, a headline that would change his life and change the world:  “Adolph Hitler Appointed Chancellor of Germany.” Years later, he reflected on that moment and said,

“It was as if we were all on the Titanic

and everyone knew it was going to hit the iceberg.”

It was difficult to describe what it meant to live in a world that was simply not expected to last.

It was like living between a dead past

and a future not yet born.[ii]

We learned in those years about God’s call upon us.

God’s call upon us was not to stay silent

or slink into oblivion.

How often, this week, have we wanted to stay silent; to slink into oblivion? I know I have. This week, for me, it’s been in seeing:

• Our family members, friends, co-workers, church visitors, unable to find consistent and dependable mental healthcare.
• Khaled Joudeh at a morgue in a hospital in central Gaza, having a last glimpse of his sister.
• The gateway from Chad into Darfur opens slightly to allow food and medical care for Sudanese people starving at record numbers, and closes shut once again.
• Wars raging in the Middle East and North Africa, Ukraine and Russia, Yemen and Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, Tigray, Myanmar and Sudan, and the DRC.

And just as we’re ringing our hands and shaking our heads and crying out “What is happening to our world? There’s nothing I can do!” Paul comes to us with a hymn from the ancient church and won’t let us be silent or slink into oblivion.

In facing the world where we live; Paul doesn’t want us to dive into sympathy or pity. He wants our empathy and our kindness at the ready. He wants each of us, marked with a seal of the Holy Spirit, to love the world like we’ve never loved before.

You see once you’ve known the love of Christ you can never stay quiet, can you? You can never slink into oblivion, or pretend there’s nothing you can do – not when  you belong body and soul to the Lord of Salvation.

At this point, some of us may be taking out our phones and Googling for a moral primer in Christian living. Go ahead; let’s take out those phones, but we won’t find anything that matches Paul’s primer for the Ephesians. It’s all there in chapter 4, verses 25-32. To live as people of the Gospel is to:

To tell the truth.

To sustain one another.

Be angry – go ahead, you can be angry,

just don’t let the sun go down on your anger.

And forget about stealing, plagiarizing, thieving.

Speak only words that build up.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit.  

Forget all bitterness, wrath, fury, slander and malice,

and anything that keeps you

from being in healthy relationships.

And with everything that you are:

 be kind to one another,

forgiving one another,

as God in Christ has forgiven you. 

 These are God’s commandments.

God’s Revelations for Living.

My pastor friends and I check in with one another about our upcoming sermons. This week, I’m still shaking my head when I said I was preaching from Ephesians. Not one, but two friends said

“Aren’t you tired of Paul?”

“Why would I be tired of Paul?” I asked.

“Well you know,” they said: “He’s so judgy and irritating. He’s so preachy, so annoying.

And anyway in the end, Paul’s not a very nice person.”

Mmmmm.

You know those times in your life, after someone says something like this, and you think of the perfect, ideal, and brilliant thing to say and it comes …… about four days later? That’s what happened to me.

“Paul’s not a very nice person.”  Well of course he’s not a very nice person. Niceness has never, ever concerned Paul at all. He could give two rips about being nice. Not a part of his DNA. No one ever taught him that, “if you can’t say something nice you shouldn’t say anything at all.”

Because Paul knows when we get together, we discover very big differences, huge disagreements, and we suffer very real discord. For Paul, it is not possible to love one another without knowing that you can also be furious with one another. And when anger comes, we are not to keep quiet, get nice, and slink into oblivion; we are to speak up, express honesty, declare ourselves with sincerity and to do it with kindness. [iii]

Kindness. It takes practice. A lot of practice.

It’s one of the most difficult lessons of the Christian life. It’s one of the most ambitious tasks of maturing in faith. It’s one of the most challenging spiritual disciplines for church folk. And it’s this:

We are not called to be nice.

We are always called to be kind.

And there are deep theological differences.

• Nice is shallow; kindness bares your soul.
• Nice is cautious; kindness has the courage to speak the truth in love.
• Nice takes zero imagination. Kindness is creative and resourceful.
• Nice lets us look away from the front page of the paper and go right to the comics. Kindness breaks our hearts because it’s a way for us to experience the desperation and anguish of others.
• Nice is a perpetual-Stepford-spouse smile. Kindness gives us wrinkles, it shapes us, it mends us, and it reforms us into something new every day.

Frederick Buechner says it best:

If you tell me that living as a Christian

is a kind of nice thing that happens to you

once and for all – like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say, “go for it, go ahead,”

because you’re lying to yourself and lying to me.

Every morning, Buechner says, we should wake up and ask ourselves this:

“Can I believe the Gospel again today?”

No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read the news, till after you’ve studied that daily record

of the world’s brokenness and corruption,

which should always be right next to your Bible.

Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for this particular day. If your answer is always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing is all about.

At least five times out of ten days, he says, the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, and maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human – in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really, really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and……great laughter. [iv] Yes!

My friends, when you have experienced

the Living and Loving God,

you can never keep quiet;

never slink into oblivion;

never shy away from the suffering

that tears humanity apart;

because you know in the depths of your soul

you are here to serve the One who has created you.

You are here to be responsible for the world.

And here to do that with one another.

And by the way,

what would we ever do without one another?

We love one another.

We cherish one another.

What would we ever do without one another?

What would we do?

I don’t even want to think about it.

ENDNOTES

[i]  Ephesians 4:25-5:2: So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

[ii] Thomas G. Long. Sermon: Called By Name. Broadcast on Day One from Alliance for Christian Media, Chicago, IL, January 11, 2004.

[iii] Barbara Brown Taylor. God in Pain: Teaching Sermons on Suffering. Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1998, 33.

[iv] Frederick Buechner. The Return of Ansel Gibbs. New York: Knopf, 1958.

Ephesians 4:1-16
August 4
Jess Winderweedle
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