Don't Forget What You Look Like
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
For Sundays In Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany
A young college graduate embarked on what he hoped would be a promising career in sales. He was outgoing, witty, and enthusiastic. His company assigned him his territory. It was a rural area in the Midwest. His responsibility was to sell the latest in farm equipment to the farmers in the area. With great fervor he memorized the strategy sales pitch and left his office to spread his message of "better farming through better equipment."
His first two visits had not resulted in a sale. But he could sense that the two prospects had been listening as he had rattled off his litany of better yields, faster harvests, and more long-term profits due to updated equipment. He noted in his customer data base beside each name, "Initial cultivation promising, return for follow-up visit."
Then, he stopped in front of his third farm house. The elderly farmer sat on his front porch gently munching a cracker as he rocked in his rocker. With a flourish the young salesman bounced up the rickety steps to the porch.
"Howdy," he exclaimed.
"Howdy, yourself," came the response.
"Sir, can I show you a catalog of modern farm equipment?"
"Nope," said the old farmer.
"Well, sir, don't you want to know how to improve your farming methods?"
After a few minutes of uneasy silence, the thoughtful old farmer raised his head and looked the young salesman directly in the eyes. He spoke firmly: "Son, I don't farm half as good now as I already know how to farm."
In a very real way, the book of James reminds us Christians of what we already know how to do but do not do.
When we look at the book of James we already know the things it tells us to do. That's its point. Knowing what to do is not as important as doing what we already know to do. What we profess and what we hear is never as important as what we do.
Many Christians come to worship to have a moment of calm in the midst of a tempestuous world. Nothing wrong with that. Other Christians come to worship to have their spirits lifted by hearing the music, listening to the prayers, and reflecting on the sermon. Nothing wrong with that, either. We all need shelters which provide respites from the elements and filling stations where we can get a dose of high octane preaching. We sometimes feel refreshed, if not enlightened, when the service is about to conclude and the choir launches into its threefold Amen after the benediction.
In fact, professors of preaching tell us that the opening of a service as well as a sermon should be an attention grabber. Then with everyone on board, we should slide together toward illumination, right thinking, and lofty praise until the noon hour chimes and the threefold Amen moves us contentedly into the parking lot.
Today's text assumes such a posture toward the Christian life. Consequently it singes our hair with a threefold alert: receive the word, do the word, and reflect genuine religion so you will recognize yourself as a Christian. The hearers who forget are contrasted with those who translate the words they hear into their lives. Hearing and doing are one.
All too often we Christians deceive ourselves. Profession and confession must be enacted in order to be real.
The early Christian church contained a powerful healing ingredient. As these small groups of people, often meeting in secret, worshiped together, their order of service was geared first of all toward self-disclosure and confession (exo-mologesis). This was often followed by pleas for forgiveness and plans for making restitution. A period of fellowship then concluded their gathering. The early church followed this worship formula until A.D. 325 when Constantine assumed control of the church for all Roman citizens. With an eye toward making the church acceptable, Constantine replaced the requirement of open, personal disclosure with private confession to a priest. Finally, in the thirteenth century, the church made private confession to a priest at least once a year an obligation. Martin Luther, of course, dispensed with closed confession.1
Verbal acknowledgment of one's failures and short-comings, whether to God in prayer or to one's brother and sister in Christ, is vital to emotional stability. We in the church are coming to a realization of this fact. Through the centuries confession became frowned upon by psychiatrists and clergy because it went to a pathological extreme and became a symptom of disease. Yet confession, in its proper context, remains one of our most effective methods of obtaining relief from guilt. In this respect we have much to learn from the early church.
But notice this important fact: the early church did not end the process of guilt resolution with confession. The early Christian church did more than pray and confess. Its members made plans for restitution so their lives could mirror their beliefs.
Reparation, the process by which one makes amends for wrongs or injuries done to others, has been a part of the Christian tradition since the inception of the church.2
The epistle of James and other verses throughout the New Testament illustrate that one's relationship with other human beings provides an accurate measuring stick for the status of one's relationship with God.
Reparation is a clear-cut, constructive method for guilt resolution. Sometimes a change in behavior can do more for our stability than all the platitudes we can utter, prayers we can pray, or beliefs to which we can subscribe.
