Sermon 9/5/2021 “Prayerful speech”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection, 2800 Hope Way, Alexandria, VA
Text: James 3:13–4:3, 7-8a
Day: 17Pentecost, Proper 20, Year B
Long ago and far away, there were two small churches of different denominations located near each other in their small city. The two denominations were very similar to each other theologically, so they competed for members.
There was a big difference between the two churches, though. While neither church was perfect (as none are), one of them had a habit of “running off” their pastor. They’d search for and call a new pastor, then find fault with him until he quit a year or two later. The pastor of the other church was flawed, but faithful, as were the people there.
The situation played out to the point that the church’s denomination closed the warring church. This was, they said, “a toxic church” and they urged the church’s members to pray and reflect on James chapter 3 before finding a new church in which to worship.
As the story goes, all the leaders of that closed church appeared in the other church the following week, asking that pastor if their people could all join that church. If that pastor said “yes,” it would double the size of his struggling congregation. But if the pastor said “yes,” it might come with a huge cost.
What would you say to these people? <……………….> I’ll tell you what the pastor said, even while confessing that I probably wouldn’t have handled the situation nearly as well. The pastor asked them if they had read James chapter 3, and when they said “not yet,” looking around at each other uneasily, he told them to come back when they had.
Now, I suspect the pastor was “clued in” to what the other church’s denomination had asked of this congregation. You know I don’t believe in coincidences. I just wouldn’t have thought to point them to James chapter 3, which is our epistle lesson for today. If I had, it would have been inspiration from the Holy Spirit for sure.
Last week, when the epistle lesson was the earlier verses in James chapter 3, we heard how the tongue “steers” us like a rudder steers a ship. Last week, we heard how the tongue “is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” This week, James’ epistle urges us to listen to our own words and use them as a kind of test:
If our words (and actions) are peaceful, kind, pure, gentle, willing to yield, without partiality or hypocrisy, then we are attuned to the wisdom of God.
James says envy and selfish ambition first show themselves via the tongue. We engage in what James calls “conflicts and disputes among us.” James then diagnoses the illness that produces “conflicts.”
I figure that right about now you’ll be wondering what conflicts and disputes there are among us at Church of the Resurrection. I’m sorry to have to disappoint you: No one is fighting here. Or, if anyone is fighting, they are successfully hiding that from their priests.
So, why draw our attention to this epistle today? I remember some 8 or 10 years ago when we began to discern the last time. There were competing ideas, and we in churches are not used to letting our ideas compete. We usually “go along to get along” and then murmur about it later, to ourselves or others. In other words, I see the start of any endeavor to discern God’s will as a time of danger in a church. Why?
James would call such a time—any time we seek the Lord anew—as one when “evil” would oppose the effort, would move to block us. And how better to avert a group of people from seeking Christ’s will for their lives than to get them each so set on doing their idea that stalemate ensues and any effort gets stymied, gets blocked?
Here’s the irony: Maybe God wants us to do several small things all at once, rather than one big thing. Discerning God’s will is never “either-or,” but all about truly listening to all voices and praying and seeing where the Spirit leads us. Didn’t we begin a food pantry and Godly Play, even while we worked on affordable housing?
So, don’t be quiet. Ideas are where discernment begins. At our Discernment Forum Number 2 next Sunday, we will begin to gather your ideas—the ones God is nudging you to put forward. Our epistle lesson today reminds us of how we should share the inspirations we are given, and how we should respond while we keep our ideas alive and listen to others’ ideas all at the same time. I know you will because I know you.
I also know that we at Resurrection can have an interchange of ideas and even seriously disagree without slipping into the kind of disordered speaking that James is talking about here. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.” I would avoid the elitism inherent in this thought by recasting it as James has, by urging all of us—starting with me—to focus more on how to speak rather than on what to speak. James says we should speak “peaceably, gently, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”
James’ language is ancient. “Resist the devil,” James says, “and he will flee from you.” Then James suggests we resist the devil by resisting that which would deter us from doing God’s will “by seeking and aligning ourselves with Wisdom, the Spirit of gentleness and peace.” In other words, we should seek and align ourselves with God’s Spirit, which is already our daily quest.
James’ instructions today are almost so mundane—“Guard your tongue!”—that we could say, “Of course,” then forget what his message really is and go on our way. But the enduring thing about today’s epistle lesson is that living a God-filled life often means less of us—especially less of our words.
Oh, about the people whose words had closed their church, many of them joined the other church and eventually became trusted leaders there. Every few years one of them would tell others about the message of James chapter 3, teaching newcomers how to be the flawed people we all are, together, doing God’s will.
