Let us pray:
Lord, take your word and apply it to our minds that we might not grow shallow, and apply it to our hearts that we might not grow cold and apply it to our feet that we might not just be hearers of the the word but doers also.
In the name of God, father, son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Good evening/morning!
That prayer was a part of my life every Sunday for a while when I was in training for ministry. Before falling in love with the Prayer Book and walking the Canterbury Trail in seminary, and therefore well before settling into a cozy Anglican spirituality, Beka and I attended a nondenominational megachurch with great music and better preaching. We really went there because my classmate, friend, and fellow back row trouble-maker, Isaac Hunter, was the pastor there. Imagine my surprise that my fellow class clown and idiot from Church History II was the pastor of well over 2000 people! We would sit in rapt attention during his preaching. He could easily go as long as 40 minutes every Sunday but we never noticed because his self-deprecation was so disarming, his stories funny and sincere, and his teaching subtle and engaging. But it was the way he motivated the congregation to action, inside the church and out in the world, that would greatly influence my sense of Christian vocation.
Therefore, his opening prayer always got my attention when he came up to give one of those great sermons because it magnified and illuminated a scripture that had become deeply entrenched in my imagination. We heard it today in our lesson from St. James’s letter:
But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.
St. James and Pastor Isaac were, in their ways, answering a question that has stirred the conscience of many a Saint of the Church, well-known or otherwise. The question has to do with what our lives look like when going to church on Sundays is a given and smaller acts of weekly devotion are understood, the question that all new or committed Christians must ask themselves when they examine how Christ has changed their lives. The great and profound query: “Well, what now?”
In my own self-examination for vocation, I looked at the ways that being a disciple of Jesus had changed my life: Sunday mornings had a different rhythm for sure, and they certainly were far less punctuated with the penitential headaches that hung around after Saturday night’s activities. I had become strangely concerned with how people lived and were treated by others, and weirdly enough I wanted to give people things that were mine and not theirs. But the question gnawed at me still. ”What now?” I would ask God and my mentors. I felt, like St. James wrote, that I was forgetting who I was when I walked away from the mirror; as if I was leaving the full work of my ministry somehow incomplete.
Have you ever felt that way? It’s an odd feeling. It isn’t the crisis of questioning the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, which can be a healthy part of growing closer to God. It isn’t the crisis of being angry at God for asking too much, which can be healthy too (just look at the Psalter). But it is, in its way, a crisis of how to take the direction of our life, how to live into the call of Christ’s Kingdom, how to live as a subject of Christ the Lord. Again, it is a crisis of our sense of vocation.
St. James was telling his recipient community how they could live out their vocation, and encouraging them to live according to the perfect law of Christ. As a side note for the curious or especially interested, I encourage you to look to the similarities between St. James’s letter and the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew Chapters 5 through 7. This encouragement towards saintly activity, founded in a relationship with Christ, is why James remains my favorite book in the New Testament. It’s about acting in accordance with the new law of grace in our hearts, our heart which leaps like John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb when we recognize the mark of Our Lord, Jesus. It is a call to action that impels us as believers to act out the love of God, to remove obstacles between us, to be bearers of the ministry of reconciliation entrusted to us.
To mix images between Saints Paul and James, it is about removing the darkness of the mirror we see ourselves in, so that when we examine the reflection, we can see the image of God more perfectly, so that we remember that image in the mirror when we go to help build God’s kingdom.
Today is Rally Sunday, where we will sign up our young people for a constellation of opportunities and programs for Christian Formation. As a parish family, Rally Sunday is a chance for us to live into our vocation, to look into the mirror together and not forget what we look like as James warns. I think we can say with confidence that our work together is certainly to magnify the living lord in thanksgiving on Sunday mornings. We also take very seriously Christ’s call to the apostles to make disciples and to baptize. This is a place, a people, that deeply desires that Christians, especially the young among us, ask, “Well, what now?” so that the work of the Gospel, the Word of life itself can be applied to minds to stave of shallowness, applied to our hearts to prevent the chill of indifference, and applied to our feet to avoid hypocrisy or complacency.
Thus, as we approach this year of discipleship, I hope we can all approach the sanctuary with a renewed sense of purpose, or at least the desire for one. When we meet the font of blessing, present in the Sacrament, let us give thanks for the vocation of this parish and all that live in it. Let us give thanks for the work we’ve been given to do, remembering who we are in our call together, praying for one another as we tend to our common task in ministry.
Amen.
Sermon preached by the Rev. David S. Bumsted
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
14th Sunday after Pentecost
30 August 2015