Kick-Off Sunday
James 1: 17-27
September 7, 2000
Last weekend we went to Phoenix on our Labor Day holiday. Each year we spend part of this time in that great American pastime, shopping.
This year, we stopped at the new Nordstrom. While waiting for Peggy to try on some clothes, I struck up a conversation with one of the salespersons. I asked how they were able to handle the vast Labor Day crowds. He shared an idea that he had suggested to the management. It was a novel way to be helpful to customers who wanted assistance without offending those who were there to just browse. This was the plan. Upon entering Nordstrom’s, a person was asked to attach one of two available pins. One pin was red and said, “Please wait on me.” The other was green and said, “Just browsing.” Not a bad idea. I think we ought to adopt it for Sunday mornings.
Our ushers could greet worshippers in the doorway with an invitation to choose a pin. One would be red (for the names of Pentecost) with the words “I want to be turned on to ministry.” The other would be green and would say, “I want to hear the music and sermon, but I’m just browsing. Don’t disturb me.”
Our text for this morning comes from the letter of James. It’s an appropriate passage for our Kick-Off Sunday, the day when we’re invited to go to the Gallery and sign up for a variety of ministries and other activities. It’s a text that isn’t complicated. It says it plain and simple, “Be doers of the Word.” We are urged to be doers and not hearers. This letter reminds us that we can listen to religious talk all day and never discover what it’s all about. It is only when we act, when we do the Christ-like thing, that we will know what Christianity is all about.
James points out that we can deceive ourselves. We can fool ourselves into thinking that hearing is enough. My secret fear about church-going is that it seems like an inoculation for many. A couple of shots, and pretty soon, we become immune to the Word of God. We say to ourselves that because we’ve spent a little time in church, that’s all that matters.
Maybe we should print Garrison Keillor’s caution at the bottom of our Sunday bulletin. Keillor once wrote, “You can become a Christian by going to church about as easily as you can become a car by sleeping in a garage.” Or, as James would put it, “Be a doer of the word and not just a hearer, deceiving yourself.”
Philosophers have noted the development in our society of what they have named, ‘The onlooker consciousness.’ Onlooker consciousness is a way of being in the world characterized by detachment; a studied disengagement adopting the guise of a perpetual tourist. Just passing through, just browsing, is what we often say to the world. The trick in our day is to keep detached, keep our distance, don’t get involved.
But Jesus would say to us, “If you want to know about me, you must follow, be immersed in ministry.” Jesus didn’t say learn about me. He said, “Follow me.”
We have a great number of courses offered in this parish. I dare say we offer more educational opportunities than most churches. But let me say this as plain as I can. If a course that we offer doesn’t motivate, train, or inspire you to some action, to some outreach, we’re wasting your time as well as our own. On every blackboard, newsprint easel, we ought to write, “Be ye doers of the Word and not hearers only.”
Through the years, I’ve had many conversations with parishioners about what they look for in sermons. Often I hear them saying, “I really like a sermon that makes me think, that teaches me some new way to look at the text.” And I might add that as a preacher, the fun really comes in taking a complex, difficult passage and carefully exploring it. But the letter of James doesn’t need much explaining. It’s very straightforward. Listen. Religion that is pure and unblemished before God is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction. “To be a doer and not a hearer of the Word.” It’s hard to earn my pay as a preacher with lines like those. They don’t need a lot of explanation. But maybe, on this Kick-Off Sunday, we don’t need a lot of words from the pulpit.
Have you ever heard the old saying, “I would rather see a sermon than hear one?” (I’m sure that wasn’t directed at me.) But there is something in that saying, a nub of truth. The most powerful sermon preached at St. Philip’s will not be the words you hear from this pulpit. People have been listening to preachers for centuries, and for the most part, little has happened as a result of those sermons.
Good people, the most powerful sermon preached today is what you will do in the next hour, the next day, the next week. Who will you reach out to? What acts of Christian service will you do? That will be the real test of what is happening here. Will you be a doer and not simply a hearer?
Well, there you have it: the point of it all on this Kick-Off Sunday. We have come together to hear the Word. And the Word is a call to action, a challenge to each of us. “Be a doer and not just a hearer.” Don’t be deceived by simply sitting in a pew. That’s the point of our text. That’s the point of this coming year. James might have put it this way if he were here: “You are a minister. Now act like one.” Amen