JoeAm Preaches a Sermon

Brimstone Joe?

Good morning my friends, it is a joy to be here today.

Let us pray.

"Our Father, we gather here today to honor Your Work on earth, a work that is partly done, and which you have left for us, free of will, to complete. You remain a Mystery to us, and that is what excites us about this day. Today is a day for decisions. We must make them well, because we know You trust us to act in dignity and honor.

We are excited to know that You have set before us a grand puzzle, intricate of design, dangerous in places, safe and secure in others. A challenge, for sure.

It is up to us to think well as Your Children, to chose among the many paths available to us to find the one that is wholesome, the one that is enriched with kindness toward others.

We ask for Your Patience as we consider our choices. We want to choose well. 

In Your Name we pray,

Amen"

Today I would like to speak about choices. About the decisions we make. About how we deal with the good and the bad outcomes of our decisions.

Let's turn to James in the New Testament of the Bible, Chapter 3, starting with verse 13.  For those Jews, Muslims, atheists or other believers and non-believers shifting uncomfortably in the pews, please consider this a secular reading, as if God were simply the Goodness in your heart. We are not really interested in the politics of religion, but in the meanings we can draw from the thoughtful words we read in this great book of wisdom and confusion. I will offer brief interpretive remarks at the end of each verse. The verses are short, so this won't take long at all.

• 3:13 Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.

• If you are wise and knowledgeable and engage in discussions with others, display the quiet confidence a wise man would choose.

• 3.14 But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.

• If you act out of envy or anger, take care not to go against truth.

• 3:15 This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.

• For this kind of wisdom is sure to cause problems.

• 3:16 For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

• Envy and anger create bad will and bad acts.

• 3:17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

• But wisdom from the goodness of our hearts is gentle and easy to convey, filled with mercy and kindness and truth unshaded by deceit or need.

• 3:18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

• Good will is created by those who speak in peace, sincerely.

So given this guidance, how might we approach our daily decisions?

A decision is a choice of paths we will take, or cause others to take. Some decisions are small. Should I wear red or blue today? Some are large. Should I get married or not?

Some decisions are easy. Should I put cheese in the Spaghetti sauce or not? Some are hard. Should I buy that property or not?

Some are beyond difficult. Should I file for annulment? Have another baby? Have an abortion? Shoot and kill the enemy soldier I see on the ridge over there?  They test our emotions, test our thinking, test our conscience.

And once we have made a decision, we have changed the course of mankind. We have set in motion a set of events or responses from the trivial to the extreme. One act begets another. And we do not always get the result we expected or wanted:

• "You look sickly in that blue dress."

• "You idiot, I'm allergic to cheese!"

• "You want an annulment? You can have it, but I'm keeping the kid!"

When we make a decision that causes a reaction we did not foresee, what do we typically do?

We explain ourselves. We make sure others are aware of our rational thought process, our good intentions, our innocence.

"Don’t' call me an idiot, you twit. How am I supposed to know you are allergic to cheese? I always put cheese in the sauce."

We seldom confess that maybe we could have done a better job thinking this through. Our credibility, our credentials, have been undermined by criticism. We start nailing planks every which way to shore up our standing.

Why do we feel this relentless need to justify ourselves? To explain, to make excuses? To blame?

Are we not violating the instruction of James 3:14, are we not going against the truth? Going against it by spinning the decision, by shifting responsibility for it, for failing to acknowledge it was, after all, OUR  decision, OUR act.

No, my brothers and sisters, when we weasel out of the results of our acts, try to sneak away in the bright light of day, we are shaping a new truth, and it is dishonest.

This is the troublesome kind of decision we are warned against in James 3:15. The earthly choice rather than the heavenly choice. We choose strife. We choose the deceits of self-justification.

When we chose the dishonest path, the blame, the excuse, we build a reality that is warped by lies and mistruths. And decisions and acts that flow from those mistruths are themselves flawed. We have contributed to the building of a monster, Satan's delight, a reality built on fabrication.

On some days, we call it Senate.

No, no, my friends.

It is important to build our decisions and our acts on truth, lest our whole world become a lie.

Our institutions are the work of many men and women. Our government and its agencies. Our churches. Our businesses. Our schools.

How many of them are built on the rock of truth? On the foundation of integrity?

How many are built on the sands of fabrication, mistruths aimed, not at promoting honest solutions, but self-serving acts? How many are built on the earthly corruptions of small man rather than the heavenly glory of honorable man?

• We should demand honesty, for it is good.

• We should demand integrity, for it is good.

• We should demand accountability without shame, or blame, or excuse, for it is good.

So think about this as you go forth to make your decisions today. And the next day.  And accept the results of your decisions forthrightly after they have settled in and changed the way of our world forever.

Claim your decisions with courage and honor, without fear or regret or shame. Claim them with all the Goodness of your heart.

Let us close in prayer.

Thank you oh Conscience Pure, the Heaven in my heart.

You guide us through light and dark, You give us vision of the riches of our troubled Eden, the world about.

Thank You for this vast, intricate puzzle, our Nation, our World.

In Goodness, we go forth, seeking to choose well, and to build.

In peace.

Amen