Love in Action
By Rev. Heidi L. Barham | September 8, 2024
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Read James 2:1 – 10, 14 – 17 (NIV)
Our text for the morning comes from the Book of James once again… and picks up where we left off last week… reflecting on the unexpected and undeserved gifts that God gives to us.
This week, the text shifts our focus to consider how we are called to treat others while we live our faith out loud… and so for our time together this morning, I want to invite our attention to the subject: LOVE IN ACTION.
Now, as I was preparing the bulletin for this week, I did what I usually do, which is look at the Lectionary to see what passage of Scripture I might use as the basis for the sermon. It made sense to continue with the readings from James and I decided to reflect on the idea of LOVE IN ACTION… so, I finished drafting the bulletin and sent it over to Jane, Ruth, and June before I left for the pastors’ retreat in Washington DC.
That was Monday.
The following day, I made the drive to DC and that evening, I was able to spend time in worship with approximately 450 colleagues in pastoral ministry from across the country. There was a concert by the Children’s Chorus of Washington DC before we moved into a time of praise and worship. After that, we heard a sermon preached by Rev. Lori Tapia, who is the Executive Leader for Obra Hispana, which is the Central Pastoral Office for Hispanic Ministries within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
In her message, Rev. Tapia focused on a story from Exodus 17 about Aaron and Hur holding up Moses’ arms while Joshua fought against the Amalekites. As long as Moses’ arms were raised, Joshua prevailed. But if Moses dropped his arms, the Amalekites would prevail. Hence the need for Aaron and Hur to help Moses keep his arms up so that Joshua would ultimately be victorious.
The point of the message was that we are called to live in community… to help others in their time of need… and this tied into the theme for the retreat which encouraged us to establish “Holy Friendships.”
We are not designed to live this life in a vacuum… we are called to live together as brothers and sisters in Christ… to bear one another’s burdens (like Aaron and Hur did for Moses) … and we are called to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
I recall thinking that Rev. Tapia’s message felt like confirmation of the direction I was planning for the sermon to take on Sunday… focusing on LOVE IN ACTION.
That was Tuesday.
And then Wednesday happened…
Sitting in my hotel room, I watched the news stories about yet another school shooting… this time resulting in two teachers and two students being killed and nine others being injured. It was only their second day of school.
And as I listened to the reporters talking… I was taken aback to hear that this was already the 8th school shooting of the current school year. And sadly, there has even been an incident that occurred following a Friday night football game, not too far away from here, in Euclid.
Now, I know there are some people who would rather not hear about these issues in the context of Sunday morning worship… but it is an unfortunate reality that we are living with in this day and time.
And while, it may be easier to keep quiet and not think about or speak about what is happening in the world around us… that is a luxury that we simply cannot afford.
So, I want to invite us to pay particular attention to the second part of our text as it appears in the Message Paraphrase:
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?Real faith… involves more than just talking the talk… it requires walking the walk.
We cannot simply tell someone who has a legitimate need to just go and be well… especially when we have the ability to help to meet their need.
In the same way… we cannot simply keep offering thoughts and prayers and think that will be enough.
As James said, “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead…” It is indeed “outrageous nonsense.”
In other words, we have to do something… something more than just pass by on the other side of the street like the priest and the Levite when we someone hurting… hoping someone else will come along and take care of the situation…
We have to be like the Good Samaritan and render aid when we are in a position to do so (see Luke 10:25 – 37).
[Let me just insert a quick note of caution here… while there is a call for us to help others who are in need… we need to do so in a manner that does not put us in harm’s way… we do need to be smart about whatever it is we do.]
Now, rather than give a litany of things that we could do like call or write our elected officials or volunteer at a Guns to Gardens or safe surrender event… I want to us to turn our attention to a verse found in the Old Testament.
It is a verse that many people tend to quote in the midst of challenging times like those that we have been confronted with as a nation…
It is a verse that… on its face might seem to lend credence to the continued practice of simply offering “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of life’s tragedies.
The verse leading up to the one that I want to share refers to the times when God will shut up the heavens so there is no rain… times when He will command locusts to devour the land or when He will send a plague among the people… all times of severe distress, suffering, and agony.
Which is when we come to 2 Chronicles 7:14 which reads:
…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.Now most people quickly zoom into the part about praying… but there is much more that this verse calls us to do, individually as well as collectively, IN ADDITION to praying.
First, the verse says we are to humble ourselves…
That means we have to admit our sins and our shortcomings. We have to be willing to acknowledge that we have not always done what is right and we have not always done what the Lord requires us to do.
In Micah 6:8, the Prophet writes, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
But if we take a look around at the world we are living in… it is not a far stretch to see that acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God are not character traits that could be used to describe a vast majority of people.
There is much work for us to do… and that is why the writer of 2 Chronicles suggests we need to first humble ourselves.
Now, the second thing we need to do as a people, as well as individuals, is to pray… to pray to God and ask for forgiveness.
We generally spend much of our time praying and asking God for things we want or need… offering prayers for provision and protection for ourselves as well as others in our lives… making our petitions known seeking healing for ourselves and for those around us… and even asking God to mete out His justice on those other people who have done wrong.
But how often do we lift prayers of contrition… asking God to forgive us for missing the mark… for failing to love as God has commanded us to love… for failing to do our collective part in making this world a better place.
I dare say those are harder prayers to pray… because they require us to take a long hard look at ourselves… and sometimes we don’t like what we see when we look in that proverbial mirror and reflect on who we are as a people. But nonetheless, we are called to pray.
Then, the third thing this verse from 2 Chronicles 7 calls us to do is to seek God’s face… but how do we do that? After all, it’s not like we can just walk up to the front door of heaven, knock and ask to see God face to face.
