Jesus is the Blaze that Did Not Burn Up the Bush Before Moses in the Desert

The lectionary epistle for this coming Sunday is James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17.

Along the way and over the years, there have been certain game-changing moments that have forever altered how I've understood and performed my ministry. For example, there was the time when I decided to preach off the cuff, without notes. Just shoot from the hip. And I got animated and agitated and argumentative as I'm want to do. And what shot out of my hip and into my congregation's ear balls was a certain four-letter word.

Let's just say the word was not Yahweh. Nor was it, as the bishop made clear to me, holy. In order to tame my tongue, I've preached from a manuscript ever since. Along the way, there have been moments.

For example:

There was the holy Thursday at my first parish in Princeton when kindly old ladies with good intentions but palsied hands insisted on filling those ridiculous little personal -sized communion cups themselves. And when they insisted on carrying those stacks of tiny cups in their kindly but shaky hands from the basement sacristy to the upstairs altar the night before.

Because I'm a nice guy, I said, sure thing, ladies. I didn't realize that the grape juice would spill, sealing the heavy brass lid to the heavy brass trays of cups. Neither did I realize that when I presided at the table the next evening and solemnly attempted to lift the lid from the blood of our savior for a chilling second or six seconds, I would lift the lid along with all five of the brass trays locked by the sugary seal of the spilt grape juice. They all came up together, lid and brass trays, in one terrifying motion. And then, just like that, the seal broke. The trays fell. The off -brand Welch's grape juice poured out like that elevator in The Shining. And though Good Friday was still another 24 hours away, the table looked like I had just desanguinated Jesus Christ on that altar.

Let's just say that was another time for a certain four-letter word.

And I've double checked the Lord's Supper before the worship service every time, and I am strict about who gets to serve on my altar, Gale Dallas.

Along the way, have been moments.

For example:

There was the Lent, when I thought it would be a good idea as a fundraiser for the church's mission project, a sanitation system in Latin America. I thought it would be a good idea to shoot a series of videos of me wearing my clergy collar, sitting on a toilet, talking about the importance of sanitation in rural Guatemalan villages. We've got to make sanitation sexy, I told our mission committee.

Let's just say I went from safe anonymity to the bishop's shit list so fast you'd swear I had a flux capacitor strapped to my back.

And I've kissed the bishops you know what ever since.

Along the way, there have been moments that have hijacked me and how I understand my ministry. For example, there was the Atlantic article I read a while back. It was the article's headline that grabbed me, “Listening to Young Atheists, Lessons for a Stronger Christianity.” In it, the author Larry Taughton described how his nonprofit organization, the Fixed Point Foundation, conducted a national survey of college students. They canvassed students from campus groups like Secular Student Alliance and the Free Thought Society, atheist equivalents to Campus Crusade for Christ. To the foundation's surprise, thousands upon thousands of students from all over the country volunteered to share their journey into unbelief. Almost all of them, the author noticed, almost all of them were former Christians. Not former Muslims, not former Mormons, former Christians. Let's just say the findings from the survey surprised the Fixed Point Foundation. According to Larry Totten, the Foundation's director, the overwhelming majority of those young people who now identify as former Christians, they attribute their lost faith to the fact that the teaching of their churches was soft.

The overwhelming majority of those young people who now identify as former Christians attribute their lost faith to the fact that the teaching of their churches was soft.

Vague. These students heard plenty of messages encouraging social justice, community involvement, and being good. But they seldom saw the necessary relationship between that message and Jesus Christ or the Bible. They didn't see why the church was necessary for those messages which they heard echoed everywhere else in the culture.

This is an incisive critique.

These young atheists, former Christians, seem to have intuitively understood what the church often doesn't understand about itself. Namely, that the church does not exist simply to address social ills, but to proclaim a message, Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. Because that was missing in their churches, they sought little incentive to stay.

Church does not exist to address social ills but to proclaim a message, Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. We would hear this response, Taughton writes. We would hear this response again and again. That's in the Atlantic, which is not a Christian or even a religious magazine. Well, let's just say this article convicted me. And ever since, I've been lot more cognizant of how I speak up here.

And when it comes to the letter of James, everyone always wants to rush to the end of chapter 2, where James writes to the church in Jerusalem that faith without works is dead. And clearly, can see from what Claire read today, you can see at the top of chapter 2 that the church in Jerusalem needed to be convinced that faith without good deep doing is dead. And they were messed up. The church needed to be convinced.

Do we? Do we? According to the survey in the Atlantic, not only does the church in America not need to be convinced about the goodness of good deed-doing, no one in America needs to be convinced. Social justice, community involvement, doing good, it's in the ether. Even secular schools require community service hours, right?

Not only do we not need convincing about good works, survey says, our always rushing to the end of James chapter two has undone God's work of faith in young people. Our words have consequences, James tells us in chapter three. All our words about good works, the survey says, have had consequences for faith.

The survey says that by stressing the effects of the gospel, good works, rather than the gospel itself, we've starved people's faith on the vine.

The survey says we don't need to remind anyone that faith without works is dead. The survey says we need to remind Christians that Christ is not dead. Jesus Christ, crucified for your sins, is not dead. He has been raised for your justification, for you to be in the right with God. There is therefore now no condemnation. That is the faith. That is the faith whose fruit is good works. We follow the logic. If the former dies, the latter disappears.

If He is the vine and we are the branches and good works are the fruit, then works without faith? They're like apples on the ground. They're not gonna last long. And so I don't wanna rush to the end of chapter two today. I wanna point you to the very top of chapter two. And I don't wanna exhort you to do good works. You don't need me to tell you that. I said I wanna make an argument to strengthen you in the faith.

I want to make an argument to strengthen you in the faith.

In the first verse of chapter two, James refers to his half-brother Jesus as our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.

That's what Claire read to you. That's the translation you heard. Except in the Greek, it's not adjectival.

In the Greek, what James actually writes is, “our Lord Jesus Christ, the glory.”

In Hebrew, it's called Shekinah.