Words Matter: A Sermon for the 15th Sunday After Pentecost

May only truth be spoken and only truth received. Amen.

Over the next few weeks, we will be venturing into the Letter of James. This letter is considered to be the first universal letter, meaning that rather than being addressed to a specific community – like Paul’s writings to the Corinthians or the Ephesians – James was writing to the church at large. His letters were meant to be circulated among many churches. Think of it like a priest writing a sermon and then sharing it with a mailing list.

As with many other letters in the bible, no one knows for sure who wrote the Letter of James. It was a fairly common name back then. Was it James, the son of Zebedee? Was it James the apostle? Was it James, the brother of Jesus? Most commentaries go with that last one, and if that’s the case, then this particular James knew Jesus and followed Jesus for his entire life, which would make him a bit of an expert of Jesus’ work.

As we work our way through the letter, you will find that the overall message from James is to harmonize faith and action, and to do so as a community, for the community.

This morning, there are two wisdom lessons that James is trying to get across to his audience, and to us:

1. Thoughts and prayers aren’t always enough.

2. Actions speak louder than words.

Both of these statements should make you pause and think about your faith, about what it means to you to be a Christian. I would consider myself to be a good Christian. I believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I read and listen to the Word of God. I pray. I’m sure everyone here could probably say the same thing.

I think, mostly, we call ourselves Christian because we tune in each Sunday to hear the Word, to hear the Gospel proclaimed. We cross the threshold of the building to hear the word and to pray for ourselves, our local community, and our global community. We pat ourselves on the back, congratulating ourselves for another job well-done, and we go home.

But there are people who rarely attend church services and yet could be considered more Christian than many. These are the people who go out into the world to be with and help the poor, the invalid, the sick, the unwanted, and the dying.

For too many, Christianity has become all talk, talk, talk. Don’t do this, don’t do that. Be this, be that. The church, as a whole, appears to have become complacent. If you really want to show your true faith in God and in Jesus, then you need to get out there and help the widowed and the orphaned, the poor and the sick.

A friend of mine once said, “I believe so deeply in the power of prayer. 

And it would be really amazing if the church would do more than pray. I think we are all aware now that when it comes to justice, "thoughts and prayers" is good but not enough.”

Jesus made company with the poor, the sick, and the unwanted. He spent most of his time with the lowest of the people and he loved them all, gathering where the people were, spreading the word about the Kingdom of God, and the wisdom of God, and the grace of God.

Christianity began as a group of people who wanted to share Jesus’ message and lessons with everyone around them.

In today’s reading, James implies a kind of deep forgetfulness that leaves the religious self unable to function fully. He implies that we have forgotten what it truly means to be Christian.

To hear the Word and not to do the Word is to forget what you look like - to forget the image of God within you - to forget that the Word is within you waiting to come forth in abundant love, mercy and grace.

So, this is what James tells us: that we are to be quick to “hear,” because not hearing enough leads us, inevitably, to speech that is angry and unproductive. But hearing alone is not sufficient. We must also “do,” because failing to act is evidence of a fundamental failure to function as God’s first fruits in the world.

In 1:22-24, he speaks about a lack of connection between hearing and doing, between who one is and what one does. He asks us to picture ourselves standing in front of a mirror. We are to pause there as James asks, “Do you see who you are?”

You are someone who has been blessed by God’s gifts, someone who has been brought to new life through God’s word – a person who is a first fruit, set aside as someone who belongs to God.

And with that gift, with the gift of God’s grace and wisdom, we are meant to get out there and do as Jesus did. We declare our faith to be alive and strong by loving our neighbours, caring for the sick, and making friends with the poor.

When our words and actions are in harmony, it is our neighbors who benefit. For when we know who we are, the gifted children of God’s creation, our hearing and doing come together and conform in care and service for those most in need of our love.

Perhaps, if we as Christians were to follow James’s precepts, we would do a lot less talking and a lot more listening. We would measure our faith by our personal relationships, both in our habits of speech and our relationships with others in the community. Our primary expression of our religion would be in outreach to the poor and neglected. By such attitudes and actions, James tells us, we fulfill the divine purpose and become first fruits of all God’s creatures.

Again, to hear the Word and not to do the Word is to forget the image of God within you, to forget that the Word is within you waiting to come forth in abundant love, mercy and grace. To see the world in those eyes means we can no longer be blind or deaf to the “orphans and widows in their distress”.

As congregations of the IRSM, we need to show the world what true Christian faith is all about. Entering a building doesn’t make you a Christian. Spreading the love of Jesus to others – that’s what being a Christian is all about.

So go out into the neighbourhood and declare your faith in Jesus by showing love for your neighbour every day, not just on Sunday but everyday! Go forth into the world to LOVE and show faith in Jesus. It’s not about our butts in the pews. It’s about our feet on the street!

Amen.