No… but we can study God’s Word… deliberately seeking God through the Scriptures… purposefully learning more about God’s will and who God created us to be… recognizing that each of us has been made in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1:26).
And when we are intentional in looking at others so we can see the image of God in them… that is when we will begin to see the face of God.
And that brings us to the fourth thing outlined in the verse from 2 Chronicles 7… after we humble ourselves, pray, and seek God’s face… we must turn from our wicked ways.
And although I know the people sitting in this sanctuary and those listening on the phone and on the internet are inherently good people… none of us are exempt when it comes to having wicked ways.
Someone is probably thinking that is simply not true Pastor Heidi… we are not murderers and rapists… we are not thieves and adulterers. What wicked ways could you possibly be referring to?
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is credited with saying that, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” and, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” (Martin Luther King Jr. ‑ Biography, Quotes & Legacy | HISTORY).
To stand idly by and shirk our shared responsibility to our brothers and sisters who are hurting and in need… well, simply put, that is wicked.
It goes against what Jesus taught when He recounted the parable of the sheep and the goats… teaching His disciples [and us] that we are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, provide shelter to the homeless and clothing to the naked, and visit and care for the sick and imprisoned (see Matthew 25:31 – 46).
In fact, Jesus used this parable to call out those who did not do those things… explaining that in the time of judgment, “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ [and Jesus went on to say] “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
And so, we must repent… we must turn away from… our propensity to turn a blind eye toward those who in need… those who are suffering from injustice in the world. We cannot and must not remain silent in the face of tragedies that are turning the lives of so many people upside down simply because those things are not affecting us directly.
But in his 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King wrote to his fellow clergymen and said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (Letter from Birmingham Jail - Full text (bates.edu))
We are all in this together and we all have a role to play in making this world a better place for EVERYONE… because we are all called to be part of the beloved community.
Now, Victoria Atkinson White was one of the speakers at the pastors’ retreat… and in her book, Holy Friendships: Nurturing Relationships That Sustain Pastors and Leaders, she talks about us being, “key contributors in God’s ongoing love story with creation” (V.A. White, 2023, p. xvii).
And I want to suggest that when we accept that we are all key contributors… and we make a point of humbling ourselves, praying, seeking God’s face and turning from our wicked ways… that is when the Scriptures tell us that God will hear us from heaven… God will forgive us… and God will heal our land. …and hopefully, we can all agree that our land is in desperate need of a healing.
Now, in addition to what we find in 2 Chronicles 7:14… there is something else that Jesus commands us to do and that James makes reference to in verse 8 of our text this morning. it is something that is part of the Levitical law that is found in the Old Testament book of Leviticus.
And it is simply this, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Looking at the first part of our text this morning, there is an admonishment to not show favoritism… to not discriminate against someone based on how they look or on their perceived socio-economic status. Rather, James says, we should “keep the royal law… ‘love your neighbor as yourself.”
LOVE IN ACTION means treating everyone with dignity and respect… not simply the ones who look like us, think like us, vote like us, or act like us.
LOVE IN ACTION means welcoming in the stranger… inviting them to share a pew with us… and perhaps even share a meal with us.
LOVE IN ACTION means realizing that we have so much more in common with one another… if we will only take the time to look for the points of intersection.
Because here’s the thing… if we spent less time mistreating and disrespecting other people… and spent more time showing them love and compassion… there would be fewer hurting people in the world.
If we actually make it our mission to live our faith out loud… we will spend a lot more time spreading the Gospel… leaving virtually no time for spreading gossip.
Now, let me be clear… I am not so naïve as to think that all we have to do is hold hands and sing an endless chorus of Kumbaya and all will be right with the world… but we do have to start somewhere.
We have to recognize the shared humanity that lies within all of us… and we have to start looking at others in effort to see who Jesus sees when He looks at us.
We see a homeless beggar on the street… Jesus sees one of His beloved… in need of food and shelter… someone who lost their job, their home, and maybe even their family… someone who could not get the treatment they needed to work through their mental health issues… someone who ran away from an abusive, life-threatening, situation and suddenly found themselves with nowhere to go… nowhere to turn… and no one to help them.
We tend to hone in and see the worst in others… to quickly judge by appearances… to forget about the plank in our own eye because we are too busy focusing on the speck of dust in the other person’s eye (see Matthew 7:3 – 4).
But isn’t it good to know that Jesus looks at the best in us and forgets about the mess in us… and because of God’s grace and mercy… Jesus is able to love the unlovable. And yes… we have all been the unlovable at some point in time… but regardless of how unlovable we may be or have been… the Lord loves us anyhow and He loves us unconditionally.
So, what if we made it a point to try to love like that… to show others that their past is not what defines them… to encourage them that Jesus already paid the price to wipe their slate clean…
What if instead of responding with anger and animosity when that person cuts us off in traffic… what would happen if we offered a prayer for their safety… and for whatever situation has them in such a hurry…
What I am trying to get at is this… what would happen if we all tried to be a little kinder and more compassionate to one another… what if we made it our personal mission to stamp out hate by spreading love… I mean real LOVE IN ACTION… the kind of love that is contagious like the love Jesus has for us.
The kind of love that took Him to that cross at Calvary so that we could be forgiven of our sins and spend eternity in God’s kingdom.
The kind of love that has the ability to drive out the darkness in this world.
The kind of love that is everlasting.
The kind of love that will never let us go.
And I just have to believe that when we put that kind of LOVE IN ACTION, the world will become a much better place for us all.
So, if that is the kind of love that you desire for yourself and that you want to share with others… then, I want to invite you to stand and join in singing our Hymn of Discipleship: O Love that Wilt Not Let Me Go #540 Back
