James 3 : Mark 9 : Sermon

Transcription

1 James 3 : Mark 9 : Sermon "Who is wise and understanding among you?" That is an interesting question that James poses to his readers? Who, indeed? Is there anyone here today who might want to come forward and claim to that title? I doubt it somehow, for anyone who is wise enough to merit it would certainly be wise enough not to make such ridiculous claims for themselves! For that matter, how do you recognise someone who is wise? What sort of evidence would you look for? Someone with lots of books lining the walls of their home perhaps. There are people here today who certainly fit that description! Someone who shows signs of having got on well in life, a nice house and a classy car. Yes, some of you could match up to that. Someone able to give good answers to difficult questions, able to quote experts and sound knowledgeable. We are not short of those qualities in this congregation either! Perhaps if you want to look wise it is helpful to wear glasses, giving the impression that your eyesight has faded though years of careful research, studying tiny and detailed text. At last a category that I can fit into! But I don t think any of that is what James is looking for, because he asks quite specifically Who is wise and understanding among you? The question implies that it must be possible to have wisdom without having understanding, and I suspect that we do know of people like that. We have our stereotype of the mad professor, brilliant in his field but hopeless at coping with daily life, or the brilliant scientist who can compute complex formulas in their head but struggle to remember where they left the car. Given that we have so many Professors and scientists in our congregation I would of course add that such stereotypes are ridiculous and obviously not appropriate but nonetheless, we accept that it is possible to have great wisdom in a particular area, and to have very little understanding of life.

2 2 Perhaps we see the same thing in the business world, where we see people who have all the wisdom they need and more when it comes to clinching deals and making profit, but who drive their health into the ground through the stress of over work and poor human relationships. Clearly, that is not the kind of wisdom James is looking for. Indeed he goes on to explain that there is a difference between what he calls worldly wisdom and what he calls the wisdom that comes from above. That distinction is reflected in our intriguing gospel story this morning, where we are told that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying, prompting Jesus to point to a child as one who was capable of understanding what really mattered. Wisdom is the bible does not equate to success, or at least not to the kind of things that we often mean by success. At this point I want to tell you about one of the people I encountered at the Greenbelt Festival this year, because I think her story is significant and inspiring and because her story may just help us to understand the kind of wisdom that James is talking about and looking for in a Christian community. Eugene Harvey was born into a middle class family in Australia, and while her parents were busy with many things every Sunday there was a neighbour who took her every week to Sunday School. When she recounted this she didn t mention anything about what she was taught there, but she did describe the great kindness that she experienced there, something which affected her as she grew up and gave her a desire to do something good and to make the world a better place. She did well at school and then at University and soon found herself in a well paid and glamorous job in the entertainment industry. But the infection she had picked up at church had not left her and by the time she turned 30 she grew frustrated and unsettled because she knew she was doing nothing to make the world a better place. So she was a very capable young lady. She had the wisdom she needed to cope and to be successful in the world. But she also had the other kind of wisdom that told her this wasn t enough, that there was more to life than this.

3 In an attempt to make a new start she moved to London and one day she met a man who was doing charity work and who asked for her help. She was amazed to discover that there were people who would value her, not for her professional qualifications or skills, but for her presence and her time and her support. Indeed this turned out to be a life changing experience for her, and with some other friends she started a new charity with the title: We are what we do. They work with the simple philosophy that small changes in lifestyle done by a lot of people add up to a big change in the world. The first thing they did was to ask people to send in ideas of what they would like to ask one million people to do to make the world a better place. These ideas were brought together into a book Change the world for a Fiver which has sold over a million copies. The charity now operates in many countries, getting lots of people to sign up to small promises to improve their community or to help the global environment or to support the world s poor. It has grown to such an extend that they now run schemes with major supermarket chains in the UK and are discussing plans to do projects with Coca Cola and Google among others. She is no longer earning big money and is no longer moving in glamorous circles, but her ideas and hard work are inspiring people all over the world to believe they can do something and be part of something and make a difference for good in the world. Is that perhaps an example of the sort of thing that James is looking for? Is that perhaps an example of what he is talking about? Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. We can have the kind of wisdom that leads to pride and ambition and a desire to manipulate people for our benefit. Or we can have a kind of wisdom that gives birth to humility and mercy and a desire to serve people. I think it is fairly obvious which of these two descriptions describes the motivation of Jesus Christ. Though it has not always been too obvious in the history that his followers have created. 3

4 We are what we do The name of the charity is almost a summary of all that James is trying to say in his letter. Not we are what our job title states about us, or we are what we own, nor even we are what we say we believe. It is what we do that shows who we really are, and it is what we do that reveals the kind of wisdom that we operate with, the kind of understanding that we have. What we are called to do is not so much have wisdom but use wisdom. And we show that we have it by the way we use it. And remember, Jesus himself said that his followers should be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16). To have the wisdom we need and to use it in ways that help rather than harm. One aspect of wisdom is knowing your limitations, so when I come across someone who expresses things better than I could I am happy to stand aside and let the other person speak. That was the case this week when I read Eugene Paterson s paraphrase of this section of James, so I reckon I should just read that for you and let it speak for itself, giving us an excellent summary of what James is challenging us to do. From The Message 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 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 4

5 hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor Real wisdom, God's wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. Perhaps that is a good thing to keep in mind as we seek to become the people we want to be, and as we seek to become the church that we want to be. Books and study and learning and developing skills may help, but they will never teach us what we most need to understand. But try to live a godly life, aim to get along with others, and there is no knowing what it might lead to. For the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. 18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.