Resources:

"New Collegeville Bible Commentary" edited by Daniel Durken

"The Queer Bible Commentary" edited by Mona West and Robert E Shore-Goss

"Feasting on the Word" edited by David L Bartlett and Barbara Brown Tayler

pulpitfiction.com

Bread of Life, Word of Life: A Sermon for the 14th Sunday After Pentecost

Photo by Kate Remmer on Unsplash

Grace, mercy, and peace to you in the name of the one who gathers, calls, nourishes, and restores. Amen.

 

Over the last five weeks, the Gospel reading has been from John, with four of them moving through Jesus’ “bread of life discourse” at the synagogue in Capernaum. Throughout the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, Jesus has been saying that he is the bread of life; that he provides the only food which truly nourishes; that he gives us his own self, his own flesh and blood, to sustain us on our journey; that we are actually to eat his flesh and blood in order to abide in him.

 

These are, indeed, hard words, hard to hear, hard to understand, hard to believe. Line 54 states, “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life” and, for most of us, we would read that as referring to the Eucharistic meal, that Jesus is speaking of his presence in the Holy Communion. But if that’s really the case, I don’t know how Jesus could have expected his listeners to “get it.”

 

The last supper, the event which Christians subsequently viewed as the first eucharist, the first Holy Communion, hadn’t yet occurred. The first record of a liturgical re-enactments of that event, in something resembling what we call Holy Communion, is found in First Corinthians which wasn’t written until around 55 years after Jesus’ death. So, although Jesus’ words “I am the bread of life” are familiar to many Christians, in this passage, the disciples declare this to be a “hard saying.”

 

In the 6th chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus feeds five thousand plus, and compares this windfall to the manna the Israelites had received centuries before when they wandered the wilderness. Manna was God’s way of looking after the people of Israel.  They received the blessing every day until they finally reached the land of promise. Then Jesus has a very long monologue about bread of life, which starts out nicely but ends with the command to eat his body and drink his blood.

 

It’s frightening and messy. To think that we should have life at the expense of another human being. That is tantamount to cannibalism as Jesus’ followers reason it: not kosher, unacceptable in any reasonable, moral system of thinking, and a stark breaking of the Law. They are “offended” by Jesus’ audacity. He is declaring himself to be manna, the “bread of life”. Just as manna gave life in the wilderness, so also Jesus gives life.

 

Although the crowd was initially enthusiastic about the idea of Jesus as one like Moses who could provide this miraculous bread, they reject the identification of Jesus with manna. They are rejecting him for who he is: the true bread from heaven whose death he claims will be grounds for establishing “eternal life” for them. And they begin to walk away. They begin to desert him.

 

These are people who haven’t just joined him for the day. These were not mere hangers-on and band-waggoners who walked away. Note that John calls these folks not simply "the crowds," as in earlier passages, but rather "disciples." They were real followers who had probably been around for a while. The people in today's reading who now desert Jesus are precisely those who had, in fact, believed in Jesus, those who had followed him and had given up much to do so.

 

But his words became too muddled and too offensive for most of his followers. It got hard, they got tired of waiting for everything Jesus said would happen to happen, they didn’t like what he was preaching, so they left. They gave up and went home. A chapter that started with a huge crowd, ended with only twelve still willing to stick around, and even then, one of them is destined to betray him.

 

In the original manna story, the people’s response to God’s salvation is mixed. Although they initially herald the triumph of God in the Exodus, Israel immediately begins to “grumble” or “complain” against God and Moses in the wilderness. They do not trust God to take care of them.

 

Similarly, the group following Jesus initially receives the miraculous food and heralds Jesus as a prophet. But they also begin to “grumble” against Jesus following his teaching about the manna. As in the Exodus story, the issue is not simply the grumbling of the people but the lack of trust in God that it represents: “some of you do not believe”. The faith that the disciples had put into Jesus is waning and their trust in him is fading.

 

The picture John draws for us in today's Gospel is not a pretty one, but it's probably a pretty realistic portrait of disbelief, of disciples then and now for whom the life of faith has become too hard. But the picture also includes courage and faith.

 

Jesus turned to his twelve, his closest group, and said, “well I guess you want to go, too?” Peter responds, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter’s response to Jesus is not a word of despair or a statement that they will have to settle for Jesus because there is nothing else. Peter and the others who remain have been given the gift of knowing that Jesus is the one who can give genuine life.

 

It’s not that they weren’t plagued with doubt and fear. They suffered at times from a lack of courage, and they, too, eventually deserted Jesus – and at the very time he needed them the most. The difference was that they knew where to look when things got hard. They trusted that they could look to Jesus and lean on him.

 

The words of eternal life are not always simple, cute, easy to hear. The words of eternal life remind us that life is not always plain; solutions to our problems are not straightforward. It is exactly because the words of eternal life ring true that we cannot leave.  Where would we go?  Who else will tell us the truth about life?  Who else has lived the truth about life so fully?

