Sermon Preached at Stouffville United Church
Rev. Capt. John Niles
Music by Daniel Mehdizadeh and Choir
Scripture:
James 1 : 12-18
Sermon Series on Book of James
I mentioned last week the work of Stephen Spender who wrote “The Truly Great”.
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song…
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit…
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
Spender was attempting to pay tribute to all those everyday people who served and sacrificed their lives in order to make a difference in the world; who knew that they had been created by God and would return to God; but before doing so, they tried to focus their lives beyond the temporal or temptations of the day -that were like noise and fog that can often, if we let them – smother the flowering of the spirit.
Life is filled with both trials and temptations.
Temptations are a trap to reject; and trials are a truth to navigate. Have you ever noticed that free cheese is always available in mouse traps? The temptation to take the easy road is always there. It is as easy as staying in bed in the morning and sleeping in. But the discipline of meeting the daily trials refines and defines a person.
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I, I took the road less traveled by
And that made all the difference
James is encouraging us all to persevere through the trials and temptations.
I
To persevere through trials and temptations, we must first recognize its source. 12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. 13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…”
James, is addressing a normal question that often comes up when times of tragedies or trials happen and that is, “Is God punishing me? Is this terrible thing coming from God?” And James response is that God does not tempt, nor is God the author of evil. Yet, that does not mean there are not going to be trials and temptations.
The word Tempted (1:13) is the same Greek word that is translated trial (1:2, 12), but clearly it has two different senses. God tests or tries believers’ faith, but He does not tempt anyone into sin. God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac (Gen. 22:1-19). God tested Job by allowing Satan to afflict him with all of his trials (Job 1:8-12; 2:3-6). He tests both the righteous and the unrighteous, to reveal their respective characters (Ps. 11:4-7; see also, Exod. 16:4). With His people, the purpose of God’s tests is to refine our faith like gold or silver (Ps. 66:10-12; 1 Pet. 1:6-7; 4:12-14).
Robert Adams found $17,000 in cash in a bank bag beside an ATM in Chicago. At first, he thought it was prank/joke. But no TV crews popped out of the bush or from around a corner to catch him. The bag had Chase on the side, so he took it to the bank, but they said it wasn’t theirs. It had to belong to the company that filled the ATMs. He found from the teller who that was and it took some work to figure out exactly what had happened and to what building he had to go. As it turned out one of the armored truck employees accidentally dropped the bag. Upon returning it, he was asked about being tempted by the money, he said simply, “It’s not my money. I don’t care if you put another zero on there, I wasn’t raised to take money that isn’t mine.” Robert Adams didn’t suddenly wake up one day and choose to have integrity. He said it himself: he wasn’t raised that way. One’s own values, principles, and priorities, help us make decisions that are consistent with them. James was reminding us all of the Source of those values.
II
To persevere through Trials and temptations, you must first recognize its source, and also its force. “Blessed are those that persevere…for they will receive the crown of life from the Father of lights in heaven. Which is similar to the beatitude that says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”
A man was on a diet and struggling. He had to go downtown and as he started out, he remembered that his route would take him by the doughnut shop. As he got closer, he thought that a cup of coffee would hit the spot. Then he remembered his diet. That’s when he prayed, “Lord, if You want me to stop for a doughnut and coffee, let there be a parking place in front of the shop.” He said, “Sure enough, I found a parking place right in front—on my seventh time around the block!”
Have you notice that there is always free cheese on mouse traps? Now, you would say I won’t eat that and I’m not a mouse. No, but you do go to Costco! And soon after going to the Costco there is someone there with a tray of Cheese for you to eat – it’s a trap! It may be cheese or chocolate or some other specialty food, but that trip to pick up a couple things totaling $50.00 results in you leaving having paid $500.00. It’s a trap. Temptations are a trap to reject; and trials are a truth to navigate. Have you ever noticed that free cheese is always available in mouse traps?
Leslie Weatherhead wrote a letter to his son and in it he described his own struggle with doubts – and he was a great preacher. “I pray”, he said, “I pray that God would give me more wisdom, more wisdom. And then I realized that I should stop asking for more wisdom and start doing up to the point of knowing. I’m not even doing that which I already know.”
Isn’t that just the way? To be of pure heart involves being true to what you know and accept. Those things that you are unsure of should never stand in the way of what you are sure of. However, if we are not willing to act on what we know, it really doesn’t matter at all what we don’t.
Billy Graham said: “Many people argue, “I do believe in God. Isn’t that enough? No! You must act on that belief by receiving Christ and then living accordingly. I may go to the airport. I have a reservation. I have a ticket in my pocket. The plane is one the ramp. It is a big, powerful plane. I am certain that it will take me to my destination. They call the flight three times. Yet, for some reason, I neglect to get on board. They close the door. The plane taxis down the runway and takes off. I am not on the plane. Why? I “believed” in the plane, but I neglected to get on board.
James was saying, you know that God is with you in Christ, you know that temptations do not come from God, and that God is the force for good not for evil.
James was saying, you know that God is with you in Christ, you know that temptations do not come from God, and that God is the force for good not for evil. But there is also another force that comes into play that force being for internal and external to our own human nature that comes into play that tests and tempts us to diminish ourselves.
III
To persevere through trials and temptations, you must recognize its source, its force and also, its course. 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. 16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. 17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created. Look at any great writer, artist, composer, and performers. What they do is the expression of what they are. They give it their distinctiveness. They are defined, and refined by it. Flannery O’Connor a novelist from Georgia speaks of what she does when she writes her novels and short stories as “the habit of art”. But her friend Sally Fitzgerald speaks of O’Connor’s work as not so much the “habit of art”, but “the habit of being.” By this she meant that Flannery O’Connor lived day by day in accordance with her formative beliefs; in a manner consistent with the basic truths she accepted and the principles she embraced. For O’Connor, that was being a Christian. She lived her Christian faith. She tells us that she did not have to discover a new set of values every day, for her values were given to her by her faith. “Her stories sometimes chilled us with the reality and depravity of evil, while at the same time, we are left a prisoner of hope, grasped by the optimism of grace.”
