Doing and Being

• Preacher: The Rev. Andrew Van Kirk

• Passage: James 1:17-27

As many of you know, I got my undergraduate degree at Duke University. I went to Duke largely because, when I was 10 years old, Christian Laettner hit a turnaround jump shot in the Eastern Regional Final as time expired to beat…hey Logan, can you remind me who they beat that day? Kentucky. That's right, it was Kentucky, wasn't it?

I was watching that game with my parents who both went to Duke, and two of their friends, who had also gone to Duke. And when that shot went in, things went crazy. From that moment on, I was hooked. I watched every game I could. I cut out AP wire reports on the games from Sports Day in The Dallas Morning News, and put them on my bulletin board. I wore Duke shirts and sweatshirts. I went to Mavs games and cheered for Cherokee Parks – who remembers that guy!? – because Cherokee Parks went to Duke. And then, eventually, in the fall of 2000, I went to Duke.

It was there, during my freshman year, that I submitted the heights and reached the peak of Duke fandom. It was there, during the January in 2001, that this happened:

I am the 'V' in this picture. I am 18 years old.

And yes, I understand that the general sentiment being communicated here is not particularly holy; but we did crush the Virginia Cavaliers that day.

Another fun fact, at this point in time, I was living in a tent, not my expensive on-campus housing. I spent eight weeks in that tent that winter. But I had very good seats to the basketball games.

That year Duke won the NCAA championship. It was as good as it gets.

For the rest of college I remained deeply invested; I went to all the games at home; organized my academic and social life around the away games on TV. I was a huge fan.

Last year, I watched less than 30 minutes of Duke basketball. What changed? There are lots of things, but two changes in my life are most important:

First, Stephanie and I cancelled cable the better part of a decade ago, and ESPN broadcasts almost all the college basketball games, so I don't see them. I'll read a game summary or check the score, but reading about basketball for 30 minutes a week is not as engaging as watching it live.

And two, I don't have anyone to watch Duke games with (certainly not 10 pasty white guys and one Asian kid who want to paint their chests). Stephanie went to Furman, not Duke, and doesn't enjoy watching a basketball game anyway. I don't have friends nearby that went to Duke.

So the two things: I don't put in the time, and I haven't maintained the relationships. When it comes to being a huge Duke fan, I just stopped doing it. And once I stopped doing it, then I stopped being a big fan.

This is a general rule: if you stop doing something, you'll stop being the person who does that thing. If you stop exercising, you'll stop being athletic. If you stop speaking Spanish, you'll stop knowing Spanish. If you stop acting out your Christian faith, you'll stop being a Christian.

This friends, is the basic point of this section of the epistle of St. James we read today. And given that it's Ministry Sunday, I want to encourage you today to do your faith, not just think it. Get involved. Be a person who does Christian ministry, so you'll be a person who is ever more Christian.

Would you take the reading out please? It's in your bulletin on page 2. We're going to focus on one section of it, but I want to show you how this passage goes together first.

We're going to start with verse 19 (vv. 17-18, though beloved of the Stewardship Committee, are part of a different chunk of thought). "You must understand this," namely "let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger." In the rest of this paragraph, James addresses these three admonitions. First, he tackles anger, in then next paragraph listening, and then in the last paragraph, speech.

The anger and speech paragraphs make a sandwich out of the listen paragraph. Here, I reformatted it sandwich style so you see it visually. Doesn't that look delicious? You have your two pieces of bread, and then in the middle your turkey or bologna or whatever.

The bread is made of things we're to be "slow to" do – slow to anger, slow to speak. Make no mistake: anger and speaking are things we can do. We can do anger. I'd daresay anger is one of our dominant cultural attitudes these days. We've got a lot of problems and challenges in the world to be angry about.

A church member and friend confided in me this week, "I'm just so angry, Father. I'm so angry at this virus." Now this person also had the good sense to realize that anger was not producing God's righteousness. It rarely does. Still, like sock puppet Logan, we've all got a lot of people we'd like to poke with sharp pencils, kinda hard. James says don't. Your anger does not produce God's righteousness.

