Sermon 8th November 2015

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh-Cunnell, continues our study of the book of James. The reading is from James 4 verses 11-17.

Judging and Boasting

A preacher, a man of God, is blessed with healing hands. He heals people. His church is well known for it, but he is always struggling for money. Eventually a wealthy mother calls on him to come heal her ailing son and somewhere along the way having healed the son he starts to abuse his gift for money and loses his faith. He gains the wealth but in his anguish he lists the many horrors of this world causing him - in one moment to renounce his faith, and in the next to desperately  call on God to show his face - well that's the play I'm in at the moment - it's a comedy - no honestly - 

God is showing his face all the time in the preachers healing hands and yet it is the preacher who turns away for material gain.

Towards the end of last Sundays passage at verse 8 of chapter 4 James urges 

GN

8 Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners! Purify your hearts, you hypocrites!

NIVJames 4:8

8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

OR as the good old king James has it  Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you

I want to Begin with this assurance from verse 8

GN Come near to God and he will come near to you

That's what the preacher lost sight of

And Isn't that what we long for. Isn't that what we're aching for as we sit together on this Remembrance Sunday, as we hear again the soaring  call of the Last Post, as we reflect on loved ones who have died, as we hold in our hearts the losses sacrifices and sufferings caused by wars past and present and the legion of other struggles faced by humanity across Gods creation, aren't we all longing  for God to draw nigh and be alongside us Through it all?

Don't want we want to lay our burdens down, to clear the clouds that block the sunshine of his love?

Come near, come near he is waiting, James counsels

James is intensely concerned with the need for hearers and readers of his letter to remove all obstacles that block the faithful from drawing near to their Heavenly Father. 

As the end of verse 8 concludes  

GN Wash your hands, you sinners! Purify your hearts, you hypocrites!

NIV 8  Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

GET CLEAN  before God, move all obstacles clouding your progress in Christ towards the light of God

Paul visited James in Jerusalem soon after his conversion and again on his last stay in Jerusalem and perhaps he took a leaf out of James' book when he wrote to the Philippians

 Philippians 3:1Good News Translation (GNT)

3 In conclusion, my friends, be joyful in your union with the Lord. I don't mind repeating what I have written before, and you will be safer if I do so, 

NIV***

James  frequently repeats through  this letter, what one commentator (for the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges) describes as

 the ever-besetting sin of his time and people, against which he had warned his readers

 - the ever besetting sin of what comes out of our mouths

 throughout Ch. 3 James really wants to focus our hearts and minds on this so that as Paul says we will be safer if he does so and also in

ch1 he writes at verse 26

26 Do any of you think you are religious? If you do not control your tongue, your religion is worthless and you deceive yourself. 

There is the ever besetting obstacle

27 What God the Father considers to be pure and genuine religion is this: to take care of orphans and widows in their suffering and to keep oneself from being corrupted by the world.

There is the way to God's light

So whose hearts is James directing?

Friends, brothers and sisters James addresses his audience at James 4:11 

The Greek word for brother or sister (adelphos) refers here to a believer, whether man or woman, as part of God’s family

Cameron told us last week that

Somebody has very helpfully defined ‘the world’ as “Society as it organises itself apart from God”.

So it is the hearts of the family of believers in Christ crucified, resurrected and ascended, that James is concerned about.

Believers living in a world, organising itself apart from God. There lies the challenge and the tension for believers then and now 

Joke

So a young man goes into the barbers tells the Barber

 I'd like you to cut my hair like Justin Bieber

With that he sits down and promptly falls asleep in the chair. When he wakes up he looks in the mirror and shrieks with horror - he is completely bald.

What have you done?! he demands of the barber, I expected a cut like Justin Bieber.

The barber replies , "my shop my rules and if Justin Bieber comes in here he'll be bald too

The Barbers shop, the barbers rules

Gods world Gods rules

And if we want to be part of his world we'd do well to listen for his expectations not ours, that's what James wants us to focus on too, Gods expectations.

Last Sunday Cameron also spoke of James' theory, which states that: 

“For every action there is a spiritual consequence: positively; or negatively”. 

And previously Trevor spoke about there being 

“ two kinds of wisdom and two ways of going through life. There is a life that is based on the wisdom that comes from heaven – God’s wisdom. And there is wisdom that is ‘earthly’ – that has nothing to do with God’s wisdom. 

