Sermon - Trinity 16

We heard a wonderful part of the letter of James this morning, “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom”

The author of the book identifies himself as “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ”, from the third century some authors suggested he was “James the Just” first Bishop of Jerusalem.^[8] 

Paul describes him as "the brother of the Lord" in Galatians 1:19 and as one of the three "pillars of the Church".

He is traditionally considered the first of the Seventy Disciples.  If written by James the Just, the place and time of the writing of the epistle would be Jerusalem, where James was living before he was executed in 62AD.  

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the letter has been the subject of great controversy, the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther said it was “not the work of an apostle” because it contradicted his translation of St. Paul, who says that we can be justified by faith alone.

I don’t know why Martin Luther was all upset about the Letter of James though, I am sure if he had just chilled out a little and read it with a more open mind, then he would have seen some wisdom that was well worth leaving it in the Bible.

James writes;

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it”.

Then, on power he writes;

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”

And even though Luther wasn’t fussy on James, I for one am glad he wrote it – most importantly because all his talk about power in the church helps my sermon this morning.

In the Gospel this morning we catch up with the lads, they are walking though Galilee and Jesus was teaching them about how the Son of Man was going to be betrayed, and be killed, and then on the third day rise; but that the disciples did not

understand what he meant, after Peter being told off in last week’s Gospel I think they were a bit scared to ask.

Instead, they were arguing, and we hear that when they arrived at Capernaum

Jesus asked them about it, saying:

"What were you arguing about on the road"?

But the disciples were silent because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest among them.

A daft argument really

-  How on earth do you get into an argument about whose the greatest?

I mean imagine it - trying to decide who is more important...

What measuring stick would we use?

Those who farm - are they the greatest

     - because they produce the milk and food we need to eat?

Are the teachers among us the most important

     - because they train people in the various jobs they must do and provide them with the tools they need to learn new things with?

Or is it doctors

     - because without them we could live shorter and uncomfortable lives?

Or how about rugby players

     - for without them we have only have football to watch?

Or even inventors – because without them we would never have the toaster or the automatic pencil sharpener

It is an endless argument once you get into it, and one the disciples did well to remain silent about when confronted by Jesus.

Why the quest to determine who is the most important? 

Why this quest to be number one?

As soon as they started the argument, it was all going to end in tears.  They are walking and following the Son of God who loves all the ‘lifting up the lowly and bringing down the mighty’, it’s part of his manifesto.

Jesus speaks of a different way of living and of thinking when after asking his disciples about what they were arguing about, calls all twelve of them together and says to them:

          "If anyone  wants to be first, he must be the very

          last, and the servant of all."

And then taking a little child and having him stand among them,

he takes the child in his arms and says to  them:

          Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my

          name, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, does not

          welcome me, but the one who sent me.

I have always liked that image.

Jesus calls the twelve - and he calls us - away from our arguments about who is greatest, and who deserves more, and who should call the shots and turns our mind instead to the question of our attitude and how willing we are to humble ourselves and to serve one another.

Children then and now weren’t seen as the ‘greatest members of society’; in Jesus’ time they were expected to be obedient, work and earn a living for their family.

Jesus is saying that life in the Kingdom of God is not about being the greatest, or the first... but rather about seeing other people in a way that ignores all distinctions.

It’s so hard to have that attitude.

There is poem about the attitude that Jesus expects his followers to have.  It goes like this:

When I say..."I am a Christian"

 I'm not shouting "I am saved"

 I'm whispering "I was lost"

 That is why I chose this way.

     

When I say ..."I am a Christian"

I don't speak of this with pride.

 I'm confessing that I stumble

 and need someone to be my guide.

              

 When I say..."I am a Christian"

 I'm not trying to be strong

 I'm professing that I'm weak

 and pray for strength to carry on.

It continues like this for several more verses…

A friend recently said to me that he was surprised how much he had learned in his lifetime, however he said “it’s the important things I keep forgetting” he then went on to tell me that;

He would like to feel more at peace,

He would like to have more happiness,

He would like to think more clearly about the world's problems

He blames the world, and the way in which success is measured, for his forgetfulness, but that isn’t the problem.  We can be as kind as we like, but we won’t succeed until we give up the world's standards of success - measured by power, status, and money - and turn as humble children to our God and learn from him;

·    As long as we discriminate

·    As long as we judge some more important than others,

·    As long as we desire to be more important ourselves. 

·    As long as we, to use the words of James in today’s reading, envy others and have selfish ambitions, we block out what God has in store for us, and our world.

Jesus, after all, came among us not as a Lord, not as a boss, not as an important person but as servant.

He came to touch, to embrace, to heal, to forgive, to help, to love, and this even when he knew it would take him to the cross.

Our prayer should not be "make me someone important",

nor should it be "give me wealth and success".

Our prayer should be like that of St. Francis. That we sometimes set to music…..

Make me a channel of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let me bring your love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.  In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Sermon: Pentecost 14 (Trinity 13) Which side are you on?

 Which Side are you on?

Proper 17: Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 6-9; James 1.17-27; Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23

It is the job of the Gospels to disturb, but it’s almost tedious to indicate how political and theological presuppositions are continually turned upside-down in the topsy-turvy world of Christ’s Kingdom.

Today in the reading from Mark’s Gospel, we are thrown into a scene where Jesus is meeting his most persistent and regular antagonists, the Scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem.  If they were actors, they would be complaining that they were always setting up the jokes for Jesus to deliver the killer replies.

