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The Rev. Frank
Logue
Doers We humans are a rather predictable lot. Consider this. If you see someone check the time on their watch, and walk up to that person moments later to ask, “What time is it?” What will that person do next? A) tell you the current time? or B) look at his or her watch again and then tell you the current time? The answer is easy. Most of the time, the person will look at his or her watch a second time. I will give a second example of human predictability and then I will stop. If you want someone to learn to tie a knot with a length of rope which of the following will work best: a) tell the person how to tie the knot. For example say, “When tying a bowline, they must make a loop with the rope that forms something like a tree with a whole at its base, then pretend the opposite end of the rope is a rabbit. The rabbit goes out of the whole, around the tree and back into the whole, then pull the rope tight and you are done.” or b) You give the same directions, but this time you take a rope and show the person the actions you are describing. or c) You do everything in B, but now you get the person who is learning to tie the knot to actually take a rope in their own hands and do the actions alongside you, so that he or she ties the bowline while watching you both describe how to do it and tie the knot. Once again. The answer is easy. Every human I know would learn better by doing the knot tying for his or her self rather than just hearing about it or watching it being done. That is how humans work best. Sometimes in describing this sort of thing, the term muscle memory is used. We say that doing the same action again and again gives you muscle memory. That is why a soldier drills taking apart a rifle and putting it back together over and over until he or she can do it with eyes closed or seemingly while asleep. The muscles remember the actions and taking apart a rifle and putting it back together becomes second nature. Those two examples give everything you need to know to understand our reading this morning from the Book of James. Those examples also give us some insight into Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading. The gist of it is that actions not only speak louder than words, they also teach better than words alone. Actions form the person who does them. In our reading from the Book of James, the author tells us that we are not just to be people who sit and listen to the Word of God, but we should also put the words into action. James calls it being a doer of the Word and not a hearer only. Our reading puts these two examples this way. To the first, James writes, “For is any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” I compare this to looking at a watch and then moments later rechecking the watch if someone asks the time. You saw the time, but it didn’t sink in deep. Before you are ready to answer again, you have to check again. For James, if you are only hearing the Word of Go found in scripture and not acting on it, the words of the Bible give you a picture, a pattern for life, but you hear them, walk away and immediately forget what you have heard. By comparison, James writes that those who are not “hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed by their doing.” There is a parable by Søren Kierkegaard which shows what I am trying to say better than I can put it. He wrote of a community of ducks waddling off to duck church to hear their duck preacher. The duck preacher quacked on eloquently of how God had given the ducks wings with which to fly. With these wings there was nowhere the ducks could not go. With those wings they could soar. Shouts of “Amen!” were quacked throughout the duck congregation. At the conclusion of the service, the ducks left telling the preacher what a stirring sermon it was and then they waddled back home. Not a single duck flew. Not even the preacher. Hearing about the possibility of flight is one thing. Flying is another. It is that simple. And coming to hear about God in church as revealed through the life and ministry of Jesus is one thing. Going out and acting on his teaching is another. This idea hits on my second example. To learn to tie a knot, hearing about knot tying or even watching knot tying is no match for taking a rope in hand and actually tying the knot. In the Gospel reading from Mark, Jesus pushes this teaching farther, to include thoughts as well as actions. The problem in Mark is not that the people are not doing the actions, but that the intention of their heart is not in synch with the actions. Jesus’ disciples have been chastised for not ritually cleaning their hands before eating. The problem is not whether their hands are dirty or not, but whether they are ritually clean by following the prescribed ritual and prayers. Jesus counters that if you get the ritual right, but you haven’t put your heart into it, then the ritual is meaningless. You can stand and say the words of confession in church, but if you still hold in your heart evil thoughts about someone else, then what good is the confession? If you are still wishing the boss who gets all red faced while telling you how you always do something wrong would just keel over with a coronary, then perhaps you are still clinging to some sin. The scribes and Pharisees who got indignant about the disciples not following through on the proper ritual are concerned about the outward form. For Jesus this is just going through the motions if it is not matched with the same intentions in your heart. Jesus says that their way of approaching things is to suggest that if you follow all of the rituals for purity then you will be pure. But Jesus says that it is all the stuff in your heart that makes you pure of impure, not whether you ritually wash your hands or your cooking pots or anything else. Jesus tells them, Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. Now I want to pull the two strands of this sermon together. First we learned from the Book of James that just hearing what is said in church is not enough, but we have to find ways to put our faith into action to make it real to ourselves. We should become doers and not merely hearers, otherwise we are only kidding ourselves. Then Jesus pushed things further by saying that it is the junk in our hearts that needs work and not just our outer actions. That the real mess in our lives comes flowing out of ourselves more than what others do to us. Someone else can’t make you dirty. You can’t be defiled by someone else. But the envy, pride and so on within you can do a pretty good job of gumming up the works if you don’t attend to it. The way these two strands weave together is that in doing the word of God, we also can work on the junk in our hearts if we get our intentions lined up with our actions. First, hear something that you should act on that comes from the Word of God. I will give you the shortest and best version of that I can. Jesus teaches that the essence of everything he taught is that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves. What would it be like to put that teaching of Jesus into action. There are several ways this could work, but we will take one that Jesus returned to over and over, loving your neighbor. Jesus taught that everyone in need is the neighbor you are to love. And as everyone is in need at some point, then everyone is your neighbor, even your mom and dad or your husband or wife. Your big brother and your little sister are even the neighbor you are to love. You get the idea. Let’s make it literal though. Let’s imagine that your literal next door neighbor is going through cancer treatment. You know that he usually cuts the grass himself and that there is no way his wife can do it. Sure, they probably could hire a lawn service, but who can afford that while going through cancer treatment. You walk next door and let them know that you would like to cut the grass until he gets cancer free and feeling better again. He will balk at the idea, but you insist. Then you start cutting his yard. That is a very concrete example of what I mean. Now let’s add Jesus’ teaching here. Jesus would say that this is all well and good, but if you only did this so others would see what a great guy you are then it is meaningless. If you just started cutting his lawn so that you could brag about it to others, then you were not doing it out of love. If you wave at all the neighbors as you mow to say, “Look how nice I am to mow this lawn,” and then go tell folks at work and the woman behind you in line at the grocery store how you are so nice to cut your neighbor’s grass, then your intentions are not in line with the action. But if you really are out there just caring and concerned about the guy next door who needed a hand, then you are being a doer of the word and not a hearer only. Jesus and James would agree that putting your faith into action with the right intention of heart will change you for the better. The more you put your faith into action, the more you develop the muscle memory to love your neighbor as yourself. This is why group’s like Habitat for Humanity are so worthwhile as they give us a place to make the idea of loving your neighbor real. But you can do the same thing by volunteering to be a scout leader, or by any one of a number of actions. But notice what you are not doing. You are not doing good deeds to chalk up brownie points with God. You are not impressing God, or earning favor with God. What you are doing is teaching yourself by example. Look to Jesus life and teaching. Pattern your life after what he said and did as well as you can. And each time you take some concrete steps to actually live in to what Jesus’ taught; those teaching will become more real to you. Hearing a sermon is nice. But living a sermon is what God is calling you and me to do. Amen.
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