Rich Oppressors, who me?

Read James 5

Everyone here can take a breath for the next section.  It’s just talking to rich people.  Is anyone rich?  No, we’re just regular people.  No rich folks here.

On your personal Facebook page, post Marked safe from James 5:1-6.

I’m not rich.  Who is rich?  Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, those people are rich.  I’m not Warren Buffet rich.  I’m not even Jimmy Buffet rich.

We’ve got a billionaire president and another billionaire who wanted to be, but I’m nowhere near having that kind of money.  I’m just not rich.

Let’s put it this way.  Do you:

·       Live indoors

·       Have heat or air conditioning or both

·       Own a car or have access to a car

·       Have more than one set of clothes

·       Eat every day

·       Have clean water available to you every day

·       The water comes into your house via plumbing

·       You have a phone

·       You have a smartphone

·       You have television

·       Your bathroom is in the house

·       Your culinary decisions are where not if we are going to eat

·       You go hunting because you like to not because you will starve if you don’t

·       You have a device that plays music

·       You don’t worry about your town being pillaged

·       You have attended a play or show or concert

·       You tithe

·       You made extra offerings to help the Children’s Home of our Local Benevolence Fund

·       You had something more to give to Martha, the Goat and 2 Chickens, VBS, F4, or camp

·       You have a storage room or building that would outfit another entire family or two

·       You think that diet means to lose weight instead of meaning whatever you can come up with to eat.  If you went to college, that time period doesn’t count.  Four-day old pizza is a legit diet

·       You have access to college or trade schools

·       You pay another person to cut your hair or your nails

·       You have posted online

·       You complain because you had to wait 10 minutes to get your fast food

·       You purchased a suit or dress for a special occasion

·       You have a bank account with at least enough money to keep it open

·       You had money for the book fair at school

·       You have a job or other source of income

·       You know what MSI stands for

·       You have said the words: What are we doing for fun tonight?

·       You have a microwave oven

·       You were able to give your kids and grandkids very nice gifts

·       You are still trying to figure out MSI.  OK, it’s Multiple Streams of Income

·       You may worship where you want without fear of persecution.  You might be doing it in isolation but you are not persecuted.

Now let’s see where you stand as far as being rich.

If you said yes to fewer that 5 of these, you likely live in poverty and probably outside of this country.  If you said yes to more than 5 but fewer than 10, you are better off than half the world regardless of where you live.

If you answered yes to more than 10, you are rich.  You are rich.  You are rich.

OBTW—did I mention that you are rich.

You should realize just how blessed you are.  Before you get too excited, realize that you also lost your exemption to the counsel in the first part of chapter 5.  Yep!  James is talking to you.

And as you read his words they should bring to mind the words of Jesus.

Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in an steal.  Instead, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

James is admonishing the rich among them who have hoarded their riches for themselves.  He is saying that the very things by which you measure your wealth and comfort have corroded. Your worth is worthless!

Your corroded wealth testifies against you.

Part of this warning is if you use your wealth to manipulate others.  That is, you slow pay your helpers.  Why?  Because you can.  What are they going to do?  You are the person of influence and they can’t pressure you.

We hear the word oppressor than automatically think, Well that can’t be me.

But what if it is?

We might think of oppressors as plantation owners, communist governments, sweatshop owners who pay pennies to make a $100 pair of shoes, but not us.

Those are extreme examples, just as Warren Buffet is an extreme example of being rich.

But what if our riches are corrupting us?  What if, let’s put this in familiar context, we are not putting our Master’s money to work right away.

What if our comfort level has blinded us to the need around us?

What if our When I get around to it attitude is corrupting what we have?

We have been here before.  Money is not evil; in fact it is not the root of all evil.  The love of money is not even the root of all evil. The love of money is a big player in sourcing evil.

The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.

Our money and our stuff and anything else that contributes to our wealth is not the problem.  Those things do not have a life of their own.  They have no free will.  The fact that we store up treasure here on earth and those treasures  become infested or corrupt is the problem.

Sometimes we don’t see the problem.  Oh that junk?

If it’s junk, why have you not discarded it?  Well, it might have some usefulness.

Then why don’t you give it to someone who will use it?

Some of you here consider me a pain in the neck because as I walk around the church building during the week, I find items that are just stuck in a room or in a corner of a room or behind a sofa and I take them and put them on a table in the fellowship hall.  I am asking for one of three things:

·       Claim it and take it home

·       Discard it

·       Give it away

There may be other options but accumulating stuff is repugnant to me in an organization that should be committed to putting what we have to work at once.

I know there are always exceptions but we must be on guard that the exceptions don’t become the rule.

