The Letter of James: Double-Minded
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
January 20, 2008
James 1:5-8;22-27;4:4-7
A Fred Craddock story, one of my favorite preachers, "Every Christmas I used to go home to west Tennessee. An old high school chum of mine, I called him Buck, had a restaurant in town, every year it was the same. I'd go to the restaurant, 'Merry Christmas Buck,' I’d say, and he would give me a piece of pie and a cup of coffee for free. Every year it was the same.
I went in, 'Merry Christmas, Buck.'
But this year he said, 'let's go somewhere for coffee.'
‘What's the matter? Isn't this a restaurant?'
‘He said, 'Sometimes I don't know. Sometimes I wonder. Let's go.'
So we went for coffee. We sat there and pretty soon he said, 'Did you see the curtain?'
I said, 'Buck, I saw the curtain. I always see the curtain.'”
Now what he meant by curtain was this: they have a number of buildings in that little town that are called shotgun buildings (we saw them in New Orleans. They're long buildings with two entrances, front and back. One is off the street, one is off the alley. In Buck's restaurant and other restaurants in town, the entrances were separated by a curtain, with a kitchen in the middle. If you were white, you came in off the street. If you were black, you came in off the alley.
"He said again, 'Did you see the curtain? The curtain has to come down.'
'Good, bring it down.'
He said, 'That's easy for you to say. Come into town once a year and tell me how to run my business.'
I said, 'Okay, then leave it up.'
He said, 'I can't leave it up.'
'Well then, take it down.'
'I can't take it down.' After while he said, ‘If I take that curtain down, I lose a lot of my customers. If I leave the curtain up, I lose my soul.'"
“Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Submit yourselves therefore to God... Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves." James had a problem with the church community to which he was writing. It seems that many in the church could speak quite eloquently about their faith. They could tell you in no uncertain terms what they believed and what you should believe, but their fine words seemed to have precious little impact on their actions, on their daily life. So in the church they spoke ill of each other, talked behind each other's backs, favored the rich, discriminated against the poor, all in the name of Jesus. They were, in the words of James, "double-minded." They said they wanted to follow Christ and yet they could not seem to let go of the ways and values of the world around them. They were like people who look into a mirror, getting a glimpse of their true selves, but as soon as they turn away, forgetting everything they saw. Double-minded: wanting to follow Jesus, but finding it so difficult to let go of the world. "If I take that curtain down, I lose a lot of my customers. If I leave the curtain up, I lose my soul."
I think Charles Schulz must have been familiar with the book of James. Linus and Lucy are standing in front of a fence upon which Lucy has drawn a large heart, one side shaded gray. She says, "This, Linus, is a picture of the human heart. One side is filled with hate, the other filled with love. These are the two forces which are constantly at war with each other." At which point, Linus gets a stricken look on his face, grabs his chest and says, "I think I know what you mean. I can feel them fighting." Ever feel that way?
Another time, an angry Lucy asks him why he tore the cover off her comic book. Linus answers, "I don't know. I really don't know. Why do I do stupid things? Why don't I think? What's the matter with me? Where's my sense of responsibility. Oh, but then I ask myself, am I really responsible? Is it really my fault when I do something wrong? Must I answer for my mistakes? "POW!" She lets him have it. As she walks away, a flattened Linus observes, "Her kind never worries about those things." Double-mindedness...talking the talk but struggling to walk the walk. Do I leave the curtain up? Do I take it down? Why did I tear off the cover of that comic book? Do you ever find that struggle in your own heart? Is there ever a time when you don't feel it? The way of faith over against the way of the world.
On this weekend when we remember and honor, not only Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, but also his life and witness, I recall that in 1965 at the General Synod, the national meeting of the United Church of Christ, he was the keynote speaker. And, at that meeting he challenged the church with these words. "We are called to be thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society, not thermometers that merely record or register the temperature of majority opinion... How often the church has had a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds... The time is always right to do what is right." He must have been familiar with James: "Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves." In King's words, "Any religion that is concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the human soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried."
A minister shares this story. "Just before Christmas, I was watching the six o’clock news and there was this face out of my past... Lewis Pitts. I had known him when we were students in college. He was a freshman when I was a senior. There he was on TV, little Lewis Pitts, now a lawyer who had defended and won acquittal for two young black men who had been accused of a kidnapping in South Carolina. There he was on television, this person I had known as a freshman, talking about justice. I called Lewis and invited him to lunch.