James gives us the wonderful image of a mirror held before us which enables us to see who we are in the light of God's love. Then, he cautions, after looking at ourselves in that mirror we should not go out into the world and forget what we, as Christians, are supposed to look like. We are to be engaged with the world, but we are supposed to reflect our true Christian selves instead of the world's persona. We must so live that our Christian reflection is commensurate with what we reflect to the world.
The persona was the mask which actors in Greek drama wore during plays. One character could play many roles. By changing the persona, the mask, a character changed personality. One could easily slip into another role and be a different self. James is arguing for a self in which beliefs and behavior within the church are consistent with one's actions and attitudes beyond the doors of the church. Appearances are important.
Given the Jewish background of the epistle of James, there is much similarity with an ancient rabinnic story about two families, the family of Garmu and the family of Abtinos.
The Garmu family were the experts in baking the showbread for the Temple. Twelve special loaves were placed on the golden table of the Sanctuary and exchanged for new ones each week. The Abtinos family were the experts in making the incense used in the Temple ritual by the priests.
The elders of the Garmu family decided not to teach their skills to anyone outside the family, and the same decision was made by the Abtinos elders. The result was that the special methods of baking the showbread for the Temple and of making the holy incense were closely guarded secrets which no one outside those two families could ever learn.
The rabbis were not happy with the policy of the families and were afraid that the Temple service would be endangered if they allowed such a monopoly to continue. So they called in other specialist bakers and perfumery experts from Alexandria in Egypt to replace the two families. But things did not go at all well. The new bakers were unable to make the Temple loaves stay fresh all week, like the showbread of Garmu; and the incense of the Alexandrians did not send its smoke up in a perfectly straight line like the Abtinos incense.
So the Temple heads called in the heads of the two old families, but they refused to come. Finally, after their fee was doubled, they came before the Temple administrators who asked them why they did not instruct others in their skills. The Garmu and Abtinos patriarchs gave the same answer. The two families were concerned that outsiders might use the skills to their financial advantage and make the showbread and incense for purposes of idolatry.
In addition to their passionate concern that items used in the holy Temple would not be misused for idolatrous or secular purposes, the families of Garmu and Abtinos were highly praised for their moral concern that no one in their families should be suspected of using Temple material for their own purposes. That is why members of the Garmu family never ate pure bread loaves in case anyone would suspect them of eating Temple loaves or using the baking material for their own use. Similarly the women members of the Abtinos family never wore perfume so that there would never be any suspicion that they were taking some Temple incense ingredients for their private use. Indeed, they were so firm in this matter that before one of their men married a lady from another family, they stipulated to the bride that perfume was not to be used by their womenfolk, in order to rise above suspicion (Yoma 38a).
The historical story about the two families contains a powerful ethical lesson as noted by the late Rabbi Chaim Pearl, a noted authority on Judaism. The ethic is known in Hebrew as "For the sake of appearances." A situation should not only be correct, but it should appear to others that it is correct. In that way, outsiders can derive a good example from witnessing what is right. A great judge once declared: "It is not only necessary that justice be done; it is important that justice be seen to be done."3
The wider implications of the ethic run throughout Judaism and Christianity. After the children of Israel had completed the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness, the Bible records that Moses made a complete record of how every item had been used. The gold and the silver, the brass and every precious item were accounted for, to the very last piece. Why did he do this?4
Moses did this for the sake of appearances so the image of himself that he saw in the mirror of God would match the image of himself that he held forth to others. He could not allow himself to forget what he looked like. It was not only necessary for Moses to be honest in the sight of God; it was also important for Moses to be honest in the eyes of the people. He had glimpsed a high image of himself and he would not allow himself to look at himself otherwise.
Christian history affords us examples of saints in every age that gave their lives over to an image of themselves far beyond any they had ever known. And from that day forward, they never forgot what they looked like in the eyes of God.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola did not begin his life as a religious person. To the contrary, he was caught up in images of medieval chivalry. His fantasies were those of gallantry and kingly romance. He became a professional soldier, good at gambling, fighting, and having affairs with women. While defending a fortress in 1521, an artillery shot crashed between his legs, shattering his right leg and wounding his left.
