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Sunday, October 17, 2010
What Really Matters Transforming Our Actions
By Rev. Jerry Herships
James 2:17
In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
Matthew 7:20
20Thus you will know them by their fruits.
Mark 8:35
35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
We are finishing up a three part series called What Really Matters: Transformation. We started with transforming our mind. Last week we talked about transforming our heart. This week we are going to close the series by talking about how all this leads to transforming our actions.
It is not by accident that we talked about these transformations in this order. I believe there is a natural progression. I believe that transforming our mind leads to a transformation of the heart. I also believe that once our minds and hearts are transformed it is all but impossible to not transform our actions, in the same way that a tree naturally produces fruit. When we have transformed our minds and hearts we will produce the fruits of the spirit in our actions.
Paul talks about the fruits of the spirit in his letter to the Galatians. He understands them to be: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self Control. All of these are things that are exemplified, not by thinking about them or just “feeling” them, they need to be lived out. People will see our love in action, they will see our Joy, see our kindness, our patience, and our self control.
And, much like the tree, if we don’t produce fruit, there is something wrong with the tree. A strong, healthy tree produces fruit. A strong, healthy transformed life in God will produce more love and joy and kindness and goodness in the world.
Transforming the mind and heart is the work of the gardeners. It is what we do to prepare to go out in the world. Prior to transforming our hearts and minds, we might have lived a life that didn’t produce much fruit. Some have said it felt like they were just going through the motions.
“Going through the motions” goes away after transformation. Remember for something to be transformed, the old way has to go away. It has to die. In this way, transformation is about dying to an old way of being. When it comes to the three things we are looking at, namely mind, heart and actions, we are looking at a new way of thinking, feeling and living. The old ways die. This is what Jesus meant when he said: 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. It means we are choosing to die to our old ways. We are choosing a new life. We are choosing a new life in Christ. This is what transformation is about.
Now let me be clear about what these scriptures DON’T mean. We will start with the first scripture from James, which is one of the most misunderstood. First off, there is great debate about whether this is James the brother of Jesus or a different James. He makes no reference to being Jesus’ brother. If you were the brother of the Son of God, I would think you would play that card when introducing yourself!
Regarding the actual scripture verse, the first point to make is NOT talking about what it takes to get into heaven. We don’t EARN our way into heaven. Our actions do not ring up brownie points that get us closer to the pearly gates. As we have talked about before, God’s grace is a gift. The author of James is not saying that your faith is false because you don’t act and BECAUSE your faith is false you won’t get into heaven. That’s not it at all. The author is saying that your faith will NATURALLY lead to actions. They go hand in hand but it is not a deal breaker regarding the afterlife. Your actions change because it’s impossible for you NOT TO. James believed that true faith will always be manifest in one’s life, especially in the ways one treats the poor and oppressed. James believes that those who have faith need to show it in how they live. For James, religious conviction (“faith”) and concrete behavior (“works”) are inseparable. He writes later in this letter, “be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.
So how do we do this? How do we do “work?” It is simple…but not easy. At the basic level it is obeying the one command that matters, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
One way of knowing if this God stuff is sinking in is to take an honest assessment of how you are going through your day. I still get mad and frustrated when I have to fix something at home. It is safe to say you won’t see a whole lot of “Patience.” That particular gift of the spirit is more or less absent on those days. Remember, the gifts Paul is talking about are: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self Control. After days weeks, months and years of going to church, have you seen an increase in these? These are the things that will blossom. It doesn’t mean that you have to give up your job and go work for a leper colony…although if you are called to go, by all means go. It means with all this “God stuff” in your life, are you living your life any different than you were before?
The progress will never seem fast enough. Some of you have heard this story about the bamboo tree. If you have heard it bear with me. I think it is a great example of how we sometimes grow.
A lot of people are baffled by the way the bamboo tree grows. When it is first planted it looks like nothing is happening for the first few weeks. Then it looks like nothing is happening for the first few months. Then it looks like nothing is happening for the first few years! It barely grows, usually just a few feet. Then in the FIFTH year (!) the tree shoots up and grows up to 90 feet in a single year! Why did it wait?
The truth is…it didn’t. During those first few years the tree was growing constantly. The growth was there, you just couldn’t see it. The bamboo, (of which there are over 1600 varieties, was growing during those early years…deeper into the ground. The bamboo uses those early years to develop its root system. It is this early root system that allows for the explosive growth above the ground during the fifth year.
I think for many of us our faith looks a lot like the bamboo tree. We spend years developing our root system, trying to develop our foundation. On the outside, it sort of looks like nothing is happening. There is no visible difference to our lives. It is during these early years of developing our foundation that we start to renew our minds and hearts. When that work comes to fruition, we find ourselves bursting out, much like the bamboo, doing everything we can to reach up and out into the world. That early work was necessary, as the foundation, for the dramatic work that will follow out into the world. To establish that foundation, those early roots, and NOT shooting out into the world, would make no sense. So why develop the foundation at all? The bamboo, like our lives, needs a good foundation to withstand explosive growth out in the world.
I don’t know where you are in your tree of life. You might be in the first couple of years and growing in your knowledge and asking hard questions. GOOD! You might be in the next couple of years…finding yourself thinking about people outside yourself, being more compassionate towards those less fortunate than you and feeling a nudge to “get out there.” You might be ready to break new ground and to go out into the world, reaching out and up.
Wherever you are, enjoy the journey. Life is too short to beat yourself up. Give yourself a little grace and enjoy the ride, knowing that God isn’t through with you and there are a lot more wonderful growth opportunities still ahead.