Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 1, 2024

Labor and Perseverance

Joseph L. Morrow
Associate Pastor

Psalm 15
James 1:17–27

In an episode of the television series Monk, the detective Adrian Monk is asked, in the course of an investigation, to become an assistant coach for a high school girls basketball team. Now Monk knows next to nothing about basketball, but oh does he think he knows coaching. And he displays a particular fondness for the coach’s whistle. So much so that he starts to blow the whistle at every opportunity during games. Someone scores, he whistles. Someone gets a rebound on defense, he whistles. Someone misses a shot, with disappointment, he whistles. Doesn’t like a foul call, he whistles. Over a four-minute period, Monk blows the whistle so often you feel like he’s given a four-hour concert with it. In this case, the referee equipped with his own whistle has had enough. He walks over to Monk as if to grab it out of his hand. Monk can’t help himself and gets in one last whistle before he cuts out the act.

In my family, I had several great aunts on both my mother’s and father’s side. As far as I know, they never coached a team or refereed a game a day in their lives, but they knew how to blow the whistle on foolishness, misbehavior, and even on your good fun. Because these were strict, God-fearing matriarchs who, if you were out of line, could also put the fear of God in you. They were highly religious people. And we tend to think of religious people as those who excel at blowing the whistle when the rules are broken, when right belief and behavior are not followed scrupulously. Religious people are those who might shun where you worship, what music you listen to, or what clothes you wear. As I learned with some of my aunties, it’s best not to be their target. Better to pull up a chair and grab the popcorn while they tenaciously lay into someone else.

My dad was often the someone else. Born and raised among Baptists, he fled church when he joined the military. As he got older, Dad chafed against what he felt was stuffy religiosity. And he did so with revelry — even a believer’s joy. He would poke holes in the arguments of my aunts as they made their way into our kitchen talking of the Bible’s literal truth and the importance of being saved to avoid eternal damnation. He would ask questions like, “Why are there two stories of creation in Genesis? Why is the devil hardly mentioned in the Old Testament?” He raised questions that perturbed our elders.

On the surface, my father was cast as chief skeptic. Yet he did have beliefs of his own. A glance at the small bookshelf he kept in our den revealed well-worn copies of scientific manuals about biology, medical procedures, and pharmaceuticals, or his favorite hobby, scuba diving. There were books on self-reliance in the Muslim tradition and military history. He embraced what might be called the rational mindset, the humanist cause, and an epicurean lifestyle of feasting and travel. He was proof of the abiding truth that we might not call ourselves religious, but we all do the religion thing.

It’s not simply that we hold beliefs and that we are confident about them. It is that every day we engage in practices that seem to reveal our values and give us a sense of control as we walk our way through life. Yes, we are different than many of our elders. We claim religion as something those other people do, the pushy, smug, judgmental folks who always think they’re right and, when you prove they just might not have it all figured out, they move the goalposts of right so that they are always on the touchdown side of it. Instead, we claim spirituality like diet cola — same great taste as religion except half of the calories and none of the guilt.

But we still hunger for what religions produce. Author Tara Burton, in her book Strange Rites, does us a favor chronicling several emerging forms of religion that look unlike anything we’ve seen before. From wellness culture to fandom, she highlights new forms of devotion and points toward organizations like the Ritual Design Lab, who are developing bespoke forms of religion. You can call the ritual design hotline, tell the lab about your community and needs, and then they’ll create for you a unique and nontheistic ritual (Tara Isabelle Burton, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, p. 62). I browsed the site and found rituals like the Parking Ticket Sautee to address your legal frustrations. And the Farewell design as a way to honor your relationship with your laptop or printer on its last legs. These vignettes serve as a reminder that we might not call ourselves religious, but we all do the religion thing.

That we all do the religion thing is a foregone conclusion for the Letter of James. James calls our attention instead to what we do not seem to be able to do — to act upon our noble religious beliefs. James is a peculiar entry into the New Testament conversation. You see, unlike Paul’s letters, it’s not written for a specific community in Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, or even Jerusalem. Instead, it’s written to no one in particular — all twelve tribes of Israel in the Diaspora, which is a little like invoking my fellow Americans in a political speech.

While the audience is in question, the message is certain. James stands in a tradition of biblical figures and movements that called people to get real about living the religion they profess. James is like Amos saying let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream (Amos 5:24). He is like Isaiah saying “is this not the fast I choose? To the bonds of wickedness, to lift heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free?” (Isaiah 58:6). He is like John the Baptist, who tells those coming to him confessing with their lips to give away one tunic if they have two and to not overcharge those with whom they do business. Aligned with the prophets, James puts it plainly: You want to know what true and pure religion is? It’s doing the stuff you likely think good people should do: Care for widows and orphans in distress. Attend to those who can no longer help themselves. Keep yourself free of corruption.