 

John’s gospel begins with: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  For Christians, there is something about the Word that we cannot seem to find anywhere else.  The gospel words of eternal life go straight to the soul. Each week, through the preaching of the Word, we're offered again and again the Word of eternal life. We're offered the chance to be encountered by Jesus and his living Word. Through the speaking and hearing of the Word, Jesus' real presence is made manifest in our world, and we are pointed to the one place amid all the tumult and upset of this world and life we share that we can look to and know for sure that we will find God in Christ there for us.

 

So come now to hear and receive God's life-giving word, Jesus. Come today and always to hear in Jesus the promise that you have infinite worth in God's eyes, that your life has purpose and meaning, and that through you God intends to do great things in this world. Come and receive the Word of eternal life, Jesus the Christ, that you might believe in him and have life in his name.

 

Amen.

A Review of the Book "God, Gospel, and Gender" by Margie Baker

Title: God, Gospel, and Gender: A Queer Bible Study for Teens

Author: Margie Baker

Publisher: Church Publishing

Year: 2024

186 pages

From the Back: In this bible study, Episcopal priest and teacher Margie Baker shows teens how the bible affirms and supports all of God's beloved children. Beginning with an exploration of what it means to be made in God's image and the ways that God is represented with a variety of male and female images and concluding with an examination of how love for all our siblings in central to God's relationship with humanity, the study shows a thread of inclusion that runs through the bible.

Personal Thoughts: While this book is geared towards teenagers, the information within it is certainly important for all ages to learn about. One of the biggest anti-queer arguments is that God created only two genders and that anyone who tries to live otherwise is an abomination against God. Taking the time to explore scripture and to truly understand what it means to live as created in God's image, to know that we are all wonderfully created as a child of God, could change everything about how we are living in this world.

    God, Gospel, and Gender was recommended to me and now I recommend it to you. Read it alone or as part of a group in conversation. My colleague and I plan on making this our 2025 winter book study.

    Fear of the unknown is often a lack of knowledge and understanding, so here's your chance to start building your knowledge about the queer community. And for queer youth looking for validation and acceptance in scripture, this is also the book for you. It's easy to read, easy to understand, and will encourage you to rethink some of the assumptions you may have had about scripture (or maybe reinforce what you've already been thinking!)

A Review of the Book "The Courage to be Disliked" by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

Title: The Courage to be Disliked

Author: Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Year: 2013

264 pages

From the Back: Is happiness something you choose for yourself? The Courage to be Disliked presents a simple and straightforward answer. Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of three giants of 19th-century psychology, alongside Freud and Jung, this book follows an illuminating dialogue between a philosopher and a young man. Over the course of five conversations, the philosopher helps his student to understand how each of us is able to determine the direction of our own life, free from the shackles of past traumas and the expectations of others.

Personal Thoughts: This book has been on my to-be-read pile for a long time and I finally decided it was time for me to crack it open. I was really looking forward to it as it has come with all sorts of accolades and recommendations, especially for someone like me who constantly looks for external validation instead of looking within.

    Overall, the book did not disappoint in content. I had so many aha! moments throughout and I had to take my time reading it as I was often pausing to ponder a point or consider how a topic applied to me and my life. Where I find fault in the book, however, is in it's delivery. It was written in conversational form which was distracting as it felt forced and fake. Which I get, it wasn't a real conversation. Or if it was and the book attempted to be a verbatim record of that conversation, then it must have been on awkward conversation.

    Despite that, this is a book that I will likely keep close at hand as I work through why I react to life's moments in the way that I do, and there are certainly people that come to mind I feel would benefit from reading the book. As it says on the back of the book, "Reading this book could change your life."

A Review of the Book "After the Rain" by John Bowen

Title: After the Rain

Author: John Bowen

Publisher: Ballantine Books Inc

Year: 1958

158 pages

From the Back: How would you react if you found yourself on a modern day Noah's Ark (with no foreseeable prospect of finding dry land)? What could you think of to extend the limited supply of food? Would you agree to separate sleeping quarters for male and female? Would you feel that any human life you encountered was precious to the survival of the race, or would you want to kill all others in order to give yourself a better chance? How would you survive?

Personal Thoughts: I don't know what it was about this book, but reading After the Rain brought me back to all those books we read in high school English. Just the vibe of the it I guess, I'm not positive. But regardless of why that was the feeling I got, I quite enjoyed reading this novel.

    When I first saw the cover, I was reminded of the movie The Day After Tomorrow, so that's what I was expecting to read. However, the similarity between movie and book lay only in the fact that both are disaster stories.

    After the Rain also reminded me of the book Lord of the Flies. Not that it was a bunch of boys lost on a island, but that it was a small group of people who started out working together to try and survive but in the end, hubris takes over with one person in the group trying to "rule the world."

    This was a thought-provoking book that still contains many lessons to be learned even though it was written almost 70 years ago.