The Wonders of
Implants
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United, Aurora, CO 9/2/2012
Based on James
1:17-27 & Mark 7:1-23
When
I was a child there was a commercial on T.V. that I thought rather cleaver, for
it challenged our usual stereo types of what was being asked. In this commercial you see this person
walking up to his neighbor’s fence. The
neighbor seeing his visitor in a gesture of being a good host invites the
neighbor over for a drink. The neighbor
declines by responding, “Thank you but no.
I don’t drink.” The host say’s,
“I was referring to a glass of water or some iced tea.” The generic understanding that most people
have of the word “drink” refers to some type of alcoholic beverage. Yet the meaning is much broader than inferring
alcohol.
Another word that
gives a similar type of response is the word “implants.” What comes to the mind when one first hears
this word is “silicone.” Yet there are
all sorts of implants: there are dental implants, cornea implants, tissue
implants. There are implants for
contraception and there are implants for fertilization. When you place a fence post into the ground,
that post has been implanted. So there
are implants that can leave us emotionally cool, warm, or even hot and
bothered.
But “implants” can
also be wondrous and moving. Medical
implants generally give us a higher quality of life and many times is truly
life giving. In this morning” Epistle, James
tells us of the implant that God has given each of us. “Welcome with meekness the implanted word
that has the power to save your soul.” James 1:21b James tells us that,“ God gave us birth by the word of
truth.” We are told in the
Hebrew Bible that we were wonderfully knitted together at God’s own hand. A part of that thread God used in us is God’s
word
of truth, it has been implanted in each and every person. All we have to do is recognize it, not with
boosting, but with meekness. For it is
through this recognition, this welcoming the implanted word that gives us what
we need to grow and mature into what God wishes for us.
Over the past
couple of meetings of Sacred Grounds, one of the questions that Wayne Laws
helped answer in a follow-up e-mail this week was the timing of various books
written in the New Testament. Most
people when looking at the books as they are placed in the New Testament think
this is the chronological order in which they were written. But this is not the case. Most scholars today believe that the Epistle
of James was the first document written to the church, dating around 50
AD. This may sound like a mute point,
but it is important in understanding who the audience was that the author was
writing to and what might have been going on at that time in history, which
would then give us a clearer picture as to how to understand and interpret
these writings.
James is giving us
some advice that still holds true with Christians of today. Several of these pieces of advice by James focus
around our conduct with others. James
tells us to be slow to speak, but quick to listen. One of the largest issues in most church
disputes centers around this principle.
When leaders of a conference come in and try to make heads and tails of
a church dispute, more times than not, that person will hear in one form or
another that the problem comes because people are not being heard. When we are in a board meeting and someone is
saying something, often it feels to that person as if they are not being
listened to. Now, letting someone say
what is on their minds and heart is the first step in communicating, but there
is no communication until the one listening actually opens their mind enough to
truly hear what is being sad.
There is a story I
like to share and if you have heard this one already, I apologize but it makes
the point very clearly. When I was
around 4 or 5 years old, my grandmother and I were shopping for groceries. As we rounded the corner of one of the
aisles, at the other end was a woman who was very pregnant. Now mind you, this was in the late 1950’s
when you never publicly spoke about such matters. I tugged on my grandmother’s dress and
quietly informed my grandmother about the lady who was pregnant. There was no answer. As we each approached each other, I once
again tugged on grandmother’s dress hem thinking that she didn’t hear me the
first time, stated in a little louder voice that the woman coming toward us was
going to have a baby; still no response.
Once we had passed each other, I said in a voice that the clerk at the
front of the store could hear, “Grandma,
that lady is going to have a baby!” “Yes,
Steven I can see that.” my grandmother acknowledged with a face as red as a
radish. The point was, I thought I
wasn’t being heard, and persisted until not only did my grandmother hear, but
most likely everyone in the store as well.
Too often, we don’t acknowledge what someone is trying to tell us, or we
might give some flipped response that comes across as saying “their thoughts
and ideas” are not valid.
Another issue that
James is speaking to the early church: is
how our faith translates through our actions. It was James’ understanding that you cannot
call yourself a true person of the light,
without it showing through your deeds. The
Apostle Paul, spoke about this when he said, “if he gave money to the poor but did not have love, he was an empty
sounding gong.” In the Gospel of
Mark, Jesus say’s, “that it is what comes
from the inside that shows if we are pure or not.”
Yesterday I
attended the official acceptance of the Kenyan Fellowship that worships once a
month in our sanctuary become an official chapter of the National Kenyan
Christian Fellowship of America organization.
What an amazing time of worship I experienced there. Some of the songs were in English, others
were in Swahili. During those songs in
Swahili, various people at my table would lean over and tell me the English
hymn it was taken from, many times being a variation of something that was
familiar to me. During that worship,
much time was spent praising God and Jesus.
These were words that could only be spoken from what was coming out of
the heart. Because of those praises I
was feeling apart of the gathering, not just a white man being tolerated, but a
person included in their special celebration.
At various times there were people who would let out a sound that can
only be made by the vibrating of the tongue, but you could tell that this was a
praise that was coming from joy coming from deep within the heart as they were
worshiping God.
James directs us in
these verses to be dutiful to the widow and orphans who are in need. This is a mandate to care for those who are
less fortunate, who are in need, who do not have a voice. Last week as Jean Mott and I were bringing
some things from the retreat on visioning back to the church, we came across a
man who is home challenged and spends a certain amount of time utilizing the
patio near the office door. We had some
left over sandwiches from the retreat and after chatting with him for awhile,
we asked if he had eaten supper yet, and of course the answer was, “no.” So we gave a couple of sandwiches to him,
which then lead into some more conversation.
What bothers me, is that during council, just the week before, we had
discussed as to whether we should ask this man to move on, without even
checking out what his circumstances in life might be. I think James or Jesus for that matter would
have been very sad with that discussion.
If we call
ourselves people who are receivers of the word
of truth, I think we have a huge up hill road to travel before we can truly
make that claim. Yes, we make burritos
once a month to pass out to “day” labors and those who hang out at the downtown
Denver mission, but how are we doing with people who are literally sitting at
our front steps? I wonder if we more
often than not are the people James says, “who look at themselves in the mirror
and then after walking away, forget what they look like.” In other words, we can hear the word of God on
Sunday morning, leaving here feeling good, but come Monday have forgotten what
we had experienced on Sunday.
There is
wondrousness in the implant that God gives to us. Our challenge is to “welcome in meekness this
implanted word from God,” for it
is through this welcoming that we will bring life and salvation to a world that
is stained in forgetfulness, selfishness, and egocentric. Amen
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