Say A Quiet 'Yes' to God

For the third week now, we are studying in the book of James, a folksy and
pragmatic letter aimed at helping people get along with one another in
community.  James is not full of high-sounding theological doctrine and
academic theory.  Instead, James is full of real down-to-earth
recommendations for everyday life in the gritty streets of reality.
Somehow, the Book of James sounds fresh and very contemporary.  It is as if
the core struggles of humankind are the same as they were 2000 years ago.
In one sense that is encouraging because the struggles are identifiable.  In
other ways, it is darkly sad that humanity has not advanced and is still
struggling 2000 years later with the same set of human frailties that James
identifies.

Will you pray with me?  "God of ages past, God of now, and God of all
eternity, be with us in our struggles here today.  Walk with us now, heal us
now, teach us salvation in our world right now.  Amen."

So today we hear from James that real wisdom, God's wisdom, begins with a
holy life and is characterized by getting along with others.  We are told
that wars come about because of our selfishness and wanting our own way.
And James says that we cheat on God when we place our own desires and wants
above God by insisting on our own way.  Strong words.

We often think of our twenty-first century selves as advanced humanity,
assuming that our advanced technology also means that we are emotionally and
spiritually advanced.  But these words of James remind us that every
generation of humanity struggles with the same issues of self-centeredness,
talking the talk but not walking the walk, greed and selfishness.  Just
because our mother and father and generations before them learned these
lessons in their lives does not mean we inherit this wisdom from them.  We
must learn these things for ourselves.

As Bill and I have raised two sons, we have often been reminded that just
because we have learned a lesson in the school of hard knocks, does not mean
our sons have learned also.  Long ago, Bill and I learned that we cannot
spend more than we earn.  But Derrick and Dylan had to learn this lesson by
getting in over their own heads, even as we were warning them to watch out.
Bill and I know that meaningful long-term relationships are not built on
manipulation and deception, but our sons each had to learn this lesson
themselves-each in very different ways.  We would express concern  as we saw
the train of their lives careening toward some very predictable outcome.  We
would suggest, prod, cajole and then plead.  But the certain derailment of
the train was not stopped.  It might zig-zag and stagger, but it would
eventually smash head-long into the wall we always knew was there.  Then, we
had to bite our tongues and swallow our "I told you so's" that tried to
sneak out of our pursed lips.  We raised Derrick and Dylan to be independent
and self-confident.  And then when they live their lives that way, it makes
us crazy that they don't listen to common sense and wisdom and stuff we see
as plain as day.  Each generation must learn for itself.

If we as parents get so aggravated, can you imagine God's frustration with
humanity?  Each generation constantly relearning the same lessons of loving
others, placing compassion before selfishness, and self-control.  And it is
far more than each generation.  Every single one of us starts from personal
ground zero and forms our personality and how we react to the world from
scratch.  It must drive God nuts, knowing what a wise parent knows and
watching us smash through our lives like, well, like crazed children.
Because, that is what each of us are in God's eyes.  Each one of us starts
from absolute moral and ethical zero, and we must grow by small steps,
slowly, into who we are today.  And God waits on each of us to mature, gain
wisdom, always inviting us to focus on the important things of life.  If God
were a person, she would be stark raving mad with all of us for being so
slow to learn....

To bridge the gap from one person to another, every civilization has
produced its own wisdom and literature, aching to provide a small glimpse of
wisdom to be passed from one person and generation to the next.  As
followers of Christ, we have the Hebrew and Christian Bibles plus our faith
traditions for this passed-down wisdom.  Our biblical writers were trying
to transfer ideas and concepts about being better humans in community to the
next generation.  And just as we try to help our own children with our
lessons learned, we must extract the lessons from these biblical stories and
apply them to our new and very different lives.  We cannot do this by just
applying the exact circumstances from the Bible to us, because our lives are
different from the lives of the readers and hearers of these many-thousand
year-old texts.

James 2000 years ago cautions his hearers that they must live humbly, and
live lives that demonstrate walking with God.  James cautions about twisting
the truth, which he names animal cunning and not wisdom.  Animal cunning is
the animal doing whatever it takes to get its own way.  James isn't talking
about animals here, he is talking about American politics in 2012.

