Civility Begins at Home    

James 3:13-4:3;Mark 9:30-37

The author of today’s lesson from the book of James gives advice that makes us want to cheer, clap, or maybe even say, “Amen.” On first reading or first hearing his advice, we might imagine sending it to the people on our list of least favorite friends, family or coworkers.  You have a list.  We all have such a list.  You know the list, the one with the vulgar, unflattering name.  And sadly, we bring that list to church. A cartoon pictures a woman leaving worship, telling the pastor, “I only wish my brother-in-law could have heard that sermon.”  Yes. James speaks to our enemies, or those who frustrate us:  “if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.  Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, and devilish.”  (James 3:14-15, New Revised Standard Version)  Honestly, don’t you want to cheer?  I do.  I know folks, people on my list, who need to hear that message.  They really need it. 

We preachers are especially tempted to love passages like this one.  James has real finger-wagging potential:  “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?  Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?” (James 4:1) And congregations are full people like us, with cravings galore. One writer observed that this lesson is especially pertinent to our lives.  “North American culture,” says Barbara Taylor, “depends on active envy and ambition as heavily as it depends on fossil fuels.” (Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, page 91.) I thought to myself, when I read Taylor’s comment, “Preach it, sister!”  And I remembered just a couple of weeks ago being on the tour of Hollywood’s homes, each more extravagant than the other.  And more self indulgent.  Cravings.  On our vacation Lynne and I also saw evidence of endless craving first-hand as, carefully guided, we gawked and gaped our way around William Randolph Hearst’s little hideaway overlooking the Pacific at San Simeon.  I use the word “little” ironically; the main dining room is larger than the average American home. And that just one dining room in one of three homes on the site. More than a mansion, it’s affectionately knows as his “castle.”

But James isn’t talking to people in castles, whether in Hollywood, Rye, or on Boston Post Road.  James is speaking to a church in conflict with each another.  Yes, James is writing to his church. James is speaking to the faithful, no one else.  That means that James is speaking to us, and he calls us to a different kind of wisdom.  “Who is wise and understanding among you?” James asks.  Then he quickly answers his own question:  “Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.”  (James 3:13)

It’s a good thing James wasn’t watching me, or the woman in the SUV behind me, last Thursday morning.  She leaned on her horn when I stopped for a red light at the corner of North Barry and Mamaroneck Avenue last Thursday morning. I had stopped at that red light before turning right.  Silly me.  Among several thoughts I had about her was that she needed to get the email.  And then I realized that, when she honked, I had instinctively thrown up my hand.  I hadn’t made a crude gesture, just asked, “What?”  But even as I imagined the market for car windows with a message like, “I’ll drive my car.  You drive yours,” I realized that at that intersection, I needed patience as much as she.  And I wondered who might be watching us, and what someone watching me might have thought.  As the comic strip character, Pogo, noted years ago, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”  Maybe that email had a message for me, too.

You see, in that moment at the intersection last Thursday, neither of us showed much gentleness, not to mention civility.  And I had precious little wisdom, James would say.  For what, to James, is wisdom?  Listen again:  “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of hypocrisy.  And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.” (James 3:17-18)

That’s quite a prescription for us, in this culture, living at a pace that is at once frantic, selfish, and unforgiving.  Civility has sunk to the place where Serena Williams can destroy her racket on center court and, in full view of thousands in the stands and millions on TV, verbally demean the line judge who made a call that she considered wrong. And in the same week, SC congressman Joe Wilson feels no need to apologize for shouting at the President of the United States, during his health care speech to a joint session of congress, “You lie.” These days, our culture knows neither shame nor civility.  So James reminds us, at least, “Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil, and [the devil] will flee from you.  Draw near to God, and [God] will draw near to you.”   (James 4:7-8a)

 Friends, here’s the thing:  this lesson is not merely about “making nice” with each other, though recovering even outward civility is a necessary hope in our land, in our families, and in our churches; nor is this lesson is merely about teaching our children the faith, though as we baptize Sheena this morning we do well to remember that she and her friends here will learn about God, about their manners, and loving, Christian behavior from their parents and from us.  Those are important reminders, but the point of the lesson is a bit deeper still.

 Here it is:  this lesson is about being truly and fully the people that Christ died that we might become.  This lesson is about gratefully living the faith to which God calls us:  a faith that invites us to be whole, healed, and happy human beings.  Whole, healed and happy includes civil, of course.  But here’s the hard truth: We will have a more civil society not by preaching to our neighbors, but by becoming more tolerant ourselves.  And more patients; more kind; and yes, more loving.  God knows our faults better than we do.  But God’s response is to love us to death.  And beyond.  The least we can do is try to return the favor, both to God and to our neighbors. If civility, not to say Christian love, is to be reborn in our culture, it has to begin with me, period.  A fruit of Christian love, civility begins at home.  In our church, and in our hearts. We are God’s children, no less than is little Sheena.  We hope she grows up healthy and strong, respecting herself and her friends.  I believe that God wants the same for us.

Amen.