Gifts from God

15th Sunday of Pentecost Year B James 1:17-27 Every Good Gift September 2, 2018 Children’s Sermon…… Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness. (v. 19-20) Object: Sunday comic pages Good morning, boys and girls. How many of you like the Sunday comics in the newspaper? (Show the comic pages and let them answer.) What are your favorite comics? (Let them answer.) Some of my favorites are Garfield, Beetle Bailey and Hagar the Horrible. One thing that I always notice about the comics is that there is usually someone who is always getting picked on. Do you notice that Garfield always picks on Odie and Jon, his owner. Sarge always picks on Beetle Bailey. There are people always shooting arrows at Hagar the Horrible. The funny thing is that these characters who get picked on never appear to really get angry. (Have an example of this ready and read it to the children. Then express your opinion that the character has a chance to be angry, but never shows it.) That's what I like about this comic strip. It reminds me of this morning's lesson. In the lesson we are told to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. Anger does not make us good. God wants us to be good. If I didn't know better, I'd say that (name the comic character who didn't become angry) is doing what God wants. He is not becoming angry, even though he may have a good reason to be. Here's what I want you to remember this week. We all have reasons to become angry at something every day. Sometimes we can't help but become angry. It's okay to be angry. God wants us to think before we become angry. Listen to others who may make us angry. Think before you say something in return that may make an argument worse. Try very hard not to become angry with someone. Anger doesn't make us good. The next time that someone is making you angry remember our lesson this moining. Think of (name the comic character). Try not to become angry. Try to love the other person. That's what God wants of us. CSS Publishing Co., James 1:17-27 Common English Bible (CEB) 17 Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from above. These gifts come down from the Father, the creator of the heavenly lights, in whose character there is no change at all. 18 He chose to give us birth by his true word, and here is the result: we are like the first crop from the harvest of everything he created. Welcoming and doing the word 19 Know this, my dear brothers and sisters: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry. 20 This is because an angry person doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. 21 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. 22 You must be doers of the word and not only hearers who mislead themselves.23 Those who hear but don’t do the word are like those who look at their faces in a mirror. 24 They look at themselves, walk away, and immediately forget what they were like. 25 But there are those who study the perfect law, the law of freedom, and continue to do it. They don’t listen and then forget, but they put it into practice in their lives. They will be blessed in whatever they do. 26 If those who claim devotion to God don’t control what they say, they mislead themselves. Their devotion is worthless. 27 True devotion, the kind that is pure and faultless before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their difficulties and to keep the world from contaminating us. Common English Bible (CEB) Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible The Hebrew faith has a long tradition of wisdom literature – practical advice on how to live from day to day. As a matter of fact there is a whole section of the old testament which is considered wisdom text – Job, proverbs, song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes are all considered to be practical advice. In the new testament – the Christian book of wisdom or practical advice on how to be a Christian. The book of James is an interesting book. There are those like Martin Luther who hate this book. There is no mention of Jesus or Christ in this book. It almost did not even make it into the bible. No one is for sure of who James is- the popular belief is that he is the brother of Jesus, who became an important bishop in the early church. James does speak of the church – but he is not specific about which church. This book is considered a universal letter- not addressed to a specific congregation for a specific reason. I think that James offers a powerful message for all of us to take into consideration. I don’t think that you even need to be a Christian in order to take the advice of James – but it sure does help. The book of James begins with the words – Count it all Joy – what ever happens in life to be positive and to find the joy in it. There are two ways of dealing with life – we can be positive or we can be negative – but we should be positive – because God is positive. Today I want to focus on 4 messages in James chapter 1 Our scripture for today starts out with the words every good gift comes from God. In a village in Africa, a teacher taught her students the meaning of Christmas. Of giving gifts in honor of the new born king. The children were not Christian, but they understood anyway. One little boy was so taken with the idea, that he gave his teacher a gift the next stay. A beautiful stone, she noticed that this kind of stone could only be found in a village by the sea – that was some distance from where they lived. She thanked the little boy and asked where he go the stone – he told her that village. She said that is a little far, you didn’t need to go through that much trouble to give me a gift, you could have gotten me something simpler. No replied the little boy – the trip was a part of the gift to show you that I care. Often when we get a gift, we are not aware of what the person needed to do to achieve the gift. We don’t know the labor and love that went into acquiring it for us. Think about the gifts that God has given us – the earth, our food, our well being, our lives, our families and the countless other blessing we have in life – what did it take for God to create those gifts? What about the gifts that Christ has given us – salvation, understanding, new life, - how much did he have to sacrifice to come to earth and to die on a cross? Labor Day is our chance to think about our gifts, and the hands that gave them to us. We get to rest, but we also think of theneeds of others. Many who work in order to survive and to help their families – and yet who work tirelessly to give us the gifts of comfort and life, many