As he lay ill and deformed in his family's castle, Ignatius was told by village surgeons that the skewed bones of his right leg would have to be broken and reset -- without anesthetic. Thirty years later he would still describe that agony as "butchery." While lying about and suffering further painful treatments that failed to help his brutalized leg, he sought books of medieval chivalry to read. But he could find no such books in the house. The only books available there were a four-volume Life of Jesus Christ (Vita Jesu Christi) and a kind of dictionary of saints. To combat his boredom he read those books. He possessed no thoughts then of either piety or religion.
In his later autobiography Ignatius wrote that as he read the books over many times, he became rather fond of what he found there.5 He began to acquire a vision of himself far beyond what he had previously held. He began to see himself as capable of living a life similar to Saint Francis and Saint Dominic. This new view of himself, having come from looking into the mirror of God, goaded his mediocrity and highlighted a going forward into a completely different way of living.
Ignatius never forgot what he looked like from that day forward. He advanced from good to better and founded the Society of Jesus. At age fifty he was elected the first superior general of the Society, thus becoming the true father of the Jesuits who have given so much to our Christian heritage. Certainly his view of himself at age fifty was far different from the man he had fantasized he'd be when he was a royal page or a competent military commander at a younger age. He had seen a higher image of himself.
As you and I leave this service today, we go forth having glimpsed a high image of ourselves. We have prayed, sung together, confessed our sins, reaffirmed our beliefs, and listened to this sermon. When we encounter our world, may our actions and words show others that we have not forgotten the image of ourselves that we saw in this place. Don't forget what you look like!
____________
1. Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973), p. 25 ff.
2. For a fuller treatment of the subject see "Confession and Reparation," in Harold C. Warlick, Jr., Liberation From Guilt (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1976), pp. 108-113.
3. Chaim Pearl, Theology in Rabinnic Stories (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), pp. 101-103.
4. Ibid.
5. Ignatius referred to himself in the third person when reflecting on this experience. See Luis Goncalves da Camara, S.J., The Autobiography of St. Ignatius Loyola, trans. by Joseph F. O'Callaghan, S. J. (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 23. Ron Hansen has a clear treatment of the stated events in his chapter, "The Pilgrim," in A Tremor of Bliss: Contemporary Writers on the Saints, ed. Paul Elie (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1994), pp. 111-146.
His first two visits had not resulted in a sale. But he could sense that the two prospects had been listening as he had rattled off his litany of better yields, faster harvests, and more long-term profits due to updated equipment. He noted in his customer data base beside each name, "Initial cultivation promising, return for follow-up visit."
Then, he stopped in front of his third farm house. The elderly farmer sat on his front porch gently munching a cracker as he rocked in his rocker. With a flourish the young salesman bounced up the rickety steps to the porch.
"Howdy," he exclaimed.
"Howdy, yourself," came the response.
"Sir, can I show you a catalog of modern farm equipment?"
"Nope," said the old farmer.
"Well, sir, don't you want to know how to improve your farming methods?"
After a few minutes of uneasy silence, the thoughtful old farmer raised his head and looked the young salesman directly in the eyes. He spoke firmly: "Son, I don't farm half as good now as I already know how to farm."
In a very real way, the book of James reminds us Christians of what we already know how to do but do not do.
When we look at the book of James we already know the things it tells us to do. That's its point. Knowing what to do is not as important as doing what we already know to do. What we profess and what we hear is never as important as what we do.
Many Christians come to worship to have a moment of calm in the midst of a tempestuous world. Nothing wrong with that. Other Christians come to worship to have their spirits lifted by hearing the music, listening to the prayers, and reflecting on the sermon. Nothing wrong with that, either. We all need shelters which provide respites from the elements and filling stations where we can get a dose of high octane preaching. We sometimes feel refreshed, if not enlightened, when the service is about to conclude and the choir launches into its threefold Amen after the benediction.
In fact, professors of preaching tell us that the opening of a service as well as a sermon should be an attention grabber. Then with everyone on board, we should slide together toward illumination, right thinking, and lofty praise until the noon hour chimes and the threefold Amen moves us contentedly into the parking lot.
