Quick, Slow, Slow

[This message was delivered at Ogden Presbyterian Church, Spencerport NY, on September 1, 2024, based on James 1:17-27.]

“Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” James 1:19

I love the drama of changing seasons, and this is such a rich time for changing seasons. Labor Day usually brings a cooldown. Five days ago we hit just about 90 degrees; tomorrow will be in the 60s. Baseball is heading into its homestretch and my Red Sox are struggling. Pro football is beginning and I think this is the year the Bills win the Super Bowl. My cherry tree has been dropping leaves every day the last week. Sweet corn is still sweet, but not for much longer. My two apple trees are showing red fruit getting redder and larger each day. The sun is setting earlier every day and soon we’ll be wearing sweaters. And for the next 65 days, we will be in another season, that will culminate on November 5. Most leaves will have fallen and we will have had a first frost. Trick or treating will be over, but we’ll still be eating the candies not taken. Pumpkins and dried cornstalks will grace our porches. The world’s oldest continuous democracy will elect a new president. Between now and then, we will experience a lot of political tension. Unless we ignore our civic duty.

I hope we will not do that. God has ordained civic government. Romans 13 begins, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.” That doesn’t mean that God hand picks every government official or that God is pleased with every governing authority, but God ordains government to bring order society and God cares about politics because God cares about people. Many of the biblical prophecies in the Old Testament prophets called out bad government and called the faithful of Israel to resist bad government and support good government. That prophetic theme is caught well in Amos 5:24: “But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” God cares about government that brings justice and righteousness.

Pastors are wise not to preach partisan politics to their congregations and never to mix church and partisan politics. I served a congregation for 38 years that had Republicans and Democrats and independents in it. I never told them my party affiliation and I never told them which candidates to vote for. Our concern was to be faithful to our calling as citizens of God’s kingdom, as we prayed together every Sunday, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Under God, we are called to be good citizens of our nation. I fully expect that this congregation is like the one I served, with people identifying as Democrats, Republicans, or independents. You don’t come to worship on Sunday morning to hear your pastor bless one party and denounce the other. You come to be reminded of our primary citizenship, which Paul names in Philippians 3:20, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

So I say clearly and emphatically, God is not a Republican or a Democrat. God is the sovereign of the universe and creator of all people on this planet. God cares deeply about how people are governed. I preach from the common lectionary, which thousands of churches follow. I read the lectionary passages last Monday. In my first reading of James 1, these words jumped out at me: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” (James 1:19-20) My first response was that is how I want to treat this election season. My second thought was that I should share that with you.

While you don’t want me to get into partisan politics—and I won’t—you do want me to be faithful to God’s word in the Bible. That I will seek to do. While you don’t want me to tell you for whom to vote—and I won’t—you do want me to tell you how to live faithfully. And that I will seek to do. Our passage in James begins by establishing God as the source of every good gift. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” God creates us and we respond. God shares with us and we respond. God saves us and we respond. We respond by being “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” Let’s respond to the tension of this election season and a politically divided country by being “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” In “The Message” this is translated, “Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.” It’s like a dance step: quick, slow, slow.

These are actions. James reminds us to hear God’s word actively. “But be doers of the word and not merely hearers.” That is the essence of religion in the New Testament. The English word religion occurs in the New Testament only a handful of times and only in James 1 are we given a definition. That definition doesn’t mention worship on Sundays, or sacraments, or tithes and offerings, or choirs and hymns. That definition begins with a negative—what true religion is not—and then follows with the positive:“If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

This is the heart of true religion: caring for one’s soul and caring for the needs of others. It is caught in the Old Testament in Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” When some Pharisees, extremely religious folks, asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, Jesus summed it simply: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

In an intense election season, which we have entered and will endure for 65 days, nothing is more important than to hear God’s word and then do God’s word; to care for widows and orphans and anyone in in need and keep our souls unstained by the world; to love God with heart and soul and mind—our whole beings—and love our neighbors as ourselves; to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. This is the only kind of religion that matters a hoot to God.