9/3/23 Sermon

Last week we talked about the power of words and how they have the ability to transform this world. Today, I want to look at the other side of the coin.  I want to look at what actions we take or what we as Christians do to live out our faith and live into our discipleship.  But first I want to share a quotation with you on how it almost seems to begin with words. It goes like this:  What was said to the rose to make it open is what Discipleship does to the heart.

What was said to the rose to make it open is what Discipleship does to the heart.  It opens our hearts up not only to God but to other people.  James is trying to get us to see that there’s such a thing as quality of faith and that it’s quantifiable.  That perhaps we can judge how much or how little faith we have.  Or maybe the better way to put it, is that faith can be measured by how well it’s utilized.  And the measuring rod that we’re given to use for faith is by how it plays out in the real world. How we live out our faith. 

For James, having faith isn’t something that causes us to stare at our navels or retreat to the deserts and never interact with people.  But faith is something that keeps us grounded in the real world and it’s something that helps our hearts open up to who we are and what we’re supposed to be doing in the world.  And discipleship is how we act on that faith, what we do with our faith, and how we allow our hearts to open.  And again, it isn’t just an opening up to God, but it’s the realization that a heart that opens like a rose to God is really best seen by how it opens to other people.  

Successful discipleship and a successful faith is determined by how well or poorly we care for other people.  It’s tools are things like community and compassion and empathy.  What makes a faith a successful faith, what makes us successful people in our discipleship and successful people in this life is the very opposite, the absolute anti-thesis sometimes of what we’re led to believe a successful person in this world is. 

We’re told that humanity and nature for that matter are in a constant state of competition.  That in order to succeed, we have to get ahead.  We have to be winners.  We have competition that we have to crush. And that the only way we can truly win is by having others who lose.  There are winners and losers in this life. And in order to be successful, we have to be winners. In fact, it’s not just a matter of being successful, we’re told it’s a matter of survival.  

How many of us have heard the term “survival of the fittest?”  It’s Darwinism.  We’re taught that’s how nature works.  We’re taught things like “Social Darwinism”.  If you ever want to see social Darwinism in full effect, walk through a high school cafeteria sometime.   In my high school you could actually chart the evolutionary popularity of people based on how close they sat towards the back wall.  The closer the table you sat at was to the back of the cafeteria, the more popular you were.  And I sat terrifyingly close to the front of the cafeteria… 

What’s funny though, is that if we study Darwin and really look at what he was saying, especially about humanity, a totally different picture than the one we were lead to believe emerges.  Darwin in his book “The Descent of Man” actually only mentions the term “survival of the fittest” two times.  He uses the word love 95 times. 

And in fact, Darwin comes to the conclusion that the tools of discipleship and faith that I mentioned - compassion, community, and empathy- those are actually the primary reasons for our survival and our relative success on this planet. Basically, Darwin would agree that religious principles like the Golden Rule and how we as a species care for each other are the primary reasons why we’re still here and why we’re still somewhat successful.  Yes, there’s competition in nature and in human nature - neither Darwin nor I nor James nor Jesus would deny that.   But Darwin says it isn’t the supreme value.  The supreme value is cooperation - something that I think Darwin, James, Jesus and I all agree on.

It’s interesting, I saw documentary where they were talking about red tail deer. They were studying them to try and figure out how herds really worked.  And they went in with the assumption that the alpha male, the one that beat out all the other males in the spring would rule the day.  And they watched to see how the deer made the decision to get water which turns out to be a very complicated decision.  They can’t go too early or some deer won’t get the proper nutrients they need.  They can’t wait too long though or some won’t make it because they’ll be too dehydrated.  If they go at the wrong speed, some won’t keep up or others will go too fast and they’ll be liable to attacks by predators.  So, it’s an important decision for the herd.  To determine when to get water and which watering hole to go to. 

Now, they thought that the alpha male would basically say it’s time to go and everyone would follow him.  But they found something entirely different and surprising.  A deer would look up when it was thirsty and look toward a watering hole.   And then another deer would look up toward the watering hole. Then another one.  And another.  And when the 51st percentile deer would look up - so if there were 100 deer, when the 51st one would look at the watering hole, within minutes the whole herd would start moving towards the watering hole.  

