Proverbs 4; James 3:13-18
James Sledge June
21, 2015
Some
of you may be familiar with H. L. Mencken’s take on the Puritans. He wrote, “Puritanism:
The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” And just in case you
didn’t know it, Presbyterians are close theological relatives of Puritans.
Presbyterian was the name chosen by the Reformed Church in Scotland, while the
Reformed Christians in England were called Puritans.
People
of faith are known for a few “Thou shalt nots,” and I suspect most people
recognize the need for some of these. When we had the Deacons’ picnic a couple
of weeks ago, a group of us was talking about how the church was a great
location for the event except for the closeness to Broad Street. About that
time a soccer ball got loose and rolled into the street, a child close behind.
Immediately shouts of “Stop! Don’t go after it! Don’t go in the road!” came
from all over. A few, well-placed “thou shalt nots” are sometimes necessary.
Parents
usually know something about shalt nots and other prohibitions. Children may
disagree, but most parents don’t see their primary purpose as ensuring children
experience a healthy dose of unhappiness. “Yes, ice cream tastes great, but no,
you cannot eat it for breakfast, lunch, and supper. Yes, it would be wonderful
to be able to fly like Superman, but no, you may not tie a cape around your
neck and jump off the roof.”
Certain
prohibitions and shalt nots are essential to create some safe boundaries within
which a child can go about the business of figuring out how to be a reasonably
healthy, well-adjusted, contributing member of human society. But the rules are
not goals in and of themselves. They are simply a framework to help along the
way.
In
the weeks following Pentecost, we have been talking each Sunday about how the
Spirit equips us for life as followers of Jesus. The last two weeks we’ve
spoken of loving God and of loving neighbor. Many are familiar with the words
Jesus spoke about what is most important for walking in the way of God, how we
should love God with heart, mind and soul, and how we should love our neighbor
as ourselves. But what, exactly, does it mean to love others as we love
ourselves? Do we even know what it means to love ourselves?
Very
often, self love is understood as catering to my preferences, giving me what I
want. But as any parent can tell you, indulging wants and desires is far from a
foolproof guide to happiness. Eating ice cream all day long or jumping off the
roof turns out to have some real negative consequences. Parents who allow their
children to do such things might rightly be regarded as not loving those
children at all. Children, it seems, can have faulty ideas about loving
themselves, as can I.
How
many of you do things you wish you hadn’t, that you regret even as you do them,
that cause hurt to you or others in ways you never set out to do? Or have you
ever done something that you thought you really wanted to do, that you expected
to bring you great pleasure or joy, only to discover you felt terrible afterward?
I’ve
won arguments I wish I’d never had, triumphed in games or competitions that
should have simply been “for fun,” bought something I really, really wanted that
I almost never used, managed to get my way and then spent most of the time
wishing I’d done what others had wanted to do. And I’ve had lots of close calls
where I narrowly avoided these and worse.
Our
culture spends a great deal of time telling us that the key to happiness and
contentment, to filling that hole most all of us occasionally experience deep
in our souls, is to indulge wants, desires, and fantasies. Never mind the cost.
The car dealership is happy to finance a car you can’t afford. Advertisers
constantly tell you that your life will be better if your TV is larger and has
a sharper picture. And you can put it on your credit card.
I
saw an article in the Washington Post the other day that said AshleyMadison.com,
whose motto is “Life is short. Have an affair,” now boasts 36 million members
in 46 countries, had $115 million in sales last year, and plans an IPO soon to
raise money for expansion. I wonder how many of those users discovered that
having an affair did not deliver quite what they had hoped it would, that
indulging their fantasies wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Some
of God’s shalt nots are like a parent’s “Don’t run into the road,” designed to
give us safe boundaries to figure out how to be healthy, well-adjusted,
contributing members of God’s commonwealth. But they are not ends in and of
themselves. They are a framework to help us along the way, until we are mature
enough to operate without them.
James
speaks of what this maturity looks like in the letter we heard from earlier.
This spiritual maturity, what James calls spiritual wisdom, is peaceable,
gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or
hypocrisy. It is what the Apostle Paul means by being “in Christ,” or what
John’s gospel means by being born from above. It is what it means to become
Christ-like, and it is a primary goal of faith.
Unfortunately,
the religions that grow up around faith have a tendency to get stuck in
juvenile stages of spiritual development. Rules are a lot easier to manage and
codify than wisdom , maturity, and love. The Puritanism H.L. Mencken parodied,
the sort of faith practice that gives religion a bad name, too often mistakes
the shalt nots and other framework meant to provide safe boundaries for growing
into Christ, for the central purpose of faith. Such childish religion naturally
puts off those seeking something deeper and more meaningful. And such childish
religion often features very middle school-like lines marking who is in and out.
This
isn’t just a problem for conservative or fundamentalist forms of faith though.
Liberal and progressive Christians can have their own forms of juvenile
rigidity that stifles the development of maturity and wisdom, that makes
something other than Christ-like love the center of faith practice. It may be
political rigidity, a certainty about liturgical style, appropriate hymns, or
musical genre. It may even be the elevation of liberalism, progressivism, or
some other –ism above learning to walk with Christ.
The
letter of James gives us a measuring stick to see if we are moving toward
maturity, spiritual wisdom , and love, or if we are stuck in childish ways. But
the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to
yield, full of mercy and good fruits,
without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is
sown in peace for those who make peace.
Getting
to this point means letting God shape and form us, as we embrace the way of
Jesus and as we trust the work of the Spirit in us over our own abilities. It
is a process, a journey, a road made by walking. It is growing from children
into the full and abundant adulthood God wishes for each of us. Of this
journey, Brian McLaren writes,
After all,
nobody is more likely to ruin your life than you. By pursuing wisdom, you get
out of your own way. You learn to be a friend to yourself instead of your own
worst enemy. You learn self-examination, self-control, self-development, and
self-care— so you can better practice true self-giving toward God and others.
Rules are good, wisdom is better, and love is best of all.
Could this be a central purpose
of the universe— to provide an environment in which self-control, wisdom, and
love can emerge and evolve? Could this be a central purpose in our lives— to
mature in self-control, wisdom, and love? And could this be a central purpose
of religion and spirituality— to multiply contagious examples of maturity, to
create communities where the more mature can mentor others, to build a global
Spirit movement toward individual and collective maturity?[1]
Love
of God, love of neighbor, and love of self – Jesus says that correctly
understood and lived out, this embodies all the law and the prophets, the
entire essence of life as a child of God. And so, with Christ’s guidance and
the help of the Spirit, let us walk together on the road that leads to life in
all its fullness, helping one another as we journey along the way.
[1] McLaren,
Brian D. (2014-06-10). We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for
Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (p. 224). FaithWords. Kindle
Edition.
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