Doers of the Word

“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” So writes James the Apostle, in his letter found in the New Testament. What he means by this is that for faith to be real, it must be translated into deeds. As a preacher once said, it must be “tangiblized.” Otherwise, faith is just another form of self-deception. Just as inaction reveals the inner attitude, so too does action. Faith is not just a matter of the head and the heart, it is a matter of the hands as well.

We are a congregation peopled with those who are not mere hearers of the word, but who are also doers of the word.  Many of you do in a very important way – by tithing, by pledging, by sharing of your financial resources, you fund this church’s ministries here and beyond, where we are doers of the word. Money is ministry in this way, and don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise.

            But we are also a congregation who are doers of the word in a very hands-on sense. Sometimes this is the case as you go about your daily lives, as you try to live for others as Jesus lived for us, living lives of compassion and caring and seeking justice and working for peace. And sometimes you do this sort of hands-on doing of the word together, working with others on a Habitat for Humanity build, or pitching in at the hospital or at A Baby Center in Hyannis. And sometimes you pick up and get on a plane and go to New Orleans for a week of rebuilding homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Just as Carol and Brad will share with you this morning….

            Carol and Brad told you about how they were doers of the word through their work for families seeking to rebuild their lives in New Orleans. We often tend to think of being doers of the word in just that sense, in the ways in which we reach out to help our neighbors. But I think there is another important way we can be doers of the word as well, and that has something to do with being intentional about working on our own stuff, about growing deeper in faith, about working towards bringing together our doing and our being.

            So for me, when we are off on a mission trip, part of my job, part of my being a doer of the word, is to help those on the trip figure this out as well. That is one of the reasons that we close each evening with an hour of shared reflection and worship. We talk about the events of the day, about the joys and the disappointments, about the highs and the frustrations, about the interactions we had with the locals, about what we had learned. We often find, at least early in the week, that we have more questions than answers, and then at times figure out that what we thought were the answers were simply doorways to more questions, and by the end of the week it turns out that we really had learned something new about ourselves. Let me share just two examples.

            Last year one of the work groups arrived on site only to find that they had hardly any of the tools they needed to get the work done. They ended up sitting around for about half the day, growing increasingly frustrated with the inability of the overseeing organization to get them the tools and materials. They shared that frustration in the evening meeting, each taking a turn going on about the lack of organization, bureaucratic red-tape, and so on. And then someone from another of the groups said, “Okay, now take that frustration you experienced for one-half a day, and think about how it must feel for folk who have been trying to get their homes rebuilt for over four years, and who keep running into delays from FEMA and insurance companies and shoddy contractors and on and on.” Whoa; big reality check; everyone felt just a little bit sheepish, just a little too entitled. Gave us all a lot to think about.

            A second example. This year, after our first day’s work, and one of the reflection circle had just finished gushing about how neat it was to meet one of the homeowners and spend some time talking with them. “Harrumph,” opined another member of our group, “I came down here to do work, and all this time chit-chatting just gets in the way of the work I am supposed to be doing. If I had my way, I would be like a fairy that just flits in, does the works, and gets out.” Not every one agreed, but I could tell a number of folk shared this sentiment. So at the close of the session, I said, “I wonder if we all might spend some time over the coming days thinking about just exactly what the work is that we are supposed to be doing down here.”

            Well, sure enough, when we gathered for our last time of reflection, everyone had thoughts on the work we were doing in New Orleans. They all agreed, of course, that we were there to help folk made homeless by a hurricane; but they also all got that we were there to work on ourselves as well.

We were there to learn more about the causes of what many thought was a natural disaster – but which was also a man-made tragedy, with components that included the man-made destruction of the protective delta marshes; the man-made construction of a canal which gave the floodwaters a straight-line path into Lake Ponchartrain; man-made faulty engineering of the levees; and a man-made federal blunder which caused tens of thousands of homeowners to cancel their flood insurance six months before Katrina, because they were told they no longer lived on a floodplain.

We were there to learn once again how much better it is to have wealth. We stayed in a church in the Uptown area of New Orleans, a fashionable district of beautiful, expensive homes – which was built on the high ground, and so was untouched by the flooding. While those who had relatively little lost everything, those with much were largely unaffected.

We were there to learn about gratitude – to learn once again how blessed we all are to have homes and not live in a FEMA trailer and not have to wonder if we might ever have a home again.

And we were there to reconnect in a new way with our faith. We were living out the parable of the Good Samaritan as we reached down to help those in need; we were talking with people who had lived through the agony of Good Friday and had been raised to new life; we were there to know again that faith, if it has no works, is dead. And that those who are doers of the word are, indeed, blessed in their doing.

“Its Just Not About Me” - Sermon 10/24/10

In the beginning….

            What better, more fitting words, to open our Holy Book, than these: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth….”  What better, more fitting words, to open the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, than the similar, “In the beginning was the Word….”  So here, in the beginning of my time back with you after a restful, renewing, re-energizing sabbatical, let us begin again with these opening words from John.

            John’s words for us are as much poetry as prose, and his message is, at heart, that words matter. In the opening of the Book of Genesis, God speaks the world into existence; remember how it goes, God said “Let there be light” and there was light. But this time, John tells us, God’s word is not just spoken – God’s word takes on human form, and comes to the world as Jesus, comes to bring freedom, and justice, and healing, and joy, and grace, that we might have new life, and life abundant.

            So that we might here these ancient words afresh, you will be hearing two versions spoken alternately: the New Revised Standard Version translation, and Eugene Petersen’s translation, The Message.

