August 30, 2009 Des Moines

TEXT: James 1:17-27

GIVING THE PERFECT GIFT

Ralph Nader, they said, is a baseball player, Charles Darwin invented gravity, and Christ was born in the 16th century. J. Edgar Hoover was a 19th century president, the "Great Gatsby" was a magician in the 1930's, and Sid Caesar was an early Roman emperor. Jefferson Davis was a guitar player for the rock group "Jefferson Airplane," Heinrich Himmler invented the Heimlich maneuver, and Mark Twain invented the cotton gin. Managua is the capital of Vietnam, Cape Town is in the United States, and Beirut is in Germany. Camp David is in Israel, Gdansk is in Ireland, and Socrates was an American Indian chieftain.

Not the way you learned it? It's not the way Jaime O'Neill learned it either. He's the Community College instructor who devised the "general knowledge" test that elicited those responses. He had been reflecting on a notion suggested by Josh Billings, the 19th century humorist that it is "better not to know so much than to know so many things that ain't so," and decided to take a sampling of what his students knew that "ain't so." It was a kind of experimental, academic version of "Trivial Pursuit" - with no one winning the game.

Fiction masquerading as fact. But maybe not even masquerading. Maybe just wandering around unnoticed. Ignorance, made a friend - or at least no longer an enemy. Truth, lonely; left unattended. I remember hearing stories about when television was first introduced, and perhaps the only one in town was in the store window, and crowds would gather on the sidewalk around the window to see. It was exciting and people hung on every image. Now the babbling boxes are on in three rooms of the house - while he finishes the dishes, she towels out the tub, and the kids pour over homework. They even surround us in restaurants. Noise, evaporating to nowhere; images unseen, unheard, unattended.

Like perhaps in our day with truth. Once sought after, prized, and pondered; now tinted, shaped, or neglected altogether. Truth: the word, according to James, that conceived us, formed us, and now frees us. Or at least could. If we would hear it. And that, according to James, is at least half of the problem: listening, and hearing.

Others have agreed. Mortimer Adler, once Chairman of the board of editors of Encyclopædia Britannica and director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in Chicago, wrote a book called How to Speak; How to Listen in which he expressed amazement at "the general assumption that the ability to listen well is a natural gift for which no training is required." In fact, he went on to argue, the skill of listening is "much more difficult to acquire and more difficult to teach than the parallel skill of reading." (p. 5)

Truth is difficult to hear because we don't know well how to listen. No wonder, then, that James, in a voice that will no doubt be heard in every classroom in the world these next few weeks, advises us to practice. Be still, he urges, be quiet, and listen. "Be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger." Stop talking, rest your tongue, and listen. Listen, for the word is planted within you. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Listen for me, and be quick to hear.

But as important and essential as that discipline may be, James, of all people, had learned that listening, by itself, wasn't enough. He had come by this insight - this morsel of truth - the hard way, and it must have made an impression. You remember that Jesus, at least in the early years of his ministry, had been an embarrassment to his family. They were, to say the least, late to join the parade. He said a lot of strange and peculiar things; attracted an unsavory crowd - they were concerned that he was ill - or crazy - or worse. On more than one occasion they tried to get him to stop. He was making a fool of himself, and the family name was at stake.

And so one day they went to get him - to take him home, to get him some help - at least to get him quiet. And seeing their approach and hearing their call, Jesus looked at those around him and mouthed the words that must have haunted James until he died: "here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother." (Mark 3:31-35)

It was not an isolated word. Didn't he also teach that the one who hears his words and does them was like a man who builds his house on the rock? And wasn't it the sheep - the ones who had fed and clothed and visited the least among them, who were welcomed into the riches of heaven? The words were hard for the people who heard them, but burdensome for the mother and brothers who carried them home.

We are never told how the encounter was ended that day, or where the family went from there, or what they must have thought. But we do know that not too many years later "this embarrassed brother" James became leader of the church in Jerusalem, and according to the tradition of the church, later penned this most practical of books which implores us not to merely "hear the word of truth, but to do it, as well. Because" you can almost hear the echo, "whoever DOES the will of God is God's family."

And hasn't he touched, in that simple admonition, the very nerve of our temptation: to imprison the word of truth in the ether of ideas, while never allowing it to roam freely the arena of human activity? Isn't it true that most efforts at ministry seldom die of exhaustion, but rather suffocation? We think about it, study it, form a committee to research it, and then refer it to the board for further study, and go home feeling like we've really done something.

And isn't it the temptation, once the benediction on Sunday is pronounced, to go home feeling like we've completed something, rather than that we've really just begun? That, really, is the essence of the guidance that Screwtape, the master demon in C.S. Lewis' classic The Screwtape Letters, offers to the novice tempter named Wormwood when the person to whom Wormwood is assigned becomes a Christian: "Keep his mind on the inner life," advises Screwtape. "He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind... Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office." (p. 16)

In other words, keep him thinking about it, so that he never gets around to DOING anything about it. Don't let him hear what James would say to us: that Truth without action - love without legs - may as well not be truth at all.

James does not begrudge philosophy or a fascination with theology; he would be, I think, ecstatic with any surge of interest in Bible study and reflection; he would encourage us to grow and to study and learn and to reflect. But finally he would ask the question that may well be one of the most important ones in life: “so what?” What difference will it all make? "Study and discuss and worship and debate," he would say, "for that is where the truth will be heard. But let it move you into something concrete. A bucket of water drawn but set aside does no one any good, and eventually evaporates or grows foul. Likewise a mind and a soul filled, but silent. There is earth that needs irrigating; thirst that needs quenching, and the dirty that need cleansing. Pour it out. Be doers of the word, not hearers only. Pour it out and let it nourish, not obscure, the 'simple art of daily living as a Christian.' Listen for the word, and then act on it, for truth not lived is truth not learned."

And there we may well have heard one of those perfect gifts that James mentioned at the beginning of our reading: the truth of God, learned and lived. It is a gift for which this world is hungry. The truth of God sought, heard, learned, and lived. Listen as you move through the paths of this week and seek the voice of God; be quick to hear, slow to speak, and learn - be filled. Then, receiving that good and perfect gift yourself, feeling the parched ground and hearing the thirsty cries, pour it out - that truth might be made real in you.