They basically voted and when the majority vote was in, they’d mobilize.  And it wasn’t just deer that they began to find this in, but in primates and in other mammals and in birds and in fish. When they slowed down the videos of schools of fish and flocks of birds suddenly changing directions as one unit, they saw that it basically came about by tiny signals they would give to one another and by voting essentially.  Cooperation, working together, understanding our connection to each other is a fundamental component and value of life in this planet.  Science is starting to catch up with what religion has known for centuries.  

 And so I wonder sometimes when I read my Bible if the ancient authors of these books weren’t painfully aware that we’re misunderstanding our natural state - that we were made for cooperation rather than competition. I mean, look at some of these stories: we have the  fall story where humanity takes this terrible break from nature and we seem to move from a cooperating with God’s creation to struggling with it.  And then the story moves into the Cain and Abel story where one brother competes with the other and ends up killing him and when asked about it he says, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And the answer the Bible is saying is YES!, or Jacob and Esau or Joseph and his brothers. Or Moses raising a rebellion against a Pharaoh and an Exodus of slaves into a promised land where people wouldn’t have dominion over another, a land of milk and honey where everyone’s needs were supposed to be met. 

And on through to Jesus who was so concerned with how we treat each other and was always caring for and lifting up the outcasts and despised.  Jesus who was put to death for threatening power structures that tried to put people in their place, and on through to James who in this morning’s reading tells us that it shouldn’t be that one group of people have power over another - the rich shouldn’t oppress people but that we should fulfill this royal law of loving others as ourselves.  That faith is lived out in the action of cooperation, in community, in compassion and empathy by taking care of those who don’t have enough.  James, some 1700 years before Darwin is telling us that the supreme value of human existence and of Discipleship and of faith itself is the rejection of competition and the acceptance of cooperation.  That faith and discipleship are the setting aside of our wants for the needs of other.  

We act out this reality - this alternate view of the world - this understanding that not only our faith but our survival values cooperation and community and compassion and empathy here every single Sunday.  Like today as we gather around this table and take these little pieces of bread dipped in grape juice and call it a feast - Because we Believe no one walks away hungry.  It’s spiritual food and we believe that everyone EVERYONE should be able to eat their fill and leave satisfied.  We don’t sit back and watch as I and a few others maybe gorge ourselves on bread and grape juice. Which thank God. I’m on a low carb diet. But instead  We invite everyone to this table.   Because we believe in community.  Because we believe in compassion.  Because we believe that no one should leave here spiritually hungry.  Because Spiritual food is too important to deny anyone.  And what James is telling us is that actual food is too important to deny anyone as well. James is telling us that while it’s good to act on our faith around this table - the content of that faith and the quality of our discipleship is dependent on our ability to walk out of these doors taking these same values into that world and living them out the same way we do around this table.  To work to make sure that the wants of some don’t diminish or destroy the needs of others.  

Listen if we want to know what disciples do, they do this:  disciples look to God for standards of behavior that challenge the conventional standards of society.  The conventional standards of society tell us that survival of the fittest is the order of the day and that competition is the supreme value.  God’s standards tell us that community, compassion, and empathy are deeply needed in this world and that cooperation is the supreme value.  

And all that we do here - around this table and at that font and in this building on Sundays and all that we do in our classrooms and meetings and in our kitchen and in our community together as a church during every other day of the week - All that we do together as a church, as a faith community, as a family- the purpose of it is to open our hearts like a rose to God and to other people.  For us, for the Christian, Discipleship and faith aren’t pathways to inner fulfillment but they are the narrow roads to opening our hearts into God’s heart.  Discipleship and faith open our hearts to becoming precisely what God created us to be and to take the gifts that God has given us - gifts like community, compassion and empathy and using those gifts to make this world better.  

So may you have your heart opened to better love your God and your neighbor

May you share your faith through your actions and not just your words. 

May you know that God created you for love, for compassion, for empathy, 

And may you transform this world through those very gifts of your discipleship.

Amen.