Sermon - Shaped for Love

James 1:17-27

Shaped for Love

September 2, 2012                                                                                           James Sledge

Five year old Tommy walks in to the kitchen from the family room carrying an empty bowl.  “Mom,” he says, “can I have some more ice cream?” “No,” she says.  “You’ve already had two bowls and it’s nearly bedtime.”  “But please,” he whines. “I’m still hungry.”  But she stands her ground and Tommy stomps off back to the family room and the television.

Before long his mother comes into the room and says, “Okay big fella, it’s time to get ready for bed.”  Tommy of course objects.  “Do I have to?  I’m not tired.”  His mother is gentle but firm.  “Yes, you do have to.  It’s a school night, and you can stop the video and finish watching it tomorrow.” 

Tommy continues to whine and complain as he is led off to brush his teeth and put on pajamas.  “When I grow up I’m gonna stay up as late as I want, and I’m gonna eat all the ice cream I want.  Nobody’s gonna tell me what to do.”  His mother just smiles and says, “Well when you grow up you can do that.”

I suspect that at some point in their lives, all children are convinced that their parent’s chief purpose in life is to keep them from doing the things they enjoy.  Parents burden their lives with arbitrary rules which serve little purpose beyond making them miserable.  And they long for the day when they will make their own rules.

Of course most children grow up and decide not to stay up all night eating nothing but ice cream.  And when they have children of their own, they burden those children with bedtimes, deserts contingent on eating their vegetables, and so on.  As many people have noted, your parents seem to get a lot smarter as you get older.

There must be something in our human nature that makes us chafe when rules are imposed on us.  We seem to assume that they are unnecessary constraints on us.  And while most of us grow up and gain a certain appreciation of our parents’ rules, this view of rules as burdens remains with us.  Drivers don’t like speed limits.  Corporations fuss about environmental laws, and people howl and threaten to sue anytime anyone infringes on their rights or tries to tell them what to do.

Most of us have learned to appreciate many of our parents’ rules, and cognitively we understand the need for speed limits, for not allowing everyone just to do whatever he or she pleases.  But still we chafe at the idea that another can restrict our freedom in any way.  And this aversion to rules extends to those that come from God.  People think of religious rules as things that restrict our freedoms, that keep us from doing things that would be fun, that interfere with us enjoying our lives.  That’s probably why Mark Twain once said, “Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”

Our Scripture reading this morning is a bit heavy on the rules side.  Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger…rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness… be doers of the word and not merely hearers… If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues…their religion is worthless… care for the orphans and widows… keep oneself unstained by the world.  And much of the epistle of James is like this, insisting that we keep the commandments and famously saying, Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Martin Luther, the 16^th century monk and scholar who began the Protestant Reformation, argued for the removal of the book of James from the Bible.  Its focus on rules, commandments, and works violated his understanding of the gospel, of salvation by grace through faith.  One could not earn salvation, but received it as a gracious gift through Jesus. 

Fortunately, Luther did not succeed in removing James.  Other Reformation leaders recognized that the rules and works in James were not in conflict with a gospel of grace.  Just as little Tommy’s mother loved him without condition, regardless of whether he liked or even kept her rules, so God loves us.  Rules and works don’t get God to love us.  Rather they seek to lovingly shape and form us into children of God, into people made by and for love.

Most adults have come to understand their parents’ rules a bit like this.  The rules were for us, to keep us safe, to help us learn to be successful adults.  But most adults learn to appreciate their parents’ rules when they grow up and become, in a way, equals with their parents.  But that perspective is never really available to us in our relationship with God.  We never gain equal footing with God, though like petulant children we often claim it.  We remain children before God, and so it takes faith to trust that God knows better than we do, knows what is best for us. 

Of course we do have a brother in Jesus who does trust that life in its fullest and truest doesn’t come from doing what we want but from doing God’s will.  And he insists that we can experience this for ourselves only by letting go of our lives and giving them over to God.

God loves you.  God longs for you, and in Christ is even willing to die for you.  God claims you as a beloved child in the waters of baptism whether or not you’ve followed God’s rules and commandments. 

And I think that the more we experience God’s love and embrace, the more we come to know Jesus, the more we can begin to trust that God knows and wants what is best for us.  And such faith changes us.  It empowers us to follow Jesus, to be shaped and formed as beloved children of God, to be shaped and formed for lives of love.

Thanks be to God!