I moderate the session.  Sometimes I offer new ideas.  Sometimes I will put a draft out there to start a discussion and hope that that discussion leads to something fruitful.  I try not to use any power of persuasion.  I want people to be led by God’s Spirit.  I ask the session to spend a lot of time in prayer.

I did put out the year of the Bible and it was met with an underwhelming response, but the idea was not dead.  So, we took on this Month of the Bible – The Study of James as a trial method.  I did not want to do it unless I had significant buy-in from the congregation.  This sort of thing will just be the flavor of the month if people are not reading daily and discussing profusely.

I’m telling you this not just to remind you to read daily, discuss frequently, and come full of thoughts and questions for class and worship.  I’m bringing up session meetings to let you know one time my skin was about ready to crawl off of me.

We have a space challenge in this building. Think about that.  A church in Spaceport Oklahoma has a space problem.   Sometimes it has to do with people and sometimes stuff and then sometimes we have all the space we need.  It is a challenge that comes with the blessing of acquiring this building 15 years ago. 

But one Sunday evening as the session was discussing this issue that is an on again/off again issue, someone said we could just get a Conex box.  It’s a metal box like you seek on the back of trains and sometimes trucks that usually max out at about 40 feet in length.

Right away people started looking at the cost and availability on their phones.  That’s when my skin started crawling.  It’s not that it would have been an eye-sore.  We could have stuck it on the east side of the building across the right-of-way.  Unless you lived in the trailer park, you would never even notice it.

The session asked me for my thoughts, and I said I didn’t want something to accumulate stuff and if we did this it would need a manager—someone to make sure it wasn’t a new and improved junk room.

Why was I such a stick in the mud?  Because I grew up fairly poor, that is rich by the world’s standards, and this is my experience.  I grew up in the United States of America.  See if you can relate.

We accumulate stuff.  It fills a closet.  Then it fills a garage.  Then we rent or buy or build a storage room.  Then we have room to accumulate more stuff.  Then one day we go to the room and to get something we would like to use and it’s way in the back and we just say, I’ll just go buy another one.

We hold on to stuff because one day we might use it.  Then the day comes and we use something else because we don’t want to sort through the stuff.

One day we may get a Conex box for our stuff.  I never argued against it, nor will I in the future.  I will simply include my counsel that we must guard against the accumulation of stuff and as such, we would need a Storage Manager.

Let me return briefly to money. We are called to be wise with our money, even in the worldly sense.  The proverb says that the wise man stores up an inheritance for his children’s children.

The coupling in the proverb is that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous.

Are we living in such a way that the wealth of those made right by the blood of Jesus is stored up for the wicked?  Is it stored up just to be consumed by corrosion or by vermin?

Once again, James is not the Lone Ranger in his instructions and challenges.  The master in the parable of the talents addressed the third servant as wicked and lazy. 

Wicked?  Really?  Yes.

We should consider that not to use our wealth for the benefit of the least of these our brothers and sisters is the same as being oppressive.  We had the means to help and did nothing.

What am I saying as I present this part of James to you?  Put out a BOLO—Be on the Lookout for opportunities to put our wealth to use for the glory of God and not just to feather our nest or increase our own prestige.

Are we rich?  Yes!

Are we oppressive?  There’s your food for thought for this week.

When we complete our study of the Book of James, take this question to Luke 12:13-21 and the Parable of the Rich Fool.  Then ask yourself this question:

Are you rich towards God?

You thought that you got the day off with this short pericope.  Well, it might just cause us to meditate upon what it says as much if not more than the rest of the counsel we find in this book.

Re-read the first six verses and then ask yourself this question. 

Am I rich towards God?

Amen.

What about making plans?

Read James 4

If I don’t want to spend three times more than I wanted, I make a list before I go to the grocery store.  Sometimes I remember to read it while I’m in the store.

If I want to graduate college in 15 years or less, I make a plan as to what I will take and when I will take it.

If I want to get to my destination without too many stops for directions, I Google it.  Don’t ask Siri.  That girl will give you attitude, but Google is generally reliable.

If I want things to have a chance of going smoothly, I produce an order of worship.  There is not much variation from week to week.  Sometimes on Wednesday nights, I will change things up a bit more.  I even send a draft bulletin out to worship leaders and people who have an active role in the service.

Before we dived into Good News 2012, I wrote and published a plan.  Some of you might remember it.  It had worksheets for all of our outreach events.  It had reporting forms.  It had a prayer printed into the plan.

Over a decade ago, before I could be ordained, I had to be observed moderating a session meeting.  Reverend Dale Nease came over to watch me conduct a meeting.

