The War Within

James 3: 13 – 4: 8, pages 230-231 Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. 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. Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, “God yearns jealously for the spirit that God has made to dwell in us”? But God gives all the more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and the devil will flee from you. Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Sermon It’s been another exciting week in the news, and most interesting to me have been the stories of public people having their private life exposed. It’s not easy to be royalty, especially when someone is watching all the time. Despite considerable pressure to stop it, personal pictures of Princess Kate Middleton have been taken, sold, and distributed, proving that the world wants the image of the Princess in her finest evening wear, but even more wants to see her dirty laundry. To some degree, the image of who the world thinks she ought to be – refined, composed, and proper – comes into conflict with who she actually is. The same may be true for Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney who has been facing a similar challenge this week. It began on Monday when a video aired in which Mr. Romney describes 47% of the United States population as entitled victims. "[M]y job is not to worry about those people,” Romney said. “I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." For the Democrats these remarks were an opportunity to expose their campaign opponent as the candidate for wealthy businessmen who plans on ignoring half the country, just as they claim, but for Mr. Romney these were off the cuff remarks, neither well thought out nor clearly understood by the media. I see a theme here, for in the first case everyone saw something they weren’t meant to see, and in the second the world heard what only a small group was meant to hear. I can relate to both the anger of Princess Kate Middleton and the frustration of Mr. Romney because I, like many of you, don’t always dress ready to appear on the cover of a magazine, nor does every word that I say make any sense, and that’s OK most of the time because there aren’t television cameras following me around everywhere I go. Because of that luxury I have a private life. I can be relaxed at home. There are parts of my personality that you see here in this pulpit and there are other parts that you might see at the grocery store or the farmers market. And certainly, the way I preach at a tent revival is different from the way that I preach here because we all make adjustments in how we handle ourselves depending on where we are and who we are surrounded by. While it’s still true for us, to an even greater degree it was true for the Christian community that James addresses in our scripture lesson for this morning. To live as a minority within the majority, to adhere to a belief system strange and foreign to their neighbors, to simultaneously claim that Christ is Lord in a culture that pledged its allegiance to Caesar – these Christians had to learn how to be faithful while not raising suspicion, how to keep a relationship with Christ without jeopardizing their relationship to their neighbors who had never heard of him, these Christians had to learn how to be Christian at home, at the church, around their family of faith, while acting differently, acting like everyone else on the street, at the marketplace, and at work. They were faced with a challenge that we all know too well – they were forced to act without losing themselves in the process. This is a challenge that should not be taken lightly. We are led to ask, who is Kate Middleton really – which one is the real Mitt Romney – but more importantly, who are you, really? Are you truly the person you are at home, or are you most yourself at school, at work, or at the gym? The reality is that we are faced with the same struggle that Christians of every time have faced – to remain true to what we believe even in a culture where we often have to adapt to survive. These adaptations must not be taken lightly, for truly there is a war within your very self as each aspect of yourself struggles to define the essence of who you are. Sure you never hang around her at school, but she understands that you have to act one way around them but that’s not really who you are. You are still an honest person surely; it’s just that to play the game you have to play by their rules. It’s not dishonest if everybody does it – right? It seems as though it should be possible to work according to the rules of business, supply and demand, focused on the bottom line rather than the least of these – Jesus wouldn’t have been profitable in the world of business so why not adhere to capitalism during the week and the Gospel on Sunday? And of course you don’t really mean all of what you say in private conversation – it’s just talk and it doesn’t mean anything because they weren’t meant to hear it – but if they weren’t meant to hear it should you really have been saying it? “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” Last Monday morning a surgeon gave Mrs. Peggy Fleming a pacemaker to better regulate her heartbeat. That heart of hers has been ticking just fine for a number of years – but just how many years isn’t for just anyone to know. That afternoon I visited her with her son James, and as is always the case with Mrs. Fleming, she did more caring for me than I did for her. On my last visit she shamed me into exercising more often, and this time she recited me a poem that she taught all of her children, James included, by Rudyard Kipling and she told me to look it up and read it, which of course I did because you have to do whatever Mrs. Fleming tells you to do. The poem is called simply “If”: If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! The title seems appropriate: “If.” If you can do it – if you can live in a world where you may be lied about, but not let that world corrupt you – if you can live in a world of kings and commoners without giving way to thinking that one is more important than the other – if you can talk with the crowds and keep your virtue, only if. Though it must be done, do not be so bold as to believe that living in two worlds will be easy. While there is no other way, do not be so bold as to believe that you can keep one foot in both places without losing your heart to one over the other. Instead “submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and the devil will flee from you. Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” And above all remember that “God yearns jealously for the spirit that God has made to dwell in you.” Amen.