Today's text assumes such a posture toward the Christian life. Consequently it singes our hair with a threefold alert: receive the word, do the word, and reflect genuine religion so you will recognize yourself as a Christian. The hearers who forget are contrasted with those who translate the words they hear into their lives. Hearing and doing are one.
All too often we Christians deceive ourselves. Profession and confession must be enacted in order to be real.
The early Christian church contained a powerful healing ingredient. As these small groups of people, often meeting in secret, worshiped together, their order of service was geared first of all toward self-disclosure and confession (exo-mologesis). This was often followed by pleas for forgiveness and plans for making restitution. A period of fellowship then concluded their gathering. The early church followed this worship formula until A.D. 325 when Constantine assumed control of the church for all Roman citizens. With an eye toward making the church acceptable, Constantine replaced the requirement of open, personal disclosure with private confession to a priest. Finally, in the thirteenth century, the church made private confession to a priest at least once a year an obligation. Martin Luther, of course, dispensed with closed confession.1
Verbal acknowledgment of one's failures and short-comings, whether to God in prayer or to one's brother and sister in Christ, is vital to emotional stability. We in the church are coming to a realization of this fact. Through the centuries confession became frowned upon by psychiatrists and clergy because it went to a pathological extreme and became a symptom of disease. Yet confession, in its proper context, remains one of our most effective methods of obtaining relief from guilt. In this respect we have much to learn from the early church.
But notice this important fact: the early church did not end the process of guilt resolution with confession. The early Christian church did more than pray and confess. Its members made plans for restitution so their lives could mirror their beliefs.
Reparation, the process by which one makes amends for wrongs or injuries done to others, has been a part of the Christian tradition since the inception of the church.2
The epistle of James and other verses throughout the New Testament illustrate that one's relationship with other human beings provides an accurate measuring stick for the status of one's relationship with God.
Reparation is a clear-cut, constructive method for guilt resolution. Sometimes a change in behavior can do more for our stability than all the platitudes we can utter, prayers we can pray, or beliefs to which we can subscribe.
James gives us the wonderful image of a mirror held before us which enables us to see who we are in the light of God's love. Then, he cautions, after looking at ourselves in that mirror we should not go out into the world and forget what we, as Christians, are supposed to look like. We are to be engaged with the world, but we are supposed to reflect our true Christian selves instead of the world's persona. We must so live that our Christian reflection is commensurate with what we reflect to the world.
The persona was the mask which actors in Greek drama wore during plays. One character could play many roles. By changing the persona, the mask, a character changed personality. One could easily slip into another role and be a different self. James is arguing for a self in which beliefs and behavior within the church are consistent with one's actions and attitudes beyond the doors of the church. Appearances are important.
Given the Jewish background of the epistle of James, there is much similarity with an ancient rabinnic story about two families, the family of Garmu and the family of Abtinos.
The Garmu family were the experts in baking the showbread for the Temple. Twelve special loaves were placed on the golden table of the Sanctuary and exchanged for new ones each week. The Abtinos family were the experts in making the incense used in the Temple ritual by the priests.
The elders of the Garmu family decided not to teach their skills to anyone outside the family, and the same decision was made by the Abtinos elders. The result was that the special methods of baking the showbread for the Temple and of making the holy incense were closely guarded secrets which no one outside those two families could ever learn.
The rabbis were not happy with the policy of the families and were afraid that the Temple service would be endangered if they allowed such a monopoly to continue. So they called in other specialist bakers and perfumery experts from Alexandria in Egypt to replace the two families. But things did not go at all well. The new bakers were unable to make the Temple loaves stay fresh all week, like the showbread of Garmu; and the incense of the Alexandrians did not send its smoke up in a perfectly straight line like the Abtinos incense.
So the Temple heads called in the heads of the two old families, but they refused to come. Finally, after their fee was doubled, they came before the Temple administrators who asked them why they did not instruct others in their skills. The Garmu and Abtinos patriarchs gave the same answer. The two families were concerned that outsiders might use the skills to their financial advantage and make the showbread and incense for purposes of idolatry.