James says real wisdom begins with a holy life.  So what is a holy life?
Well, you know by now that for James, a holy life is living within God's
precepts of loving one another as we love ourselves, doing to others as we
would do to ourselves.  Acting our faith into the world.  And notice how
James finishes this paragraph, "You can develop a healthy, robust community
that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work
of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and
honor."  I invite each of you into some self-examination about that
exhortation.  Getting along with one another is hard work.  Most of us try
very hard to do this work.  And the more diverse our community becomes, the
more difficult the work becomes because of the increased chances that
someone will disagree with us.  But we know that we can love someone and
disagree-we all have someone in our family that we disagree with, but love
anyway.  As Christians, we are not commanded to agree with one another.  We
are commanded to love one another.  Jesus' disagreed with the culture and
society around him.  James disagreed with Paul.  But our culture does not
tolerate disagreement at all, treating it as disrespect.  But in God's
Realm, disagreement leads to learning and growth and maturation.  We are
called by James, as Christians, to reject this notion that disagreement is
disrespect.  State your opinion and let it be.  God loves you, and God will
take you just as you are and grow you into the child that God dreams you to
be.  Hold each other in dignity and honor, whether you agree or disagree.
Honoring one another does not require agreement!

This brings us to the last point of our passage today. "So let God work her
will in you. Yell a loud no to the Devil and watch her scamper. Say a quiet
yes to God and she'll be there in no time."  It is interesting to me that
James says we first must loudly say no to the devil before we can say yes to
God to work though our lives.  In our day, we might say that we need to
reject loudly our cultural ideas of greed or definitions of beauty or ideas
that our happiness is based on buying the right toilet cleaner or staying
rail-thin.  Those are the devil today, the thousands of messages we get
every week that tell us we are not pretty enough or successful enough or
well-dressed enough.  What temptation of our culture and society tugs at you
through these constant messages?  To let God work in you, say no loudly to
however the devil is tugging at you.  Let's say no loudly together, "No!"
After setting aside the things in your life that distract you from acting
wisely, then we can move toward saying a quiet yes to God. 

In his book
<http://www.amazon.com/The-Gospel-Yes-Important-Everything/dp/0307730476/ref
=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347309014&sr=8-1&keywords=gospel+of+yes> The Gospel of
Yes, Mike Glenn points out that discovering the person whom Christ created
you to be and the purpose for which you were created frees you from the
paralysis of having to make life decisions repeatedly. In
<http://www.truthfulconversations.com/paralyzed-by-choice/> a recent blog
post, Mike writes: "Your choices are actually boiled down to just two
questions; first, does this action or opportunity reflect who I am in
Christ? Second, does this action or opportunity bring me closer to the
purposes for which I was created?"

So, when I am stuck in traffic on the Q bridge and want to explode in anger
because someone cuts me off, I need only ask, "Does my anger get me closer
to saying No or Yes to God?" In this case, the anger just gets me closer to
No.  Rejecting the anger moves me toward Yes, God.  So, I choose No, Anger.
Yes, God.  Am I perfect at this?  No.  But I keep trying to learn and move
toward Yes, God in everything I do.  Just a few moments ago, Kelly said
"Yes, God" in her baptism.  We all made a covenant with her and John Paul,
also saying, "Yes, God," promising to walk with them in faith.  That is all
we can do every day.  Move forward toward God, one quiet Yes at a time.

We are all children of the eternal God, constantly growing, learning, and
walking with our God, just as we walk with our own children as they grow and
learn and walk with us.  Let us all move one step closer to God with each
decision in our lives.  Say a loud no to our culture and society, and a
quiet Yes to God.  Let us build our community of Christ together by being
humble and learning to get along with each other, treating one another in
dignity and honor.  Let us take a yes-step, and say out-loud "Yes, God"
together, quietly like a prayer.  "Yes, God."  And may it ever be so. Yes,
God.  Amen.

 

James 3:13-4:8

13-16 Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom?
Here's what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It's the way you
live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn't
wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn't wisdom. Twisting the truth to make
yourselves sound wise isn't wisdom. It's the furthest thing from wisdom-it's
animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you're trying to look better
than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends
up at the others' throats.

17-18 Real wisdom, God's wisdom, begins with a holy life and is
characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable,
overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not
two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with
God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with
each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.

4 1-2 Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do
you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want
your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what you
don't have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn't yours and
will risk violence to get your hands on it.

2-3 You wouldn't think of just asking God for it, would you? And why not?
Because you know you'd be asking for what you have no right to. You're
spoiled children, each wanting your own way.

4-6 You're cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with
the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. And
do you suppose God doesn't care? The proverb has it that "he's a fiercely
jealous lover." And what he gives in love is far better than anything else
you'll find. It's common knowledge that "God goes against the willful proud;
God gives grace to the willing humble."

7-10 So let God work his will in you. Yell a loud no to the Devil and watch
him scamper. Say a quiet yes to God and he'll be there in no time.