Listen and Learn

Deut. 4:1-2;6-9; James 1:17-27

Think back to your childhood. Can you remember taking a trip to visit a friend of the family, or going out to eat somewhere, or spending a day at the zoo or a theme park? Where you went doesn’t matter so much, I’m getting at that moment when you’ve arrived at your destination but hadn’t gotten out of the car yet. You’re sitting in the parking lot and your parents turn from the front seat of the minivan and give you the parking lot speech: “Listen up kids, we’re here, but before you leave the car, remember to be on your best behavior.” Maybe they even have you repeat all the do’s and don’ts back to them. The rules for good behavior don’t become null and void the second we leave our family’s house. In fact, I’d say we’re taught how to behave at home so that we can leave the house without making a fool of ourselves, or our family.

The text from Deuteronomy is a parking lot speech. Granted, the Israelites’ trip has been going on for hundreds of years, ever since God told Abraham to leave his home to journey to a new, promised, land. There have been a couple of detours, to say the least, including family fights and a few generations of enslavement in Egypt. But today’s text captures that moment when they have finally reached the promised land, and Moses turns around from the front of the caravan and gives them this speech: “Listen up, we’re here, but before we cross the border into the promised land, remember to be on your best behavior.”

“Remember the statutes and ordinances that I’m teaching you to observe.” Moses even throws in the classic parental threat, “if you want to live to see tomorrow, you’ll keep these commandments.” More specifically, Moses says that he has given the people commandments to keep so that they may “live, enter, and possess the land.” So that, or in order that…Patrick Miller explains how “Moses’ call to obedience is a laying out for the people of the conditions and requirements for making it across the border” into the promised land. “Obedience to the instruction of God is both the implication of their past history with God and the necessity for their future life with God.”[1]

“Keep them faithfully,” Moses goes on, “because that will show your wisdom and insight to the nations….be on guard and watch yourselves closely.” In other words, Moses is telling them, “watch yourselves closely, because people are watching you…don’t make a fool of yourselves and don’t make a fool of our God.” Miller puts it simply, “the righteous commandments and the keeping of them is the way that God is somehow known and found in the midst of the community.”[2] How we act in the name of God doesn’t change who God is, but it does shape how other people perceive God.

Sometimes I see the way that self-professed “Christians” behave and I listen to the laws and regulations they try to claim are “Biblical,” and I can’t help but think they’re making a fool of God. I feel like we need a parking lot speech: “Listen up, please remember to be on your best behavior.” I can’t tell you how many of my friends, or even family members, are utterly disgusted by their perception of “Christians” and the “God” they claim to serve. They’re paying attention, and what they see and hear makes them want to have nothing to do with it. I can remember having a conversation with a college student, back when I was campus minister at VCU, and having them tell me, “If more preachers were like you then I might actually go to church.” I’m not saying this to toot my own horn but to pose the question: to what or whom were they comparing me? What was their prior perception of church and Christianity that a guy who comes along and talks about grace and loving your neighbor would blow their mind?

That’s what Deuteronomy tells us God wants of his followers. “The nations are watching you, and I want them to say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and insightful people!’” Moses wants the Israelites to blow people’s minds by the way they live, and love, and speak, and act. And James wants the church to blow people’s minds with the fruit they bear. Like Moses, James’ words are designed to shape and inspire the behavior of a community who bears the image of God, a community hoping to “produce God’s righteousness.” James is calling Christians to speak and act in ways that bear faithful witness to the Law of God—to the word of God that has been planted within them. God’s word is the seed which grows in us to bear the fruit of new creation, just as God’s word brought about the original creation.[3]

Since words are so important, it makes since that one of the primary ways in which we bear fruit is by what we say, by the words our tongues bear. This is why James instructs the church: “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. This is because an angry person doesn’t produce God’s righteousness.” Human anger is not a vehicle for God’s justice.[4]

If you’re looking for great examples of how not to do this…it’s election season. Get ready for attack ads and slander, it’s already started. There will public debates in which absolutely NO listening is done, lots of interrupting occurs, and plenty of anger is expelled. I’d love to see a debate open with the moderator reading these lines from James: “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry. This is because an angry person doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. Therefore, with humility, set aside all moral filth and the growth of wickedness, and welcome the word planted deep inside you—the very word that is able to save you.” Why is it so laughable to think that this is possible? Is it because we watch live political debates as though they’re pay per view boxing matches? We just want to see our candidate land a good one against their opponent.

Anger disturbs our souls in ways that cause us to seek stability through reinforcement rather than correction.[5] It’s very difficult to listen well when we are angry. In anger, our devotion tends to sway from concern for God’s righteousness to obsessive self-righteousness. We’ll say or do whatever it is that makes us feel good, right, justified…rather than saying and doing whatever it is that enables us to bear the image of God to our neighbor. “Have you forgotten that you bear God’s image?”, James asks his listeners. “It’s like you’ve looked in a mirror and then immediately forgotten what you look like as soon as you walk away.” How, in a world with an estimated 2.2 billion Christians is there seemingly so little that resembles Christ?

I’ll tell you how. We’re looking in the wrong places. We’re looking at screens—phones and T.V.s. We’re being fed by hype rather than hope. In truth there is so much that resembles Christ in this world. We’re just not paying much attention to it. It’s not what creates headlines. Anger is attention grabbing. Violence is news worthy. In a world devoted to the pursuit of wealth and power it is hard to draw attention to what James called true devotion: caring for the weak. I’m reminded of Jesus’ parking lot parable. He’s not teaching about the border of the promised land, but about the day of judgment when the King gathers all the nations before him at the border between this life and the next and judges them for what they have done. “Remember, what you do for the least of these, you also do to me.” “Listen up, don’t make a fool of yourself by pursuing power and wealth at the expense of the little ones,” he’s saying. “Make a Christian of yourself by pursuing love and grace through service.”

There is so much that resembles Christ in this world. But how quickly do we forget the image of God that smiles back at us from creation when we stick our face in a phone full of angry tweets? How many moments of beauty do we miss while rewatching moments of ugliness on the news? There are people in this world serving, and loving, and caring, and bearing the fruit of God’s righteousness to those in need. I count you among these people. I know that at this very moment there are some of you thinking about the next meal you’ll make to serve to this community, some of you thinking about how we can raise money to put together 10,000 meals to feed the hungry, some of you thinking about how to collect socks to clothe the needy, some of you will volunteer at the hospital this week to visit the sick, some of you are exhausted from a busy week of parenting or grandparenting. I give thanks to God for each and every one of you.

When watching your T.V. screens makes you want to scream; when you are sick and tired of looking at the idiocy popping up on your smart phones; when you can’t stand listening to your radio any longer…turn it off and listen to the word of God instead. Turn from the eye-catching evil to look at the ways in which God’s word is bearing fruit in the world. It’s easy to become so enamored with the sensationalism of sin that we forgot about what is possible in Christ through faith. There are plenty of people making fools of themselves in God’s name, but I encourage you to watch the ones in whom God’s wisdom is growing. Listen and learn from the word of God. You’ll feel better for it. The world will be better for it. Amen.

[1] Miller, Patrick. “Deuteronomy” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1990, Westminster-John Knox. Louisville, KY. Page 53.

[2] Ibid. 57.

[3] Perkins, Pheme. “First and Second Peter, James, and Jude” from Interpretation. Page 102.

[4] Ibid. 103.

[5] Ibid.