“Gentleness Born of Wisdom” - September 20, 2015

James 3:13-18

Preached at Royersford UMC (Pulpit Exchange)

 James 3:13-18

God has a way of putting us in our places, and it’s a good thing, because we need it.  Pride is the worst of sins, because it sets us up to fail in every way, since it makes us think of ourselves as perfect or beyond correction, or not in need of God’s grace.

“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.” 

Like I say, God has ways of teaching us.  Usually, in my experience, I get taught by being thrown into the deep end.

            Twenty-six years ago this past week, on September 17, 1989, one of the biggest learning-periods of my life began.  On July 1 I had started my first pastoral appointment, serving the only English-speaking United Methodist Church in the Puerto Rico Annual Conference, which was not in Puerto Rico but in the Virgin Islands, on St. Croix.  I started out serving one, primarily West-Indian congregation, but within a month we had decided to reopen another congregation, primarily of people from the States, at the other end of the island.  It would use the facilities of the Spanish-speaking United Methodist church that it had given birth to before closing down about ten years earlier.  So I was feeling pretty good about myself by the start of September, when attendance had gone from four to fourteen rather quickly.  Then came September 17, a Sunday, when by the late afternoon Hurricane Hugo was closing in and the winds were picking up.  By morning they had reached over two hundred miles per hour. 

            Here’s where I put in my mandatory, heartfelt thanks to UMCOR for all that happened in the aftermath.  They had a plane in the air before the storm had left, and they landed before the Red Cross and their help lasted longer than the Red Cross or FEMA, and it did great good to everyone it touched.  Have no doubt that when you put money into the offering plate to help UMCOR’s work, it is well-used.

            UMCOR was one of the few organizations that did get through right away, though, and the Spanish-speaking church was stuck because their preacher was also the conference treasurer and was flying back and forth every week.  Only now, communication was cut off and in a short while transportation had to be limited to military flights, as women and children were being evacuated.

            Three weeks into all of this, Bishop Morrison made it to the island somehow.  She let me know that the churches at home were doing all they could to help, that she was keeping an eye on my parents for me, and that because of the situation she was giving me the choice of two additional duties.  Either I could become chaplain to the Air National Guard or pastor to the Spanish-speaking church.  I chose the second, since I was already overseeing reconstruction of their building.  (Had I gone the other way, I would have found myself in Iraq three months later, when that unit went to the front lines of the First Gulf War.)

            Instead, I discovered I was in the middle of a civil war in that congregation.  There were two factions.  Because I did not speak Spanish, each was supposed to provide an interpreter for Sunday mornings, taking turns.  The arrangement lasted two weeks.  They could not agree on whose week would be whose.  That’s when I told them that it would end there.  I sat down every Saturday night with a full English text of my sermon and by the light of a kerosene lamp I went through a Spanish dictionary and used a verb chart and word-by-word produced something that I could see was painful to listen to and often made no sense.  There was way too much to do to be wasting time that way, but it had to be done.

            Why?  Because there were two factions that were filled with what James calls “bitter envy and selfish ambition”.  There were people on both sides who were more concerned with their perceived prestige and holding to their self-image as leaders in the church than in doing the actual leadership.  In that time and place, leadership meant servanthood in a clear way.  There was nobody who did not have their hands full picking up the pieces of their private lives – and I mean that literally.  You had to pick up the boards and cinderblocks and put them together again. You had to scramble when you heard where there might be ice to be bought.  Everything had to be done before curfew.  To be a leader in the church meant that you had to put other people’s needs before your own most legitimate ones.

            One passage of scripture has come back to me time and time again since those days.  It begins with an admonition to a church much like that one, where there were two factions sniping at one another for reasons that we do not know.  Paul told them,

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” [Philippians 2:3-4] 

Then he went one step further than that.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.” [Philippians 2:5-8]

That, and not self-serving, is the wise way, filled not only with courage and gentleness, but destined for glory.

“Therefore God also highly exalted him
   and gave him the name
   that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
   every knee should bend,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
   that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.” [Philippians 2:9-11]

            James offers the same warning to us all.  The way of Jesus is the way of the cross.  There’s no getting around it.  Pride and ambition have no place, and the wisdom of God does not turn us into talking heads and pundits who have the answer to everything.  It turns us into the way of humility and service which is sometimes thankless but in the end totally rewarding.

            In the end, that is.  In the meantime, we are wise to question ourselves from time to time and to accept God’s help in recognizing both the duty and privilege of serving alongside one another and alongside Jesus.

            One last story.  It’s a true story that comes from a friend of mine who was sent to his first appointment in the hills of Tennessee, where he was born.  When he was being ordained, all the candidates were kneeling at the altar rail and they were to put their hands on an open Bible as the bishop laid hands on their heads and prayed.  My friend, at that moment, was seized with deep and fearful doubts whether he was doing the right thing, and whether he was fit to preach and to preside at the sacraments.  Who was he to take any leadership position?  He began to pray for a sign, and when he saw the Bible he prayed that God would speak to him through the page in front of him as the bishop came along.  It sounds almost superstitious, but that was what he was sure would give him the final approval that he needed at that moment.  As the bishop’s hand came down on his head, he opened his eyes and looked at the Bible and there in front of him, in black and white, were the words of Job 39:5 : “Who has loosed the wild ass?”  And he knew God was setting him free to serve, and doing it with a smile.