September 9 - Snippet from Sunday - Don't Be Deceived!

A lot of our Christian faith looks toward the future. Each Sunday I step behind this pulpit and remind you again of the good things God has promised for our world. I say over and over that God has promised to make everything right, to make blessings of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount a reality: The poor will really be blessed with God’s kingdom, and those who weep and mourn will really find comfort. Those people starving for justice will be satisfied when God finally brings justice. Like the prophets Isaiah and Micah foretell, God will bring justice to the nations, and then they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore (Is 2.4; Mic 4.3). A day is coming when drought and famine, trade embargoes and warlords will no long leave millions to starve to death. A day is coming when disease will no longer wrack our bodies, when loneliness and grief will no longer bring tears to our eyes.

But all of this is still to come. Christ has died; Christ is risen--Amen! But we are still waiting for Christ to come again. God has promised us much; God has given us a downpayment in Jesus’ resurrection, but we’re still waiting for God to make good on the rest. In the meantime, we’re very much aware that everything is not right. The poor stay poor, the mourning continue to mourn, justice is still denied those dying for lack of it. We pass children even in our own community who know hunger. News broadcasts from Syria remind us of that war is still a reality tearing people’s lives and communities to pieces.

I’ve heard people say that Jesus’ followers are so future-oriented that we turn a blind eye to the hard reality of the world around us. We’re so focused on “pie in the sky in the sweet by and by” that we lose touch with the here and now.

I wonder if the original Jewish home churches who received James’ letter two thousand years ago entertained that same thought about James. Last Sunday we the shocking words that open James’ letter; v 2 says, Consider it pure joy . . . whenever you face trials of many kinds. I can picture a few members of those home churches that received this letter raising their eyebrows at these words. These original believers were the descendants of Jewish refugees and exiles. They were quite familiar with trials. I can almost hear one of them muttering, “It’s well and good for James to say that people should consider trials to be pure joy while he’s safe and secure in the big church in our Jewish homeland, but he’s a little out of touch with life for us here in the belly of the Roman Empire.” Maybe we think something similar: “Pie in the sky and promises that God will one day make things right are fine between 10:45 and noon on Sunday morning, but for the rest of the work week, those promises feel a little out of touch.”

I think the Spirit anticipated this skeptical reaction from people who read James’ letter. So in vv 9, 10, and 11, the Spirit led James to tackle head on probably the most concrete reality facing the original believers or us today: money.

 

(Check out the whole sermon after the jump. . .)