Jesus, also has the advantage here in the shape of Mark, who is an expert at setting the scene for his most famous verbal victories.  The reader even gets the cues about how they should respond too.

The antagonists appear and notice that some of the disciples are eating with ‘defiled hands’.  They speak their lines, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders, but eat with defiled hands? And Jesus makes his response, all served up with a good helping of Markan gloss, which explains in a thoroughly stereotyped way, that the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands.  Jesus then goes onto suggest that they are all Obsessive compulsive with their cleanliness in the kitchen.

An unfortunate by-product of this is that devout Jewish practices are seen as quaint as best or pointless as worst.  Mark seems to completely ignore the fact that these practices were important for the Jewish people in the face of repeated invasion and subjugation.

He sometimes turns the words of Jesus into a cheap put-down, disconnecting Jesus from the issues.  In this, the twenty first century, we can forget that Jesus was himself a Jewish teacher, subject to the law, and closely associated to the 1^st century Jewish reform movements.  The early church eventually became disassociated from Judaism, Jesus never did.

And Jesus said ‘there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile’.

The question is though, who is doing the defiling?  On a day like today, as many clergy will be preaching on how we shouldn’t love tradition too much, and should embrace proper biblical teaching, whatever that may be, we seem to have lost direction somehow.  Today, people will use the readings to preach about how we shouldn’t have what are seen as ‘traditional’ practices, and order within the church because it is what the Pharisees would do.  Many others will preach about how the church needs to change to become more relevant, but relevant to whom?  That’s nice but it’s not even close.

I’ve been following the fortunes of the Russian Punk Band, ‘Pussy Riot’.  You may remember from the news that they performed a song a month ago.  They said it was a prayer, for Vladimir Putin’s downfall.  The only difficulty was that the performance took place in Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow.  They were duly arrested and eventually sentenced to two years imprisonment each for hooliganism.

Their concern was that there is an over-identification between the religious and the powers that be.

You might also remember that when the Occupy protests were taking, and a protesters camp was set up outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, Canon Giles Fraser made them welcome, but the church in general did not.  The Occupy movement was concerned with fairness and they have made their concerns known.

Their concern was that there is an over-identification between the religious and the powers that be.

And back to the Gospel reading, we have the Son of God, creating havoc and in a rather dramatic account from Mark, he is making his point to the assembled Pharisees and Scribes.

His concern was that there is an over-identification between the religious and the powers that be.

Moreover, he believed that the religious authorities had lost their direction, their prayers were empty and their tradition stale because it wasn’t giving them the strength they required to fire the people up.

Perhaps the words of Psalm 84 were called to mind?

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.  I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.

The incarnation of Jesus, was not to make us all anti-Semites, it was not to allow evangelical preachers the luxury of telling us that liturgy, order and tradition is wrong, although many will.

The incarnation of Jesus, and his subsequent ministry on earth was to help us face the choices we and to do our best in the face of conflicting choices.  We may not like it, but Jesus is reminding us of a painfully simple truth, that it is from within, from the human heart, that all evil intentions come.

If the church is failing to clearly distinguish between right and wrong and call for justice, to distance itself from powers of oppression and intolerance, then it too is more concerned with rules, order, and kitchen hygiene, than doing the work left for it to accomplish by Christ.

In that sense, it doesn’t matter what we think we are; low church, high church, broad church, reformed church, catholic church, traditional church or modern church, because if we aren’t continually looking for opportunities to engage with real injustice then we aren’t church at all.

It’s not the shape of the tree that is important, it’s all about the fruit it bears.

The idea of the Incarnation is essential.  In Jesus Christ, God takes on human life and comes to us.  Jesus lives with all the ups and downs of everyday life.  His accusers said that he liked drinking and partying amongst the ordinary people, and why not?

Jesus wasn’t born to make us think the Jews are mad with their traditions, he wasn’t born to make us suspicious of tradition, he wasn’t even born to help us attain the sort of personal individualistic transformation much loved by conservative evangelicals.  The incarnation tells us that we need to understand that the human heart is corruptible, no matter what rituals and traditions we create for ourselves.

We have only one hope, and that to see ourselves in the right light.  When Jesus says, You abandon the commandment of God and hold onto human tradition, it’s easy to forget to apply that to ourselves, but apply it we must.

We must focus on God, who loves us faithfully, and try to make all we do mean something to those Jesus cared for.

Outward shows of religion are useless if our hearts are not in the right place.  Even though Martin Luther called the Epistle of James, and epistle of straw, because he felt that he had failed in the battle to understand that we are saved by grace and not by works, I think James is not as simplistic as Luther made out.

James emphasizes our actions in the theological context that every generous act of giving comes from God.  We behave in a godly way because we have been given such good gifts by God.  Our actions are a response to God’s grace and an expression of it, and not an attempt to win something from him.

St. Benedict agrees with James, and tells us that God waits every day to see if we will respond to his guidance by doing good.

The Pharisees weren’t doing things wrong, it was just that the fruit of the tree had gone bad because they had forgotten what the harvest was all about.

We are all called to be a reflective people, to see whether our actions are producing the right fruit, and stop looking at the shape of the tree, and judging others’ trees.

God is watching every day, to see if we have learned this lesson.  Let’s pray that we all will.