Too Much Talking! Derek Starr Redwine! Sunday, Sept. 2! James 1:17-27!

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1 Too Much Talking Derek Starr Redwine Sunday, Sept. 2 James 1:17-27 One of the challenges of being a Christian is being in the world, while not being of it. Since the 1st century followers of Jesus have struggled, as we do, to find right balance between connecting with the culture and standing apart from it. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas likened the identity of a Christian to a resident alien; a person who resides in a place that is never truly their home. Being in the world, but not of the world. As you know some churches are so overwhelmed by this challenge that they isolate themselves from the world. To prevent themselves from being stained by the world, they remove themselves from it; shutting themselves in and keeping everyone else out. If we take seriously God s command to love the world, this is just not a valid option. We can t shut out the world...but those churches are on to something, because we also can t be swallowed up by the world either. Things ought to be a different in here, than they are out there. Our practices and behaviors need to point to a different reality, to a different set of principles than what governs our nation s commerce and social ethics. In their attempt to connect with the world, too many churches don t look all that different from it. This is part of what James is addressing in his letter to a group of Christian churches near the end of the 1st Century. The Letter of James stands out among the epistles, because of its strong critique of churches that are all talk and no action. James believes, passionately, that the Church of Jesus Christ must live out what it believes: that God loves all people and that as Christ s disciples we are to show that love to those who need it most. James is the strongest New Testament critic of false religion, and as you heard in today s reading what he believes makes an individual s religion worthless is not one s tendency to sin, or one s lack of personal devotion, or even how much a person does or does not go to church. What makes one s faith worthless is the inability to bridle their tongue. People talk too much - in their cars, at work, in school, in church, on their phones, in the checkout line, on the radio, on TV...talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. As we navigate the contours of our life, an avalanche of words falls all around us. Silence is no longer golden; it s extinct. People talk too much, especially people of faith.

2 In his 2010 book UnChristian, David Kinnaman, the president of the Barna Institute, a nonprofit that provides strategic information to churches, wrote about what young Americans think about Christianity. The summary of the book is not pleasant: Mosaics and Busters, those generations that include late teens to 30-somethings believe that Christians are primarily judgmental, anti-homosexual, hypocritical, too political and way too critical and disconnected from the world. Simply put, young people today see Christians as individuals who freely judge, say harsh things, talk out of both sides of their mouths, too easily mix politics and religion, and stand in judgement of the world. And its interesting to note that all these critiques are about things people say, not so much what they do. Christianity has become a religion of words, and harsh words at that. It s easy to see explain how this might have happened. We are after all people of the Word. In a world full of words, we ve worked hard to to ensure that our words are heard above the din. To keep up with all the talking heads we ve learned to talk louder, more abrasively, and with greater conviction. Out there the person with the loudest voice wins. It s not by accident that Howard Stern and Doctor Phil were two of the highest paid entertainers in Any guesses to what they made? I ll give you a hint. According to Forbes Magazine they made twice as much as one of the loudest, most abrasive voices in the media - Rush Limbaugh - who last year made $40 million dollars. In the world it pays to be loud, and abrasive, and to speak with unwavering conviction. Unless I missed it there were no times of televised silent reflection at the Republican Convention, and barring divine intervention there won t be any at the Democrat's Convention either. We live in era of hard, harsh, loud, and abrasive words and into all that God speaks this: You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. Columnist David Brooks offered an interesting critique of politicians last week in the New York Times. He argued that both political parties have been inebriated by the same fantasy: that the other party will not exist. In his opinion every single speech this election season has been based on this fantasy. There hasn t been one speech that