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            John the Baptizer is the original preacher – at least in the New Testament – and he has served as a model for preachers ever since.  And since a big part of what I do here involves preaching, and since a big part of worship in our Protestant tradition revolves around the preaching of God’s word, it seemed that this might be a good occasion to take another look at John.

            John’s main activity is preaching, and he preaches in the wilderness. He preaches in the wilderness, out there where the wild things are, out there in that uncharted, trackless waste, a place of danger, a place where hunger and thirst are an ever-present menace, a place, so lore had it, where the devil and evil spirits lurked.

            John in the wilderness has been a model for preachers ever since, for those who pursue their calling in their own wildernesses. Think of St. Francis of Assisi, preaching to the birds in the wilderness because no one in the wealthy, indolent churches would listen; think of puritan Henry Jacob preaching to his fellow inmates, our spiritual ancestors, in the Clink, London’s notorious jail;  think of John Wesley preaching on the street corners in London, and later out in the Fields; think of George Whitefield, America’s first traveling evangelist, preaching on Boston Common and in fields and forests throughout the colonies, sparking the First Great Awakening. Think also of today’s preachers seeking to bring the word of God to those lost in a modern spiritual wilderness, where seekers long for true community amid the technological babble which everywhere surrounds us, where individuals long for truth in a culture awash in “truthiness”, where souls strive for authenticity in a culture which flits from fad to fad, scandal to scandal.

            John, preaching in the wilderness, sent from God, has, or so the Evangelist tells us, only one purpose: to witness. You know what a witness is. A witness is someone who is called to testify, to tell what they have seen or heard. A witness is not supposed to embellish or exaggerate – in the words of Sgt. Friday from Dragnet, “Just the facts, ma’am” is what a witness is asked for.  And the significance of a witness is not in themselves, but in what they have to say about the matter to which they witness.

            And so we hear very little about John the Baptizer in the gospels. He speaks, and then he is gone. When he is asked who he is, he says, simply, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” He has one function – to point to the coming Christ. To make the I.D. To give us a glimpse of the truth. To be a voice speaking the truth. To witness.

            As you know, I was away the past 13 weeks, off on sabbatical. I don’t know how its been for you here – I am sure both Dirkje Legerstee and then Bill Barker did fine jobs. But I suspect some of you have been wondering what I have been doing and learning.

            For me, it was a wonderful time. After an initial time of resting and recharging, once the kids got back to school and things quieted down, I plunged in in my usual “Type A” personality way. I was going to discern a vision for us; I was going to read the latest and greatest authors, meet with exciting and vibrant pastors, digest what they had to say, and then come back to you ready to get to work and lead you forward into the next glorious chapter here at West Parish of Barnstable. With all these “I” “I”s, you’d think I was in the Navy.

            But then, thank God, with just a few weeks left in the sabbatical, I came across this ancient text and John the Baptizer, that model for all preachers. And also these words from that other early preacher, Paul the Apostle: “For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord.”

            So today, here on this first Sunday back with you, a day when I had hoped to wow you with a new vision of a new way forward for us, a day on which you may have hoped for something similar, the message is this: “It’s Just Not About Me.” 

            It was, it is, is always will be, about Jesus Christ.

            About the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

            About one who taught, and healed, and reconciled people.

            About a preaching career – the preaching career of Jesus – that ended in failure, on a cross.

            About a God who would not let the cross be the last word, but who instead raised Jesus from the dead, and through him offers us new and abundant life both in this life and the next.

            So at the beginning of this next chapter in our life here together at West Parish, in a time when perhaps you are wondering what I am bringing to you to address the concerns many of you have raised about the diminishing number of young families in worship, in the midst of a time of what still feels like recession here on the Cape, a time when revenues here are down and expenses are up and some hunger for a magic formula which will get us back on an even keel, in circumstances when we are looking for new growth in many areas – so right here, in the beginning of this new chapter, comes a refreshing reminder. A reminder about right-sizing, about humility, about how our focus need always be at the right place, and that place is not the pastor, is not the programs we offer, is not even the outreach we do – that focus needs always be on Jesus Christ.

            But if it is just not about me, it is also not just about me.  I began by telling you that John, as the first preacher in the New Testament, has been taken as a model for preachers like me ever since. But wait a minute – where does it say that John was a member of the clergy? A graduate of seminary? A trained professional?  If John has something to say to me about what it means to be a preacher, he also has something to say to you as well. We are all, in fact, called to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, to be witnesses, to point to him so that others might see, and turn, and follow, and have new life, and life abundant. Sometimes we do this in words; more often, we do this in the way we live, in the way we treat one another, in the way we share of the resources with which we have been blessed, as we live out our Savior’s call to love God and one another.

            It is really that simple. Everything else we do is subsidiary to this, worthy of doing, yes, but only because they are ways in which we witness to the love of God we have known through Jesus Christ. At base, it is just not about you, either. Not about your needs, however pressing they are, not about your concerns, however legitimate they certainly are, not about your wants and what you might get out of this church, this faith, or your God. Radical as it might sound in this consumer-driven, individualistic, what’s in it for me society, it just not about you.

            And thank God for that.  Thank God that it is about something much bigger than me me me, thank God it is about a project far vaster than our personal sound and fury, signifying nothing. Thank God it is about a light that shines in the darkness, a light that has never been overcome, a light that graciously allows us to see the true purpose for which we were created, and who is its true Creator. Thank God it is just not about me and you.

            Please join me in a moment of prayer. Gracious Creator, Light that shines in the darkness, today we welcome you into our lives, and into our hearts, rejoicing in a love so broad and deep that it fills the world. With such joy in our souls, how can we help but stand and sing together? Amen.