So as Adelphi, as believers there is a positive or a negative spiritual consequence to our actions

We can follow a life lived with Gods wisdom or  without Gods wisdom.

We can choose a life free to draw near to God, or a life blocked from drawing near.

How are we to wash our hands and purify our lives,

 if our tongues and our boasting and confidence in ourselves alone lead to negative spiritual consequences 

If they make us follow a path without Gods wisdom, 

which blocks us from drawing near to our God?

James says, we as believers are not to criticise of judge our fellows. We are under God's law, not its arbiter, we are creation not creator. We are not God - so zip it.

11 Do not criticise one another, my friends. If you criticise or judge another Christian, you criticise and judge the Law. If you judge the Law, then you are no longer one who obeys the Law, but one who judges it. 12 God is the only lawgiver and judge. He alone can save and destroy. Who do you think you are, to judge someone else?

Who do we think we are to judge, to criticise, to slander.

The ultimate Slanderer, the Bible tells us is Satan

Revelation 12:10

NIV

10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

‘Now have come the salvation and the power

    and the kingdom of our God,

    and the authority of his Messiah.

For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,

    who accuses them before our God day and night,

    has been hurled down.

We are not to  be in his camp

We are not to be 'the accuser of our brothers and sisters'

We are not to be blocked from drawing near to our God

I’m a millionaire,” the boastful parishioner testified, “and I attribute it all to the rich blessings of God in my life. I can still remember the turning point in my faith, like it was yesterday:

I had just earned my first dollar and I went to a church meeting that night. The speaker was a missionary who told about his work. I knew that I had only a dollar bill and had to either give it all to God’s work or nothing at all. So at that moment I decided to give all I had to God. I believe that God blessed that decision, and that is why I am a rich man today.”

The congregation applauded, and as he took his seat a little old lady rose and said, “I dare you to do it again!”

Boastfulness denies the strength in which we live, in God's strength.

It's easy to be seduced by success, to think that our gifts alone have got us where we are; like the preacher with healing hands who gains material success  but forgets who gave him his gift. In forgetting he comes to believe his own myth and loses sight of the creator God from whom all gifts flow.

The competitive world we live in - that definition from Cameron again - a

“Society which organises itself apart from God” , this competitive  world apart from God would have us believe in ourselves alone, we can get caught up in its values, in ourselves and lose sight of God.

It's easy to lose sight of God in my work, in acting and get lost in yourself, 

what's my billing? 

am I doing the press interviews? 

what dressing room am I in etc?

very competitive.

Perhaps your lives are competitive in a different way, who got promotion, whose garden looks best, has the nicest hairdo got invited to the bosses drinks, or the neighbours Christmas party, who got their child into which school, ....

We are of equal value in Gods eyes, gifted by Him and to be judged by him alone, we are not in control.

Why is it important that we don't judge don't boast?

James calls us to examine our lives, what are we doing with them?

Just as to a lesser degree we may ask the same question of each other

So a typical conversation in our house over the last few years may go something like

Parents:

You know those clothes that were washed and folded and left in your room, do you think they could make it into the wardrobe rather than than end up on the floordrobe...

To which the response would be

What is your life? 

 a phrase from the mouth of a teenager exasperated beyond outrage by the shortcomings of annoying  parents...

What is your life? 

what is your life? James asks. Literally in translation - of what nature is your life 

In this morning's passage in the NIV version

 James writes at v 14 

NIV 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes

While the Good News version has it

GN You don't even know what your life tomorrow will be! You are like a puff of smoke, which appears for a moment and then disappears.

We are like a puff of smoke,  a mist - here and gone, the future not ours to control.

It being November we may think about this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness as expressed by the poet John Keats. We may think of the way the mist seems to engulf everything and then disappears as the sun grows stronger. Or it being just past bonfire night we may think of glorious fireworks that burn brightly and then are gone in a puff of smoke.

On this Remembrance Sunday as we celebrate and mourn loved ones who have died, the thought shared by Cameron last Sunday from Eugene Peterson's book Run With the Horses,'rings powerfully true, when Peterson writes

we are going to have to give up our lives finally, and the longer we wait the less time we have for the soaring and swooping life of grace”. 

These little lifespans of ours, like smoke, like mist, here and gone. 