of which we don’t even think of. The second message of this passage is To be quick to listen and slow to anger. We have to learn to control our emotions and reactions to life. The ear, the tongue, and the temper — all three elements of our personal and physical anatomy, yet all three ruled with special distinction when they become integrated within the anatomy of our faith. The ear, the tongue, the temper — even these for the Christian are subject to the rule of Christ in our lives. Amen. We have to control each of those things. I love going to the Brookfield zoo. It was a great experience to see not just the animals – but the relationship that we have with them as people. How we learn to live together. The primate building – starts out like a maze, and you had to choose which way to get in. Making the point that primates are the only animals in the world who are able to make a choice about anything. All other animals don’t really think about what they are doing they just automatically do it. They rely on their instincts to live and survive. Some choices we take for granted – and some we ponder over for months. But are lives are always full of choices. Our faith reminds us that we even have a choice about how we deal with life. When cant control the events of our life – but no matter what we can always choose joy – and the joyful path. We can choose to heal and move on from hurts, or we can stay stuck and constantly remember what someone said or did. Life for humans is full of choices. The third lesson of this chapter – faith without works is dead. That is one reason that Martin Luther hated this book. For him – grace is the crux of our faith. We are saved by God’s grace alone. We don’t and can’t do anything to earn our favor with God. Actually James does not negate that, but he says that if we are saved by grace, then we live in grace by saying thank you with our actions. The book of James, the new testament book of wisdom also is based on the premise of choice. We can choose what is wise or we can choose what is foolish. The consequensces are different for each choice. James also wants us to know that one is alive and one is dead. Its is sort of like two plants – one alive and one dead. The dead one looks beautiful and takes no work but a little dusting. The living one must be waters and sunned and taken care of. Which type of faith do you have – living are artificial? Faith without works is dead. The final lesson of James chapter 1 – faith without works is like looking in the mirror and forgetting what you see. We should see God in all that we do. Why do we come to church every Sunday? Why did we come this Sunday? But here’s the reason we Christians gather for worship week after week: We worship to wake up. We worship to come alive and take notice of the presence and power of God in the world, in our lives, in everything we see and do and touch and feel. The Latin “re-ligare” from which we get our word “religion” has the root “lig” — which scholars have traced back partly to meaning “pay attention.” Any religious service, any religious act, should make us sit up, shake our heads, and focus in on the divine. When our lives adhere to a set schedule of work, when everyday routines can be acted out without even thinking about them, we lose consciousness to the wonders that surround us. The wonder of God’s creation. The wonder of love. The wonder of family. The wonder of breathing in and out. The wonder of life. What labor of love goes into what you do for others. More importantly what labor of love has gone into what others have done for you? Look at the gifts in your live – who gave them? How did you get them? What is your response to those who gave them to you? This labor day – may we remember the practical things about life. Being a Christian is not about what we think in our hear – it is about what we do in our life. We come in here, so that we can be better persons out there. We can be bitter about the things that life gives us – or we can recognize the gifts we receive from God. It is our choice. Be practical in your faith, even in times that you may not say Jesus – live Jesus in your life. Amen. Other illustrations…… The “Gratitude Salute” – James 1:17-27 by Leonard Sweet Why are you here? Why did you come to church this morning? What made you voluntarily choose to spend the last summer Sunday -- before the too busy, too crowded Labor Day weekend -- inside a church? Why aren’t you lolling on some beach? (Okay, okay--maybe you will be later this afternoon!) Maybe you are here out of habit. Maybe going to church is “what you do” on Sunday morning. Maybe you are here because your parents dragged you into the car, kicking and screaming, and you would rather be anywhere else. Maybe you are here because you are lonely. Maybe you are here because you feel something is wrong or missing in your life. Maybe you are here hoping that something in here will make you different in here (point to heart). None of these are bad reasons to be at church on a sunny September Sunday (nope, not even being brought by your parents). G. K. Chesterton, one of the most important writers of the last century, put it like this: “The world shall perish not for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder.” This week’s epistle text is from the Letter of James, the letter Martin Luther famously pooh-poohed as “an epistle of straw.” Luther’s words gave a lot of us a “free pass” on James. James was seen as “weak sauce” — not worthy of much attention. But skipping James lets us slip by to our peril of slipping up and missing some of the most real life, faith-in-action admonishments in the New Testament. Could that be the real reason it is so tempting to keep James on the back burner? James won’t let us get away with some things we like getting away with? Judge Lienhouts, who established one of the most successful probation programs in the United States, told of a time he had listened to a young man pour out his tale of woe for an hour and a half, without his saying a word. At the end of this time, the young man said, "Thank you. You have been the greatest help of anyone I've ever known. No one else has ever taken the time to listen to me." The late Dr. Charles Jefferson once said, "So prone is anger to mix itself with base and unlovely elements, so frequently does it stir up the mud at the bottom of the soul, that it is not easy to free our minds from the feeling that anger has something sinful in it; or, if not actually sinful, an unlovely flaw in conduct, a deformity in character from which we may wisely pray to be delivered."