Now realize by this point in my life I already had my Million Meeting Medal, Third award.  Running a meeting was not a huge challenge.  I had been producing an agenda, collating handouts, and all the other preliminary things needed for a meeting to go smoothly for the past 2 years.

But I was going to be evaluated on this meeting.  So, I made sure that the margins of the handouts were perfect.  The agenda had just enough detail to prompt the discussion but not so much as to preempt it.  I even spelled some of the big words right.

I was ready.  The session knew what was going on so they were extra nice during the meeting.  Dale was an easy-going guy and I didn’t expect him to throw a wrench into the works to see how I would handle it. 

Realize, I have been to training in which there are planned disturbances to what you are trying to teach or the meeting you are trying to lead.  Part of the training was how you address the disturbance and stay on course.  Dale didn’t bring any such fun to my meeting.

By meeting’s end, I knew that I had aced that sucker.  It might not have been the best run meeting in the history of the universe, but at least in the history of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. 

Dale pronounced his evaluation:  Tolerably Legal.

What!  It had to have been the best meeting ever.  I put some planning into that sucker.  Tolerably legal?  Give me a break!

Plans are a part of life.

Plans seldom go as planned.

There is a military axiom that a simple plan executed aggressively now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

There is another military truism that the plan never survives contact with the enemy.

So, we come to counsel from James on plans and planning.  On the surface, it might seem that James doesn’t think that we should plan at all, but that’s not what he is saying.  He said, don’t boast in your plans.  Don’t think that your plan is invincible.  The only invincibility, the only certainty, the only plan you can trust comes from the Lord.

If the Lord wills it, then he will bless our plan.

If it is the Lord’s will, our plan will fall apart before it has a chance to fall into place, then we can dive into his plan.

Are plans bad?  No, boasting about our plans is bad.  Putting too much hope in our plans mocks God and God is not good with that.

God sent people out to subdue the earth.  They made plans and began executing them to build a tower to heaven.  They wanted to make a name for themselves.  They were showing off what they could do with their own plans.

I don’t know if they thought they could get to heaven, but they would have something to boast about.  God said, “That dog don’t hunt.”

God has good plans for us.  They are plans to prosper us and give us hope and give us a future.

So, what do we do?

Make your grocery list.

Develop a plan to graduate college in less than a decade.

Produce a budget.

Plan the route for the trip.

Plan your vacation.

Plan for your children’s future.

Plan to leave your children’s children an inheritance.

Plan your day.

For those who have done any sort of work where you’re the boss, the employee, and the janitor, you know this saying:  Plan your work and work your plan.

Salesmen, consultants, and farmers know this.  They also know, that making adjustments to the plan is more likely than the plan going as planned.  Plan on it!

Planning is good.  It is good self-education.  Planning requires research and analysis and composition. 

Planning requires reading and assessment and synthesis of all sorts of input. 

Planning gives us the opportunity to use the gifts, talents, and abilities that God gave us.

Planning requires focus, dedication, and creativity.  Planning always leads you to the recognition of things still not planned. 

Planning is good stuff, but don’t get married to your plan.  Don’t boast in your plan.

Make big plans but don’t boast in your plan.  If you must boast, boast in the Lord.  That is where you find certainty.

We make these plans about what we will do next month or next year or for the next ten years and forget to realize that we are on this earth for only a short time.  James said we are but a mist.  It’s here and it’s gone.

Plan your work and work your plan but know that God has better plans.  The more we seek God and grow close to him, the more our plans will be like his, but we must remember that he alone is sovereign.

We have this wonderful thing called free will but God directs the steps of the believer. 

So, plan without worrying about tomorrow.  Invest yourself fully in your plans—don’t be lukewarm about them.  Work at them as if you are working for the Lord and not for human goals.

Plans are not bad.  Boasting in our plans is bad. 

Make your plan a work of art and science—the best masterpiece it can be in the time allotted—and then humbly place it at the feet of the Lord—ready to execute it or what the Lord gives you in its stead with equal enthusiasm.

And while you are making your plans, plan to do good at every opportunity for opportunities will surely arise. 

James wraps up with an advance admonishment for those who stick to their plans when the Lord has directed them elsewhere.

If you know the good you should do and don’t do it, that’s your sin.

Paul said in similar fashion, that which we do out of anything but faith is our sin.

Henry Kissinger had a style that he used in dealing with subordinate’s plans.  He would receive the plan, let it sit unread for a week or two, and then ask if it was the best that the planner had to offer.

If the answer was no or involved hesitation, he gave it back to be reworked.  If the person said yes, then he read the plan.  

Shouldn’t we always want our plans to be the best that they can be before offering them to the Lord?

