Gordon McPhee

                                               Mark 7.1–8, 14–15, 21–23

ARE YOU A DISTRACTED SCATTERBRAIN?

Scripture:  James 1:17-27 MSG

So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God— the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

Outline:

The passage read this morning from the letter of James is like a three-decker sandwich. The flow of the arguments, the logic if you will, is somewhat disguised compared to Paul’s letters, which bear the influence of his classical Greek training. James writes in a style typical of the Hebrew teachers that we see most clearly in the book of Proverbs and many other similar writings. Being unfamiliar with these structures we often categorize them into unique self-explanatory maxims and, as a result, miss the author's much deeper and richer intention. The book of Proverbs is composed of complex, interwoven groupings of sayings that interpret, enhance, and expand the meaning layer by layer. And that is what James is doing here.

In the Bible version we read from this morning, Peterson’s, “The Message”, there are identified 5 distinct paragraphs. Most translations only have 4, combining verses 25 with 22-24. However, since there are no paragraphs or even punctuation marks to delineate sentences in the original Greek, it is at the discretion of the translator to organize the text into modern English structures to convey the meaning most appropriately. I feel Peterson correctly noticed the distinctive character in verse 25 that will give us the lettuce for our sandwich.

Martin Luther prefaced his commentary on the Letter of James as an “epistle of straw” and went so far as to suggest it should be removed from the canon of Holy Scriptures. He took issue with James insistence that a profession of faith wasn’t sufficient for salvation, that genuine faith would be accompanied by works, which was too close to the corrupt Roman Catholic practices he was opposing. But he may have benefited from Peterson’s interpretation that sets faith as the lettuce of our sandwich which cradles the rest of the contents. So let’s pretend we’re at St. Subway Church and assemble our sandwich.

Like any good sandwich maker, James begins with the bread, but the bread on the top is different from the bread on the bottom. The bread on top is the most important, it’s what you see when you look at the sandwich. It has that nice rounded golden appearance that suggests there’s something good under the hood. Remember, however; that the bread on top and the bottom are also similar. We might say, the bottom is made in the image of the top, although they have a different appearance and function, they have similar substance.

The contents of the sandwich are like a BLT but James puts it together differently and we’ll be generous and not suggest that he’s using bacon, a pork-related meat. He’s telling us that what we need is tomato, meat, and lettuce, in that order, to fill our sandwich and make that connection between the bread on top and the bread on the bottom. It just won’t be a sandwich till the two breads are together around the filling.

“So, …, don’t get thrown off course”, James begins. If you’re going to build this sandwich right you need to know where you’re going with it, and that means you need to know what kind it is by focusing on that bread on top. All the good stuff, “every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven.” That’s pretty straightforward. And yet, somehow, we find ourselves, as James’ audience did, questioning and uncertain about how that looks in our complex world and our individual lives. How does that work out in practice? And so James explains, “The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” And if that wasn’t telling you that God can’t be found in anything hidden or dark he goes on, “There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle.”

Nothing deceitful. If there is anything in your life, anywhere around you that is not grounded absolutely and unquestionably in Truth, it is not God, of God, or from God. Nothing two-faced. Similarly, everything God says is an unwavering promise, good and bad. If you’re uncertain about who God is in your life, what he wants of you and how you should be living, that is you trying to negotiate your way around His will for your life. God never dithers with His expectations. He is the Father of Light, so you can see your way clearly if you want to. And nothing fickle. God will never leave you, never forsake you. As the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” attests, “There is no shadow of turning with Thee; Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not.”

Who is God? James says He is the one who, “brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.” Imagine that! Of all the billions of creatures in creation, of all the complex, amazingly endowed and incredibly beautiful creatures on earth, God chooses us as His crowning glory of creation. That’s the bread on top, the glory of the sandwich, who God is. Let’s take a look with James under the hood.

“Post this at all the intersections, dear friends”, this is important and first up to be remembered. “Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.” I appreciate how The Message translates this. “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,” as the NIV and most other translations put it, is calm and cerebral. James is emphatic, we must engage in the lost art of listening and if there is something worth saying, well then, if you’ve thought about it and considered it carefully and you believe it will help, say something. Anger is not prohibited or essentially bad, but it is a gateway of emotion, ego, and pride that needs be well controlled. As Paul said in Ephesians 4:26-27, “ Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.”

The call is to humbly let God landscape your life. The landscaping is the first thing one sees when approaching a home. It tells you something about what you’ll find inside. Consign everything that is not of God’s making in your life to the garbage bin. If it’s your own, even if you see it as good, it is in truth “spoiled virtue and cancerous evil.”

“Don’t fool yourself.” Oh my. James doesn’t hold any punches, does he? The meat of the matter is that we are better at nothing else. C. S. Lewis loved to point out that we are quick to excuse all our own sins and shortcomings while condemning the same or lesser evils in others. Act on what you hear in the Word of God. Don’t acknowledge the changes that are needed in your life without immediately accomplishing them. James knew us so well, that in two minutes we forget the truth we have seen and return to the spoiled virtue we find so comforting, forgetting the truth we have seen in Jesus, the Word of Truth.

And then we come to where I garnered the sermon title, faith, the lettuce that cradles and supports humility and truth. We so often put faith in the wrong light, that it is some grand and majestic power that only the most pious attain and wield. Truly it is a great power in its effect, Jesus said it could move mountains. Even just a tiny bit of faith, like a mustard seed. James picks up that theme reminding us that we need only catch a glimpse of God’s revealed counsel, even just for a fleeting instant out of the corner of our eye if we perceive free life and act on it, we are no distracted scatterbrain. Do not miss this key point James is making that can alter your entire life. Even just the most fleeting glance of the truth, seeing yourself as you are, if it moves you to humbly act on that truth then you will be “a man or woman of action.” Faith will work its miracle of transformation, moving the impossible mountain that holds you in the grip of religion that talks a good game but is self-deceived. You will become a person who finds delight and affirmation in the action. James is saying that seeing the truth, even staring at it full bore for a long time, is not faith. But faith is so powerful, that even the merest glance at the Truth of salvation in Jesus, if acted upon, is sufficient for eternal life.

Who are you? Are you self-deceived, a distracted scatterbrain? Well, let me tell you what James says is how you’ll know. Can you look in the mirror and honestly know these two things about yourself? Do you reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world?

Most of us would have a long litany of faithful service to church and family, daily devotions, and good deeds. James sandwich that brings you and God together is a very simple list of faith, truth and humility that comes to life when we act on the truth we hear from Jesus in the Word. It is witnessed in your life in the actions that pass muster before God: “Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.”

James simple and delicious three-decker sandwich for salvation, enjoy.

Amen