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SERMONS:
Pastor Peg posts her two most recent sermons on this page. If you are interested in reading more of her sermons you can go to pastorpeg.wordpress.com. For the next five weeks our sermon series is: The Book of James. Enjoy.
Words and Actions
June 15, 2025 Trinity Sunday
James1:19-27 Matthew 7:24-27
For the next five weeks we are going to be studying the Book of James, which is considered to be written by James, Jesus' brother. There are references throughout the New Testament that state that James is Jesus' brother. And Paul says that Jesus appeared to James after the resurrection, so we know that James was probably very important to Jesus.
Peter and James set up the early church in Jerusalem. After a few years, many of the new Jewish-Christians left Jerusalem with Peter because they started to be persecuted, but James stayed behind and ministered to the Christians who remained and became the head of the Jerusalem church. He held that position for about 30 years, until he was martyred by the temple authorities in 69 C.E.
Many of his parishioners either knew about Christ first-hand or second-hand in their cultural context. (For instance, I never met Martin Luther King Jr., but I grew up knowing about him and what he did.) Also, James' parishioners were mostly Jews who had been brought up learning the laws of Moses, which is a collection of rules and guidelines to live your life by. James's parishioners probably wanted some guidance to help them live their lives as Christians. They already knew the stories of Jesus, they wanted to know how to apply his teaching into daily life.
So, James created a practical handbook of Christian living. If you read the book, and I encourage you to read it during these five weeks, you will see that there are only five, rather short, chapters. In fact, the book would probably take you less than an hour to read. Each of those chapters are divided into four or five sections with advice and actions that will help you to be a good Christian.
Over these five weeks I’m going to lift-up one guideline from each chapter. Keep in mind that people write how-to books to address the problems and conflicts that people are having. As we work through, and as you read this book, think about how those problems relate to you in our modern day. Human nature doesn’t change, and I’ve found that what James’ people were going through are what we go through today.
From the first chapter we’re going to be talking about James' idea of words and actions. But it's interesting that before James talks about speaking he talks about being hearers of the word. He wants everyone to be quick to listen and slow to speak. Now that's an interesting phrase. But think about it for a minute: How many times do we hear something and then jump right in with an opinion, before hearing it through or giving ourselves time to think about it? Often we might hear incorrectly, so our opinion isn’t really worth very much because we have to keep on revising it. James is telling people that the place to begin with any action is by listening to what is going on around you; to take time and think about it before you speak about it.
It's also interesting that he then talks about being slow to anger. This jump from speaking to anger confused me because, why would speaking about something make me get angry? Well, I think that what James is really talking about is being defensive or always having a defensive reaction, which might come across to other people as being angry. James doesn’t want us to live in the assumption that someone is working against us, or that the world is out to get us. To have that attitude prevents us from seeing how God is working in the world through His blessings.
Then James goes on to say that we should be doers of the word, not just people who hear the word of Christ and then do nothing.
Now I need to say something about the concept of the spoken word, which was very important in Judeo-Christian theology. After all, how does the Bible begin? Creation starts when God says, “Let there be light.” Everything in the creation story happens because God speaks it into being. This is mirrored in the Gospel of John which starts with the phrase: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. What you say matters. If you speak positively, your life will lean to the positive; if you speak negatively, your life will lean to the negative. I know it sounds like some new age thing; but trust me, this idea has been around for a long time.
But for James it’s not enough to say you're going to do something, or to say you believe something, your actions must reflect your words. Not only the ones you speak but also the message that you’ve heard about Christ and how he wants us to live our lives. I wonder how many people in James' congregation said they were going to do something and then did something else, or never followed through with their intentions? (I know I’ve been guilty of that.) How many people in James' congregation came on the Sabbath and did the prayers, listened to the teachings of Jesus, participated in the discussions, and then went home and weren't very nice people for the rest of the week?
