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“Hearers and Doers,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 8/30/15

“Hearers and Doers”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, CO

by the Rev. Melissa St. Clair

August 30, 2015

 Let us not only be hearers of the word, but doers also.

Growing up in the church, I loved to be the lector on Sunday mornings. That’s what we called the person who would lug the big Bible up to the lectern and read the day’s scripture passages. Lectors were given instructions on how to introduce the text – giving the page number in the pew Bible and all of that – and how to end the reading. There were a couple options to choose from, but my favorite was this one: Let us not only be hearers of the word, but doers also.

At the time, I didn’t realize that that phrase was from the letter James, from which we read this morning.

READ JAMES 1:17-27

Believe it or not, not all books of the Bible are treated equally in seminary. I have about half a page of notes on the letter attributed to James, which consist primarily my Protestant Reformer Martin Luther’s commentary on the letter that he found less than worthwhile. An epistle of straw, he called it. In fact, he thought so little of this five-chapter book that he made an attempt to remove James (along with Hebrew, Jude, and Revelation) from the canon of scripture. No one really bought into this, not even the people who liked Luther, although if you’re using a German Luther Bible even today, you’ll discover that these books are all relegated to the very end.[1]

So what was Luther’s beef with this letter traditionally attributed to Jesus’ brother James, written for the early Christian communities scattered outside of Palestine?

He didn’t think it contained much if any gospel truth, and he was worried that it had the potential to divert people’s focus from an emphasis on grace and faith to one centered on works.

That we might get caught up in trying to work our way to salvation instead of relying on grace and faith.

I’m not half or even an eighth of the theologian Martin Luther was, but I can’t help but think that all three, faith and grace and works, play a role in our lives as Christians. Because we have faith, we do the work it takes to live it out. As we do that work, imperfectly, no doubt, we rely on the grace of God to meet us where we’re at and move us beyond where God found us. And isn’t it the grace of God upon which our faith is built? Isn’t our experience of and trust in grace where we find our courage to do the hard work to begin with?

Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher and theologian, spent his career writing to a Denmark filled with Christian people who weren’t acting so very Christ-like. He told them this parable. It’s one you may have heard before:

Once upon a time, there was a land inhabited only by ducks. Every Sunday morning, the ducks got up, washed their faces, put on their Sunday clothes, and waddled off to church. They waddled through the door of their duck church, proceeded down the aisle, and took their familiar places in the pews. The duck minister entered the pulpit and opened the duck Bible to the place where it talked about God’s greatest gift to ducks—wings. “With wings we can fly. With wings we can soar like eagles. With wings we can escape the confines of pens and cages. With wings we can become free. With wings we can become all God meant us to be. So give thanks to God for your wings. And fly!” All the ducks loudly quacked, “Amen.” And then all of the ducks waddled back home.

God has given us what we need. How will we use it to be the church God wants us to be?

Last night I had the privilege of officiating a wedding for Corinne Adams’ grandson David and his bride, Ali. One of my favorite parts of crafting these ceremonies is reminding couples that love isn’t easy. That love that leads to fulfillment in marriage is: Love that embraces sharing small, everyday blessings and overcoming small, everyday challenges that can help strengthen the bond of marriage. Love that puts down roots evermore deeply into the soil of a truly common life. Love that rejects the notion that’ll you’ll live happily ever after. Love that, instead, compels you cherish each moment – whether it’s the ones that are heavy with sadness and sorrow or, more often, the ones glowing with joy and contentment.[2]

Love like that – whether it’s in the covenant of marriage or in the community of faith or the civility of neighbors takes work. It requires that we are quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to anger.

And isn’t there some comfort, even in that challenge? In world where gun violence and natural disasters and all the –isms and the next political controversy are the dominant narrative, it seems like we vacillate between the exhaustion of always doing just one more thing because there are at least a hundred more to do and the paralysis of not knowing what to do, of feeling helpless because, dear God, what could we even do next that would make a difference?

The struggle, as they say, is real.

And the mandate is pretty clear. I like Eugene’s Peterson’s interpretation in The Message here:

 Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

 Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear!

That’s pretty real. It isn’t a heady faith. It’s a hands-on faith.

Now, in spirit of being real, I need to be real with you for a moment. I really struggled with the sermon this week. (Maybe that’s already obvious at this point.) I felt like it had to really knock it out of the park on a day so important in the life of our congregation. It wasn’t until I was replaying the words of our regional moderator, Diane Ashton, in my mind in the wee hours of this morning that I realized that today really isn’t about any words that I might say. (Thanks, God.)

Today, as a congregation, as meet after worship, we have the opportunity to make a decision that is rooted in faith and grace and puts us squarely in the realm of “doers of the word.”

Diane put it this way to the Central Rocky Mountain Regional Board. Side note: The Region purchased this land for our congregation two decades ago and still holds the deed to it. As such, we needed them to say YES to partnering with us as we take our next steps in moving forward with allowing community partners to build on this land.

Back to Diane. As someone who spent her professional life in public health and her life of faith in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Diane shared her vision of church with the Board after our presentation yesterday. And it turns out that for someone who has seen first hand the importance of care for vulnerable children and families, doing church this way, well, in Diane’s words:

“This is heaven for me. This is the church I want to be.”

I’ll second that.

[1] Wikipedia, Luther’s Canon.

[2] This part of the ceremony is inspired by a study on 1 Corinthians 13 by Robert B. Kruschwitz, © 2006 The Center for Christian Ethics.