The “habit of being”, is why we are the way we are? It is because of our habit of being. It is because of all the little decisions we made. Do you know what determines the big things in our lives? It is all the little choices we make along the way. This caused William James to say, “everything counts.”
“Every drop of water
every grain of sand
makes a mighty ocean
and a pleasant land.”
Everything counts, for somewhere in the recesses of our spirit, it has registered influencing us at levels of which we are not even aware, and after being repeated enough, it makes us what we are.
We have all heard of “road rage” and now there is “air rage” where people are being put in prison for violence while on the airplane. Eric Zorn wrote in the Chicago Tribune of a tragic accident that occurred because of a lack of self-control. According to the article, a man and woman were driving a van in the far left lane of Chicago’s Northwest Toll way. In the back were their two children. A white Cadillac pulled up behind them, tailgating them. The man driving the van slowed down. The Cadillac driver pulled into the right lane, passed the van, and then swerved suddenly back in front of the van. The van had to swerve to avoid a collision. The white Cadillac sped away. That could have been the end of it. But the van driver gave chase. He eventually pulled alongside the white Cadillac and began yelling and screaming.
According to a witness, the two men gestured angrily at each other. The driver of the Cadillac pulled a gun and fired. The bullet entered the side of the van and hit the little girl in the head. The girl lived, but she was blind and partially deaf, and has severe disabilities as a result. The man who fired the bullet is in jail. The parents of the girl must live with the terrible regret. Have you noticed that sometimes things just go from “bad to worse”? It is almost as if you get got in the rapids and are pulled tragically down.
A few years ago a Toronto lawyer was convicted of conspiring to possess counterfeit United States Money. It all started when he began to gamble to pay off his mounting debts. Soon it became compulsive and he would sit with two radios and two television sets going at the same time to keep track of the sporting events on which he had wagered. Then he found himself in the hands of loan sharks who made threats on his life as well as on the lives of his wife and children. His last desperate attempt to pay them off was to turn to counterfeit money–only to be caught, to be fined, jailed and lose his license to practice law. Here was a man trapped in a flow, a flow of troubles, each one leading to something worse.
Sow a thought, reap an act
Sow an act, reap a habit
Sow a habit, reap a character,
Sow a character, reap a destiny.
It cuts both ways; we can let the troubles flow or the blessings.
In Imaginary Homelands, the author Salman Rushdie writes of one of the family traditions of his home: “In our house, whenever anyone dropped a book, it was required to be not only picked up but also kissed, by way of apology for the act of clumsy disrespect. I was as careless and butterfingered as any child, and accordingly I kissed a large number of books. Devout households in India still contain persons in the habit of kissing holy books. But we kissed everything. We kissed dictionaries, and atlases. We kissed novels and Superman comics. If I’d ever dropped the telephone directory, I’d probably have kissed that too.”
Is it any surprise that Salman Rushdie grew up to become an author? What we honor defines us. Too many people honour the wrong thing. Today the seven deaden sins have become the seven delightful virtues. Our movies and soap opera espouse them and being harmless.
The movies tell us, “Don’t get made–get even.”
The commercials tell us, “Come to my restaurant it’s “all you can eat”
The soap-operas tell us, “Lust is love and lives aren’t destroyed by it”
But it is all a lie. For if you try to get even, I can tell you, you will go into whole and end up in jail. If you eat all you can, you’ll eventually be unable to stand. And if you think that lust is love, then don’t ever expect someone to love you–they will only want to use you. You see, there are consequence–the chickens do come home to roost, and we do reap what we sow. And the consequence of a life out of control is a broken marriage, addiction to alcohol and drugs, child abandonment and abuse, violence and death. We see it every day on the news.
During the first 20 years as an Ordained minister I had had the opportunity to travel for 15 of those years to spend time in a monastery and I would always ask the monks, “Tell me again why you are here. Why are you willing to spend your life in a monastery?” The answer I would get, over and over, is this: “I am here to deepen my union with God; to will one thing.” “To be contemplative”, they would say, “is to pay attention. It is to show up and pay attention.” It is to give our undivided attention. That is to will one thing.
Have you ever tried to give your undivided attention to something or someone? You may think that you are now; but how many of you have spent some time counting the lights in the ceiling, or checking your grocery list in your mind or thought of where or what you were going to have for lunch after the service; since I began? Raise your hands. Now, how many of you were tempted to lie? To will one thing, like paying attention, is not easy.
It was afternoon and the sun was shining. By the back door there was a blossoming butterfly bush. There was a lovely butterfly resting on a blossom about four feet off the ground. Standing there by the bush were six little 4 year-old children from the day care center that was in the church, each of them ecstatic as they pointed to the butterfly. Their eyes were glued to the butterfly. And they were chattering away with delight. “See the butterfly, see the butterfly!”
Before jumping into my car and rushing off to my next appointment I caught sight of their eyes as they were glued to the butterfly. And I thought: a contemplative moment. The children were giving their undivided attention. They were totally focused on the butterfly, and a sense of wonder was all over their faces. Someone said that children are natural contemplatives. They are filled with wonder and concentration. As that old beloved hymn “Love Divine all love excelling” said,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Lost in wonder love and praise
C K Chesterton said, “Art and Morality has this in common, they both know where to draw a line.” You think about that. Amen