James is trying to get his congregants to build a foundation for their lives on the words of Jesus. Jesus said that just listening to his words wasn’t enough – that we need to act on them. Acting on Jesus’ words will enable us to have a rock-solid foundation for our lives, as opposed to a foundation build on sand. A sand foundation has no firmness of morals, no understanding of what is right to do in life. The result of that no firmness is decisions and actions which always slide around. Since nothing is firm in decision or deed, you never know if something is going to collapse under you, bringing the whole house down in ruins.
James wants us to listen to the words of Jesus; to bring them into our minds and to spend some time thinking about them. To focus our minds into the positive so that we can bring his words into actions that will help the world. James doesn’t mind if we speak about our ideas, but it’s important to bring our ideas into actions.
Hearing, thinking, reacting/speaking positively, talking about being a Christian and then acting as a Christian, is the essential discipline of being a disciple of Christ. To be a disciple calls us to have the discipline to act the way Christ want us to act. When we act the way Christ wants us to act then we begin to move towards perfection in Christ. Christianity is a practice that we get better at as we do it. It then becomes a way of life, which leads to a revelation of blessings.
James seems to go off on a tangent when he ends this passage by saying: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. I think that here James is pointing people to a suggestion of what they can do to bring Christian action into the world. Widows and orphans in the first century were often the poorest and most marginalized people. There was a lot you could do to help them. Bring them food and clothing. Help them to repair their homes. Give them some employment in your household. Adopt a widow into your family. Maybe even bring up a child as one of your own and educate them so they could go onto support themselves. These were people in James’ communities who needed help, and he was telling his people that all they had to do was to walk out the door to be a Christian in action.
Who needs our help today in our communities? Is it a someone with cancer who needs a meal once a week, so they don’t have to cook? Is it a mother who needs someone to watch the kids while they do their homework so she can go shopping? Is it an elderly couple who need some repairs in their house? Is it a family who needs help rebuilding after a fire?
There is always some way we can be generous, renewing, and compassionate to someone out there. We need to listen to what is going on around us to find out the needs. We need to suspend our defensiveness and anger to see the problems. We then need to speak our plans and act on them so that they come into being. And when we do, we will then be practicing our faith and bringing the love of Christ to others. And then, all of our words and deeds will be set on a firm foundation of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, and we will be Doers of the Word.
The Gods We Make
June 1, 2025 Ascension Sunday Communion
Exodus 32:1-14 John 15:1-6
The Israelites have been led out of Egypt by Moses. They have witnessed ten plagues that decimated the Egyptian nation. They’ve been protected by a pillar of fire, and they’ve seen a sea parted so that they could cross safely away from the pursuing armies Pharaoh.
They've been camping under this mountain called Mount Sinai for several weeks now. And Moses has told them that he's going to go up on the mountain to confer with God and to find out what their next steps are going to be so that they can return to their ancestral lands which will be their own home in the future.
But the Israelites get impatient, and worried because Moses hasn't returned yet.
This isn't surprising. The Israelites had originally gone into Egypt as refugees from a famine. We know that they were probably nomadic herders who had been accepted into Egypt country, and had lived productive lives there. But at some point, they had lost whatever power or independence that they had, and had become second-class citizens and then enslaved citizens. Their culture, that was based on a tribal system of governance, was repressed by the dominant theocracy of Egypt.
When you’re enslaved, you’re totally dependent on and submissive to the rules and whims of who owns you. You're not allowed to decide anything for yourself, and your mentality is: I have to please the person who owns me, because if I don't my life is forfeit. And in the greater society you have no power. You are the lowest of the low and there is no way for you to have a say in anything.
You don’t learn or know how to think for yourself; you don’t have any practice with it. That's where the Israelis were. They didn't really have any knowledge or experience of how to govern themselves as a group. Moses went up on the mountain to receive the rules that God wanted them to live by as their guidelines, so that they could start to be a self-governing nation.
But the people think he's been gone way too long, and they don't know if Moses is alive or dead. They go to Aaron, who they have accepted as the substitute leader, for guidance. They know that there are the children of this God of Abraham, but they want something that they can point to and say: This is our God. They want to worship and give thanks. They want to create a connection to a spiritual identity.