In addition to their passionate concern that items used in the holy Temple would not be misused for idolatrous or secular purposes, the families of Garmu and Abtinos were highly praised for their moral concern that no one in their families should be suspected of using Temple material for their own purposes. That is why members of the Garmu family never ate pure bread loaves in case anyone would suspect them of eating Temple loaves or using the baking material for their own use. Similarly the women members of the Abtinos family never wore perfume so that there would never be any suspicion that they were taking some Temple incense ingredients for their private use. Indeed, they were so firm in this matter that before one of their men married a lady from another family, they stipulated to the bride that perfume was not to be used by their womenfolk, in order to rise above suspicion (Yoma 38a).
The historical story about the two families contains a powerful ethical lesson as noted by the late Rabbi Chaim Pearl, a noted authority on Judaism. The ethic is known in Hebrew as "For the sake of appearances." A situation should not only be correct, but it should appear to others that it is correct. In that way, outsiders can derive a good example from witnessing what is right. A great judge once declared: "It is not only necessary that justice be done; it is important that justice be seen to be done."3
The wider implications of the ethic run throughout Judaism and Christianity. After the children of Israel had completed the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness, the Bible records that Moses made a complete record of how every item had been used. The gold and the silver, the brass and every precious item were accounted for, to the very last piece. Why did he do this?4
Moses did this for the sake of appearances so the image of himself that he saw in the mirror of God would match the image of himself that he held forth to others. He could not allow himself to forget what he looked like. It was not only necessary for Moses to be honest in the sight of God; it was also important for Moses to be honest in the eyes of the people. He had glimpsed a high image of himself and he would not allow himself to look at himself otherwise.
Christian history affords us examples of saints in every age that gave their lives over to an image of themselves far beyond any they had ever known. And from that day forward, they never forgot what they looked like in the eyes of God.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola did not begin his life as a religious person. To the contrary, he was caught up in images of medieval chivalry. His fantasies were those of gallantry and kingly romance. He became a professional soldier, good at gambling, fighting, and having affairs with women. While defending a fortress in 1521, an artillery shot crashed between his legs, shattering his right leg and wounding his left.
As he lay ill and deformed in his family's castle, Ignatius was told by village surgeons that the skewed bones of his right leg would have to be broken and reset -- without anesthetic. Thirty years later he would still describe that agony as "butchery." While lying about and suffering further painful treatments that failed to help his brutalized leg, he sought books of medieval chivalry to read. But he could find no such books in the house. The only books available there were a four-volume Life of Jesus Christ (Vita Jesu Christi) and a kind of dictionary of saints. To combat his boredom he read those books. He possessed no thoughts then of either piety or religion.
In his later autobiography Ignatius wrote that as he read the books over many times, he became rather fond of what he found there.5 He began to acquire a vision of himself far beyond what he had previously held. He began to see himself as capable of living a life similar to Saint Francis and Saint Dominic. This new view of himself, having come from looking into the mirror of God, goaded his mediocrity and highlighted a going forward into a completely different way of living.
Ignatius never forgot what he looked like from that day forward. He advanced from good to better and founded the Society of Jesus. At age fifty he was elected the first superior general of the Society, thus becoming the true father of the Jesuits who have given so much to our Christian heritage. Certainly his view of himself at age fifty was far different from the man he had fantasized he'd be when he was a royal page or a competent military commander at a younger age. He had seen a higher image of himself.
As you and I leave this service today, we go forth having glimpsed a high image of ourselves. We have prayed, sung together, confessed our sins, reaffirmed our beliefs, and listened to this sermon. When we encounter our world, may our actions and words show others that we have not forgotten the image of ourselves that we saw in this place. Don't forget what you look like!
____________
1. Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973), p. 25 ff.
2. For a fuller treatment of the subject see "Confession and Reparation," in Harold C. Warlick, Jr., Liberation From Guilt (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1976), pp. 108-113.
3. Chaim Pearl, Theology in Rabinnic Stories (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), pp. 101-103.
4. Ibid.
5. Ignatius referred to himself in the third person when reflecting on this experience. See Luis Goncalves da Camara, S.J., The Autobiography of St. Ignatius Loyola, trans. by Joseph F. O'Callaghan, S. J. (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 23. Ron Hansen has a clear treatment of the stated events in his chapter, "The Pilgrim," in A Tremor of Bliss: Contemporary Writers on the Saints, ed. Paul Elie (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1994), pp. 111-146.