If you are going to plan—and you should—make it full of faith, goodness, mercy, love, and a reflection of the good plans that God has for you.  Make it the best plan ever and then place it at the feet of Jesus. 

Thy will be done!

Amen!

Free Ride?

Read James 4

A long time ago while I was still in high school, a song called Free Ride by the Edgar Winter Group was near the top of the charts.  It had a good tune, but you didn’t give much pause as you sang along with the lyrics.

The mountain is high

The valley is low

And you're confused on which way to go

So I've come here to give you a hand

And lead you into the promised land

So (ooh, ooh, ooh) come on and take a free ride (free ride)

(ooh, ooh, ooh) Come on and sit here by my side (ooh, ooh, ooh) Come on and take a free ride

All over the country

I'm seeing it the same

Nobody's winning at this kind of game

We gotta do better it's time to begin

You know all the answers must come from within

So (ooh, ooh, ooh) come on and take a free ride

Come on and take a free ride.  It’s a catchy tune but it is also the theology of many Christians.  This whole grace business is just a free ride.  The gift is free but the ride that follows the gift should be another thing altogether.

What follows must be purposeful, deliberate, and intentional.  We are living for God and we are doing it on purpose.  The gift of life is all from God.  It is free when we receive Jesus as Lord.

The life that follows is about bringing glory to God with every breath!  We no longer just exist.  We are no longer in league with the enemy.

We have been here before.  Are we a friend of God or a friend of the world?  James says that you can’t have it both ways.

If you love the world, then you hate God—you make yourself into his enemy.  How can you do this?  While we were God’s enemies, he sent Christ to die for us.

Do we just say, That’s cool?  My sins are forgiven, now I can live it up like the rest of the world does?

Once again, we find that James is not the Lone Ranger in his challenges to us.  Paul challenged his readers to comprehend grace.

What shall we say then, shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound even more?

This was a rhetorical question.  It required no answer.  The answer was obviously no.  But considering the sinful nature of humankind, Paul answered his own question nonetheless.

His answer was: No, nadda, by no means!  Don’t you know we gave up all of that!

James is on this same track.  Why do you who claim Jesus as your Lord still have fights and quarrels?  It is because your sinful human nature is still with you.  You struggle internally because you can’t decide if you want to belong to God or to the world.

God placed a spirit within us when humankind was created.  That spirit always longs for God but sometimes settles for less.  That spirit finds satisfaction, companionship, fulfillment in the world.  We become a friend of the world, knowing that the world never truly reciprocates.

The world cannot truly be our friend and our satisfaction level is never quite what it was designed to be, but we settle for what the world has to offer.  We accept the world’s friendship.

We want the grace and forgiveness of God and the Free Ride through life as a friend of the world.  Here is the theological term for that:  That dog don’t hunt.

Once we received Christ as our Lord and Savior, we drew a line in the sand.  The devil, our sinful nature, and friendship with the world were on one side and we as a disciple of Jesus Christ on the other.

So we are up against the devil, our sinful nature, and the patterns of the world.  That’s a tough battle.  It might seem like we are surrounded. 

We are.  We are surrounded by our enemies.  Let me put this in Marinespeak.  We’ve got them just where we want them!  We can attack in any direction.

But how?  Resist the devil and he will flee!

Why would the devil flee?  C’mon, we’re surrounded.

We belong to Jesus and we know it with certainty.  We submit ourselves to God.  We don’t sit on the fence.  We are not double-minded.  We are his and his alone.  We are on the winning side.

That’s it?  That’s the plan of attack.  Every attack needs good logistics, so here you go:  Draw closer to God and he will draw closer to you.

Anything else?  Quit being the wave that is tossed about the sea.  Stop being double-minded.  Purify yourself!  Do the modern-day version of sackcloth and ashes.  Show God that you have repented of evil!

Instead of pointing fingers and throwing penalty flags at how other believers receive God’s grace and respond to it, realize that you are on the same team and your Leader is the Lord.  He alone will judge your response to his gift.

Once again, James is not the Lone Ranger.  Paul put it this way.  Who am I to judge another man’s servant?

We are humble before our Lord and ferocious before our enemies.  God opposes those whose strength is in themselves.

Where does that leave us as we consider this free gift of salvation?

We are a disciple.

We are a warrior.

We are a friend of God

We are growing in God’s grace.  The spirit within us from creation hungers to have the perfect relationship with the Spirit of God that lives within us now.

The gift is free.  The ride is full of challenges—struggles that might be received as adventures, which if we will recall from the very beginning, we should regard with joy for we are being made complete in Christ Jesus.

Amen!