"I learned that since law school he had been involved in poverty law in the South. He went anywhere to defend people without money or friends. He had defended communists against the Klan, Native Americans against the sheriff, blacks against blacks or whites. In an old car, living hand to mouth, death threats a virtual everyday occurrence - what made him do it, I wondered?
"Do you know how he explained himself? 'God is love, we ought to love others,' he said. That was it. 'Lewis,' I said, 'That's not saying enough.'
'Well, it's enough to get you shot,' he said. Then he added, 'Look, I'm from Bethune, South Carolina. When you're a Methodist from Bethune, you don't really have a chance to learn much about theology, except what you pick up in Sunday School. All I learned was God is love and we ought to love others.'"
"Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves..." Now, I hear that and I say, "Yes, Amen! I can do that!" I hear it and I say, "No, I cannot possibly do that." I can't live up to the standard set by Jesus, Martin Luther King, Lewis Pitts and so many others in the church. I am double-minded, feeling so much like Linus. I feel that pull in my heart all the time. As I told the kids this morning, sure, I stand up here, and I preach about getting out into the world, giving of ourselves, sacrificing on behalf of others. I preach it and I believe it, and I want to do it. Then I go home and I have a family, and a mortgage, and a pension. I have a lifestyle, for heavens sake, that I’ve got to protect. I got a new reel for Christmas I want to try out. I am double-minded - torn between the way of faith and the tempting ways of the world. It occurred to me, about Thursday, I should never have even started this sermon, for I have been feeling guilty all week. What to do? I’m sorry I ever started that stupid Bible study. I feel like James is talking directly to me.
Well, a final Martin Luther King story. A college professor shares a time in the late sixties - when his career was just beginning - when he found himself on a plane sitting next to Martin Luther King. He introduced himself to Dr. King and as their journey progressed, he revealed he was active in the Civil Rights struggle on his own campus. But because of his work in the racial struggle, he had become alienated from his father. His father did not understand him, did not support his work and thus they had grown apart. "What can I do," He asked, "to raise the consciousness of my father, to make him see that he's a racist, and that all his pious talk about loving black people is nothing but a lie?"
King put his hand on the angry young man's hand and said "You know your father is doing the best he can. He has not had many of your educational opportunities, opportunities, by the way, which he has provided for you. As a Christian, you must be patient with him and love him."
I find that helpful. It doesn't let me off the hook with the book of James, but it's helpful. Because, first it tells me that "doing the word" seeking to live out the faith I preach, to love God and others each and every day, is not supposed to be easy. It really isn't "doing what comes naturally" and it's not going to happen overnight. Love, as talked about and lived by Jesus and so many others, takes every ounce of one's maturity. It is hard work over a lifetime, waking up each and every morning and asking God for the grace to love and care and be faithful this day, even when I know I failed miserably yesterday. Aldous Huxley once said that the modern world is a sphere of "organized lovelessness. Not easy to be doers of a word of love and forgiveness and grace in such a world.
But that doesn't mean we quit. In spite of the difficulty of doing the word, in spite of our persistent double-mindedness, in spite of our failures to be the loving and caring persons we know we are called to be, we don't quit. "As a Christian, you must be patient with him and love him." Those words also apply to us. We've got to be patient with ourselves along the way.
And so, I hope you hear this sermon today, not as a sermon about doing more or being guilty for not doing enough. It's not a sermon about doing more, let's give ourselves a break. Rather, I just hear James saying do something. Do the word, love God, love a neighbor, be a good neighbor in the world and let's not complicate things by getting into specifics. You'll know it when you do it and if you messed up yesterday you have another chance today. But also, never forget, that just having the right words or knowing the right answers really never changes a thing. If you want the world to look different next time you go outside, then do some faith, do some love, do the word. And it will happen. Be patient, it will happen. One colleague says, "Do a little or do a lot, but do some, and don't forget to get some for yourself. Let the summer showers of God's love soak the seed of your words so that they might blossom into right actions and watch the landscape begin to change. Just do it, and find out that when you do, you do live, and live abundantly...just like the man from Nazareth said."