Now when we have times of uncertainty in our lives it's human nature to go back to what is familiar;. What were the Israelites used to seeing in Egypt? They were used to seeing golden bulls and other animal idols being worshipped. In fact, the Israelites probably chose a golden calf or bull, because the bull was considered in ancient societies to be one of the most powerful creatures on earth. This is because there were still aurochs. These huge cattle were about 7 feet tall and weighed about 3,000 lbs. fully grown. They were very fierce and dangerous creatures from the ice age and were still running around in the wild, in fact they didn’t die out completely until the 1600’s.
So they create a golden calf to worship it and give thanks to, and the ensuing party becomes very wild. They’re celebrating their freedom; no nasty slave holder is going to tell them what to do now. But God notices what's happening and says: What am I going to do with these people? I led them out of Egypt, but they decide to go their own way. I'm just going to get rid of them and start over with Moses. He's going to be the new Abraham.
But Moses calms him down. It's one of the places in the Bible where somebody argues with God. He makes the case for the people. He says: Hey, you did this great thing, and if you kill off these people, all the nations are going to say that you brought these people out of slavery just to kill them. You have to give them a chance.
And God relents. He decides to give the people a chance to learn the laws and apply them to their lives and see if they can make them work. Which is something that we have been doing every generation since.
This story of the golden calf has become a metaphor for creating an idol that substitutes for God and reveals the process of how we fall into making those idols.
First of all, idol creation usually starts when we’re in a new territory or situation, someplace we've never been before, so, there's a feeling of uncertainty: What are we doing here? How do we make this work and how do we move forward? So, we look around for something familiar that we can grab onto and work with; a goal or set of guidelines that will help us.
For an adult who's beginning to make their way in the world their new idol might become making money. You can see how they might create this idol. They're figuring out the rules of employment and the rules of how to make money. They're figuring out how to save and spend the money in the best possible way to give themselves a good life. So, they put that in the center of their lives as their goal and guideline.
Some people might not care about money, but they do care about the prestige of a good job, so they devote their life to advancing their career. Some people might only care about fame, they're willing to do anything to sell that record to be on the stage, or in that new movie. For some people it might be relationships. They are willing to manipulate people so that they have the perfect friendships or the perfect romance partner.
Now there is nothing wrong with figuring out how to make money, or working to advance your career, or being famous, or devoting yourself to having good relationships. All these actions will give us some fulfillment. The thing about an idol is that you put it in the center of your life and everything you do serves that idol. Your idol becomes your guidance, moral code, and fulfillment.
But God wants his people to see that the most important thing in our lives is actually our relationships to the divine, and with the rest of the world. If you look at the Ten Commandments they lay down a set of rules that ensures that we will have a good relationship with God, a good relationship with each other, and a good relationship with ourselves.
The reason why we put God in the center of our lives; the reason why we worship him with all our being; the reason why we take time to give ourself a Sabbath to connect to him; and the reason why we honor him in our words and our deeds is because then we also honoring each other and all of creation. Putting God in our center brings our minds and hearts into the realization that we are all connected with each other.
Think about what Jesus said: Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. Jesus followers understood that grapes were connected to the soil, seasons, and climate. That grapes have to be nurtured and pruned to produce good, sweet fruit. Have you ever tasted a wild grape? They’re usually pretty sour and stunted things.
I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire.
Like us, the Israelites wanted a relationship with God. But we need to be aware of the danger of a false-idol coming between us and God. A false-idol will cut us off from our relationship with others because you are only thinking about fulfilling the needs of the idol with you; not the greater God that is outside of all of us. When we have a loving relationship with God, you have a loving relationship with all of God’s creation because you act in God’s love.
So, watch out for those false idols in your life that take your focus off God, and sneakily put it on only you and your needs. Ask yourself, does this get me closer to God and in a better more loving relationship with others? Or is it going to leave me an empty, hangover type feeling, that doesn’t feel very good in the long run? If you join with God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit you will find that you have a bountiful harvest of love, along with a gardener who will always be there for you.