The goodness of this kind of religion appears so obvious and concrete it begs the question: who could do otherwise? This is why we’re reminded so often that religion can be a social good. Sociologist Ryan Burge tells us that worship is correlated with all kinds of good outcomes: More political tolerance. More political engagement. Higher levels of interpersonal trust. Higher levels of volunteerism (Ryan Burge, x.com/ryanburge. But do you know what’s also good? Eating your vegetables and exercising. But unless there is generous seasoning on those green peas, I’m probably not eating them. And unless there’s a lifetime supply of free ice cream at the finish line, you won’t ever find me running the Chicago triathlon like some of our congregants last week. Few are able to do good based on ideals alone. But we read James and desperately want to try. What do we do with that feeling of distress when, despite our deepest desire, we cannot do the good that is ours to do?

Psychologist Adam Grant tells the story of a clever experiment. Two psychologists studied hundreds of people taking improv comedy classes and randomly assigned them to focus on different goals. They found that those who were most successful, who had creative breakthroughs, weren’t the ones who were encouraged to focus on learning. They were the ones who had been asked to pursue discomfort. “Your goal,” they were told, “is to feel awkward and uncomfortable” (Adam Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, quoted by Toby Sinclair).

Now you will not find in James a scientist or career coach to offer you such granular insights on the journey to improving yourself. James will implore you to be a doer of the word but won’t give you a blueprint for doing so. Truthfully, scripture’s prophets rarely do owners’ manuals for this life. But James does know what discomfort means. Throughout this letter, there are copious references to trials and temptations for which the only capable response seems to be perseverance. Protestant Christians, particularly Presbyterians, sometimes talk about what’s called Perseverance of the Saints. It’s a reminder that in this struggle to live out our callings, God enables us not to avoid woundedness, even if self-inflicted, but to prevail. Seeking to live out a true religion — a lifelong and daily ritual of doing the right thing — means we will encounter resistance both in ourselves and the world around us. And to persevere is to try to counter that resistance in small, deliberate, even if unsuccessful, ways. It is a summons to not merely suffer slings and arrows, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet calls them, but to oppose wickedness. So yes, we must push, stumble, fall, become acquainted with error and embarrassment. But can we bear such a difficult task?

Dorothy Day was one of the previous century’s great practitioners of perseverance and the religion of James. In her Catholic Worker House in rough-and-tumble New York City, she cared reverently for the poor and outcast, bathing, clothing, and, when necessary, burying them. When asked what motivated her, she was fond of quoting the epic novel The Brothers Karamazov by the Russian mystic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Her inspiration came from a scene in it where a lady of little faith is in conversation with a priest named Father Zosima. The lady confesses difficulty believing in the resurrection and redemption in the life to come. In return Fr. Zosima humbly admits that “one cannot prove anything.” But, he continues, “it is possible to be convinced.” Go experience active love, he tells her. Go love your neighbors. But, he warns, “love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book II, chapter 4).

Some of you may find doing the right thing easy. If you do, it’s a gift of pure grace. But if you’re like me, Dorothy Day is the kind of hard-knuckle realist to whom you look for sustenance. Anyone who quotes Fr. Zosima’s “love is a harsh and dreadful thing” doesn’t sugarcoat the difficult, cross-bearing labor of active love. It’s a love toward real people who falter, who get on your nerves, who frustrate, double cross, and disappoint you — and yes, an awareness of all the ways you reflect those qualities for others. I don’t know about you, but far too often I am stuck here loving people in my dreams, but there is the promise that, as we persevere, love will drive us to outwit ourselves and engage outrageous acts of kindness and foolish acts of compassion. The kind of risk-taking love the great blues philosophy Al Green teaches us “will make you go home early. Love will make you stay out all night long.”

Those great aunts of mine, the forebears of my faith, sometimes practiced a religion that could feel overbearing. But here’s something I noticed. After they finished their critiques — whether it was of my father, an uncle, a neighbor, or even me — those same dear ones would turn the knob to light a fire over the stove. They spread plates and silverware on the table and invited you to stay awhile for dinner. The arguments never ceased. But the rule-keeping and whistleblowing yielded to the permissiveness of the table and the concreteness of active love.

In just a moment we’ll move from the word to table — an opportunity to lay all the discomfort of your week and the struggles and mistakes of your journey aside. Come experience God’s active love toward you. In bread and cup. Come experience true religion.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church