What James says to do is to be "doers of the word," as opposed to mere "hearers" of the word. This is the listening section. Listening involves letting what you hear become what you do.

James then he gives this extended metaphor in verse 23-24 about looking in a mirror. And he says for many people, religion is a mirror. They look at it from time to time, as you'd look at yourself in a mirror, but then when they aren't in front of the mirror, they forget what they saw there. "On going away, [they] immediately for get what they were like."

Maybe something similar has happened to you. I'm getting ready in the morning, freshly showered, brushing my teeth, working out an excuse to myself about why I'm about to skip flossing, and thinking about my day. And then I notice it. In the mirror I see a spot down on my neck that I missed while shaving. And I think, I must fix that just as soon as I'm done brushing my teeth. But then in the remaining 60 seconds of teeth brushing, something distracts me, and I forget about the spot I'd missed. And get dressed, and grab a Yeti full of coffee and head out the door. Then, at some point later in the day, usually not until after lunch on the way back to the office after some important meeting, I rub my neck and I remember.

St. James says that this is the way many people approach the religious life. Occasional glimpses in the mirror that reveal the places in our lives that need some attention, and long stretches of forgetfulness.

We hear a word from God, the Word from God, on Sunday morning, in a hymn or reading or scripture or prayer, and then by the time lunch is over it's gone out the ear other than the one from whence it came.

We've got to do the things we hear as part of the Church, or else we'll cease to be part of the church.

Now look, I don't want to be overly cynical and exhort you that if you'll just make coffee one Sunday morning a month as part of Sunday morning worship team you'll suddenly become a sterling example of Christian faith and works. Though we really could use some people to sign up to help with hospitality today. And I do think serving your church in such a concrete way will make a difference in how you love the people sitting in here with you.

I do think there's a deepening of ones own faith that happens as you teach Children's Church. I do think that serving with Hands&Feet is not just good for the community, but good for you. I do think that Senior Lunch is a better lunch than Whataburger Lunch (and I've done a lot of A-B comparison testing on that one).

I do believe, as James says, that people are "blessed in their doing." I do believe that Ministry Sunday is not an attempt to fill volunteer slots, but an invitation to a fulfillment, a blessing of God, that you cannot get any other way. There's a sort of blessing God can only give those who do. And I invite you this morning to take another step towards doing.

And I recognize that thing you're doing, or need to be doing, may not be on the walls of this room or on a table down in Michie Hall. Ministry Sunday hardly exhausts the sort of doing James was talking about.

I know that the thing to do with your anger and heartbreak at Afghanistan may involve mentoring a girl at Burks who still has a shot at school. Or the thing to do instead of adding to social media din about masks may be to take a walk outside and pray for each of your neighbors as you pass their house.

The long and the short of it is simply this: the things we do with our lives shape the people we become. If we want to become shaped more Christ, we have to do. Just like with our physical health, desire alone is not enough. It matters what we spend time doing.

A few months ago Stephanie and I had dinner at Cafe Momentum, which is a restaurant in downtown Dallas whose mission is to provide training and support to youth who have had contact with law enforcement. They give these young people a place to be, help with school, and train them to work in a fine dining restaurant as hosts, waitstaff, and cooks so that when they're done with the program, they have a skills and a job. It's a beautiful vision, and it's changed lives.

When we sat down, this brochure was on the table. And the cover of it just says the exact true thing (with an extra comma, but the exact true thing all the same): "The things we think about, focus on, and surround ourselves with, [sic] will shape who we become." It's an amazing bit of wisdom from a kid who's lived a hard enough life to know its truth.

Whether you're involved with street gangs or illegal drugs, or with t-ball parents and rosé, the places and people in which we invest our time – the things we do – will shape the people we are. Today the Church nudges us once again – hey, is there anything around here you want to think about, focus on, and surround yourself with? Anything you want to do? You know, so that you can take one more step towards become shaped as the person God is calling you to be?

You will be blessed in your doing, I promise. Amen.