3 grapples with the fact that we live in a highly polarized, evenly divided nation and that the next president is going to have to try to pass laws in that context. Can you imagine how strange and striking it would be if a politician stopped talking about how he was going to do things differently than the other guy, and started talking about how he was going to spend his first months in office just listening to others? And can you imagine how much better the world would be, our nation would be if Christians, instead of participating in the divisive, corrosive talk, became known as the best listeners in the world? We ve said enough. It's time for us to listen. For all his critiques of religion, James does tells us how we can live out our faith once we ve gotten a handle on our tongues. In today s passage he clarifies what makes a religion pure and undefiled before God. And his description is shocking in its simplicity: a religion that is pleasing to God is one that cares for orphans and widows in their distress, while keeping itself oneself unstained by the world. An effective religion has to get out into the world and serve the most vulnerable, while at the same time not losing its identity as it ventures outside the safety of its community, and the best way to do that, the best way to find the vulnerable and serve them, without getting sucked into the war of words out there is to shut our mouths and listen. It s not easy to hear the cries of a widow or an orphan. In fact, it takes an incredible ear. But it can happen. Nine years ago when this church decided to hold its first WPC Invitational in support of a camp that serves modern day orphans, someone was listening. Our favorite neighbor just moved away. She s getting engaged, and while Amy and I are happy for her, we re sad to see her go. We will never have a neighbor as wonderful as Katy. She was the perfect neighbor, in that she was someone who didn't talk all that much. She was friendly, but she mostly just smiled and listened as we rambled on about our kids and work. She let her life do her talking for her. Over the past six years Katy has raised a kid that isn t her own. Her sister had a boy from her first marriage, that after she met husband number two, she decided didn t want anymore, so Katy took him in. A few years ago, Katy's sister needed a kidney, and she gave it to her and then welcomed her into her home as well, and a year ago her dad fell on hard times, and she welcomed him in too.

4 I don t know if Katy goes to church all that much, and I really don t know what she believes politically, but I m certain that Katy's religion is one that pleases God. There is a great debate going on in our nation around the best way to help the poor. Some argue that the government ought to be an arm of compassion, while others argue that the government s compassionate arm is the problem. Some believe that welfare is what keeps people from falling through the cracks, while others believe that welfare is what is causing the cracks in the first place. And Christians on both sides have been weighing in...well, what if God doesn t want us to be part of the debate? What if instead of arguing the benefits or perils of the welfare state, every Christian in this nation - all 240,000,000 of us - what if we stopped talking and started walking through our neighborhoods, listening for the cries of the over 16 million children in this nation who live in poverty. That is eighteen Christians for every orphaned child. I don t know about you, but I m all talked out. Over the next two and half months our little corner of the world will be inundated with nasty, harsh, and abrasive words. You re going to hear commercials that demonize the left and accuse the right. You re going to hear Christians say the nastiest things, and none of it will please God or make a lick of difference. Words have power, and if we are angry or nasty towards another person, if we speak harshly or with unchecked conviction, we are, as James states, deceiving ourselves... A person who does nothing but talk, and cry out, and judge and critique has come to believe that there is nothing left for them to learn, and there could be no greater deception. 1 In my last church, we tried something that made a lot of people turn their heads. It was November of 2004, and while the nation was deeply divided into red and blue, the leadership of the church decided to make space for a little bipartisanship by scheduling an election night party at the church. Central Presbyterian in Denver was a church much like this one, in that it was evenly divided between blues and reds. There were people who hated George Bush, and there 1 Vincent Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, p. 141

5 were people who thought he was the man God had ordained to lead us through the wake of 9/11. But for one night, the night when our nation was most divided by political persuasion, Christians with opposing politics sat at tables and ate meals with the televisions on and watched the results of the presidential election trickle in. Instead of enjoying the returns with people of our particular political persuasion, we forced ourselves to be with a diverse group. And as the election results trickled in, an interesting thing happened, people got quiet, real quiet. Both sides finished their meals in silence, said their goodbyes, and headed home. It was a truly remarkable display of a religion of which God would be proud. Could we do something like that at Westminster? Could we sit with those with whom we disagree and watch the results of this year s election trickle in? Could we sit in silence and bridle our tongues? Could we be quiet enough to hear the cries of those who need our help...and then work together to find ways to help them? I sure hope we could...if not, we ve got some listening to do. Amen.