This post will include the sermon and one song from worship at one of the churches. I also recorded the sermon for the first time (outside of requirements) and have attached that at the bottom of the post. It is from the 2nd service.
The opening song we sang at Flintstone UMC was "New Wine" by Hillsong:
“Live Out Your Faith”
James 2:1-17 (MSG)
September 9, 2018 (16th Sunday after
Pentecost)
Flintstone UMC, Simpson UMC
James
2:1-17 (MSG)
1-4 My dear friends, don’t let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, Christ-originated faith. If a man enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags comes in right after him, and you say to the man in the suit, “Sit here, sir; this is the best seat in the house!” and either ignore the street person or say, “Better sit here in the back row,” haven’t you segregated God’s children and proved that you are judges who can’t be trusted?
5-7 Listen, dear friends.
Isn’t it clear by now that God operates quite differently? He chose the world’s
down-and-out as the kingdom’s first citizens, with full rights and privileges.
This kingdom is promised to anyone who loves God. And here you are abusing
these same citizens! Isn’t it the high and mighty who exploit you, who use the
courts to rob you blind? Aren’t they the ones who scorn the new
name—“Christian”—used in your baptisms?
8-11 You do well when you
complete the Royal Rule of the Scriptures: “Love others as you love yourself.”
But if you play up to these so-called important people, you go against the Rule
and stand convicted by it. You can’t pick and choose in these things,
specializing in keeping one or two things in God’s law and ignoring others. The
same God who said, “Don’t commit adultery,” also said, “Don’t murder.” If you
don’t commit adultery but go ahead and murder, do you think your non-adultery
will cancel out your murder? No, you’re a murderer, period.
12-13 Talk and act like a
person expecting to be judged by the Rule that sets us free. For if you refuse
to act kindly, you can hardly expect to be treated kindly. Kind mercy wins over
harsh judgment every time.
14-17 Dear friends, do you think you’ll get
anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does
merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance,
you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good
morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and
walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that
get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
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THIS
IS THE WORD OF GOD FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD.
THANKS BE TO GOD.
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I
chose the Message for today’s reading because often it helps us to hear and
read the Scriptures in a version different than the one we read daily. If you read the Message translation daily, it
wasn’t different for you today and you might consider reading today’s passage
in the NLT or CEB later.
The
lectionary passage allows us to omit verses 11-13, however, by doing that we
don’t have the flow, so I chose to keep it.
The
author begins in verse 1 by saying, “My dear friends, don’t let public opinion
influence how you live out your glorious, Christ-originated faith.” That statement by itself could take an entire
sermon. How often do we allow others
to influence how we are living out our glorious, Christ-originated faith? May God help each of us to live out our faith
under the sole influence of Christ.
Amen?
The
next several verses go on to give us a scenario in a church setting where there
is the possibility of showing favoritism or partiality. If we are honest with God and ourselves, then
those verses can help us see inside our motives and actions.
In
verse 5, we hear/see that God operates quite differently. This is a very good thing. If it were up to us, we would likely live
inside our comfort zones, but we are reminded that the kingdom is promised to
anyone who loves God. The Royal Rule of
Scripture is: “Love others as you love yourself.”
In
verses 8-11, we are reminded that we contradict that Royal Rule if we give
precedence to others or if we are influenced by others in our faith instead of
by Christ. Verses 12-13 exhort us on how
we are to live:
12-13 Talk and act like a
person expecting to be judged by the Rule that sets us free. For if you refuse
to act kindly, you can hardly expect to be treated kindly. Kind mercy wins over
harsh judgment every time.
What
does this mean for us as followers of Christ who are seeking to grow as
disciples of Christ, to be transformed so that we can make other disciples of
Christ for the transformation of the world?
It
means that as we love others as ourselves, we are set free. It means that kindness, compassion, and love
win. Kind mercy wins.
It
takes quite a bit of energy to allow kindness, compassion, and love at times, especially when we are tired or hungry. Have you seen those Snickers commercials where
the people just aren’t themselves and they are given a Snickers bar and they
become themselves again? When we need to
show kindness, compassion, and love to others, we need to make sure that we are
spending time in spiritual practices that are filling us up—prayer, reading
Scripture, silence, solitude, fasting, worship, Holy Communion, and other
practices such as spending time in creation, journaling, prayer walking, play,
rest. If we are not allowing ourselves
to receive kindness, compassion, and love from ourselves or God, then we will
not be able to offer it to others. As we
receive and give, there is freedom.
Verses
12-13 remind me of one of my favorite verses, Micah 6:8. It has been a life verse for many years. I first memorized it in an older NIV: “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with your God.” On a church sign in Red Bank that I pass several
times a week after PT (physical therapy), they have two of the three
commandments: “act justly, love mercy”.
There wasn’t room for the third: walk humbly with God. Just as the greatest commandments: love God
and love others as yourself sum up how we are to live, so does Micah 6:8.
In
verses 14-17 of today’s passage, if we haven’t felt the conviction yet, we do
here.
It
begins: “Dear friends, do you think
you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do
anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it?”
That is one of those moments that is either an “ouch” or an “amen”
moment, depending on where you are at the time.
One
of my colleagues posted a quote this week that caused me to reflect on James
and putting our faith into action.
"I would like to buy three dollars’ worth
of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just
enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want
enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want
ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I
want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy three dollars’
worth of God, please."(Tim Hansel, When I Relax I Feel Guilty, 1979)
Sometimes we want just enough of God to get
by. How do we break out of that to live
more abundantly, to live into the freedom that God has for us?
It comes as we live out our God-talk with God-acts.
As we love God, love people, and live like
Jesus, our faith becomes action.
As we reflect on today’s passage, may we be the
kinds of people who are influenced by Christ and not others as we seek to grow
as individuals and as a church.
May we not stop at what we’ve already done to
put our faith into action, but rather daily seek opportunities to love God,
love people, and live like Jesus.
May we, as individuals and as a church body, be
open to the moving of the Holy Spirit to help us be people who keep growing in
our relationships with God and one another.
May it be so.
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If you'd like to hear a recording of the sermon, you can click here (.wav) or here (.mp3).
Because I mention the Snickers commercials, I thought I would put one here. There are many to choose from and finding one to go here wasn't that easy. I chose to go with one of the more recent ones with Elton John attempting to rap.
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| Church sign in Red Bank, TN that has 2/3 of Micah 6:8 |
Thanks to Steve McDaniel for converting my .wav file to .mp3. Community working together to make things happen for the good of all and the glory of God is a beautiful thing.
Maybe there will be something that meets you in this post where you are on your journey and encourages you.
Blessings on your journey,
Debra
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