Are we drawing near to God in the soaring and swooping life of grace”. Our season is so short, our spark of life here and gone.

But that spark, the twinkling light of life that connects us forever to our loving creator, that spark means for all our littleness, for all the shortness of our season, we are ultimately created by and for and as part of our God. A spark from his divine light. We wrestle constantly with being in the world but not of the world. But didn't God create the world? Didn't  God so love the world that he sent his only begotten son? So that the world could return to its creator, to be born again, reformed, returned to Gods Kingdom.

That soaring and swooping life of grace, can only be ours, when we remove the ungodly obstacles that stop us coming near to God, when our spark responds to the call of God's great light.

I don't know how many of you know the animated film the Iron Giant? A huge, buildings-high robot appears on the edge of a town and becomes the dearest friend of a troubled little boy, in the end the robot helps save the town from destruction but sacrifices itself in the process and is blown to smithereens. All is ruin, but as the film closes, a spark starts flashing and blipping amongst the desolation and slowly we see shattered fragments from far and wide, respond to the call and painstakingly slowly, gravitate towards the blipping, flashing spark. The Iron Giant will reunite with itself!  Roll credits, cue cheering children and nose blowing mother. It's hope, it's rebirth. I wonder, as James' Adelphos brothers and sisters, believers, are we that flashing, blipping spark calling others back to unity in Christ? Or have we become part of the unresponsive desolation?

When we judge and criticise others, when we boast and glory in our own success, we are losing sight of the source of all we are, going against God, and becoming part of the desolation, when we should be part of the spark of regeneration

In chapter 1 at verse 18 James writes to the believers

GN 18 By his own will he brought us into being through the word of truth, so that we should have first place among all his creatures.

NIV 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

Through the death and resurrection of Christ a new order has come into being. A new relationship calling us back to God through Jesus. We are regenerated first fruits to be a beacon for others to draw near to God.

I was listening to Giles Fraser on the radio this week. He is priest in charge of St Mary's Church, Newington, and a broadcaster and writer. Recently he travelled with Bishop Christopher and a small group of Southwark  Christians to  take native language bibles to Kurdish Christians in a refugee camp in Calais, who were persecuted and tortured for their faith in Iraq Iran and Syria. One man's mouth was sewn together, another man saw all his brothers hung for converting to Christianity.

Their stories  made Giles Fraser remember a sermon he heard while he was canon at St. Paul's Cathedral ...

 The Preacher asked,  if Christianity were illegal would there be enough evidence in our lives to convict us? 

Just like the Kurdish Christians persecuted for their faith, so the Christians who heard from James would have faced life threatening challenges to their faith, as Christians all over the world still do today. The phrase 'martyrs for their faith' originally simply meant, witnesses for their faith - 

what is your life? 

What are our lives?

Are we witnesses? Beacons?

A diner calls a waiter over

taste the soup

What's the matter with it sir

Just taste the soup

Is it too spicy to bland

just taste the soup

Oh very well. Where's the spoon Sir?

Aaaah

 We can appear to be agreeing to do the right thing

No judging or criticising - check - there's the soup

Not boasting or no thinking I live my life under my own control and in my own strength - check - there's the soup

But actually acting out our faith under Gods rule, doing the right thing, - aaah where's the spoon?

There is nothing abstract about James, he concludes

GN

17 So then, if we do not do the good we know we should do, we are guilty of sin. 

NIV

17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

Everything we need to do to be those Martyrs for Christ, witnesses to our faith

Everything we need to do to remove all obstacles from blocking our path to a life in the nearness of our Father

Everything we need to do to be those first fruit sparks of regeneration

Everything - James calls us in the name of Christ to do, during the brief smoky misty moment of our existence in his eternal love.

We are to be his beacon calling Gods children home and our first port of call is to get right with him, get clean wash our hands and purify our hearts.

It's Remembrance Sunday today, a day of remembering all our lost loved ones, lost in whatever circumstances. We think on the fragility of life, on its shortness and yet the enduring timelessness of God, the enduring timelessness of his love for us.

I'm going to light a sparkler now and as I do perhaps we can all think of that light that flows between us and our heavenly father, of the lives of those who have been loved and lost, and of the fact that however briefly our lives may sparkle we are to be that beacon and then live on eternally with God who made us.