Every Perfect Gift
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (B), August 29th, 2021.
James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above…You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger...and care for orphans and widows in their distress.” James 1:17-27
There is nothing like climbing to the summit of a mountain on a clear day and seeing for miles and miles and miles. There is something about the elevation and the vista that really helps put things in perspective. I have been blessed to go on some awesome hikes in my life and reaching the top and looking out always makes me feel really close to God and profoundly grateful for life. Life is broken open in those moments and I can see things at a deeper level. It is a sacramental experience, second only to breaking the bread at the Altar on Sunday mornings, that moment when our hearts are lifted to God and God is with us in such a tangible way.
That’s the kind of perspective that James is trying to give us today. The 30,000 foot level. “…every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” Life is a gift and recognizing the source of the gift is really important. That is the alpha and omega of faith. We come from God when we are born, we return to God when we die, and God is with us as the Giver of Life and Sustainer of Life every single day that we walk this earth. Every day, all day, 24/7. But it so challenging to stay in touch with that, especially when things get stressful, and things are very stressful right now. We are anxious about many things: the situation in Afghanistan, the suffering in Haiti, the rise of the Delta variant, the return of children to school, family members who are ill, economic uncertainty, the social injustice that is so pervasive. The list is very long. We are all so weary of making challenging decisions in the midst of all of the ongoing chaos. This past 18 months has been hard, and many people are just exhausted, absolutely worn out. So we all need ways to cope, to help us be the people God calls us to be, to be compassionate with ourselves and to be people of hope, justice, mercy and love. And when we get confused or lose our way, we have to retrace our steps to find our way home, back to the Source.
The Letter of James has a lot to offer us today. Just like us, the people in James’ community were seriously stressed and divided. And he knew that when people are super anxious, our world shrinks. We lose perspective. We lock down. James offers us a way to get out of survivor mode and move into thriver mode. And the way to do that is to get a bigger perspective on the situation we are in. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” James reminds us that we worship a God who is generous and steadfast, a God who is a giver of gifts, gifts we cannot receive from anywhere else.
Then James moves from the cosmic level to the very particular on the ground level of every day human experience and the challenge of living a moral life. He says this: “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger…and care for the orphan and widow in their distress.”
Our connection with God is meant to transform our hearts and then flow out into ethical actions. And there is a prayer practice that will really help us to do that. It is a practice that you have heard me talk about before, but sometimes it is good to be reminded of things, to revisit practices that we may have forgotten about, or might not have resonated with us the first time around. It’s the simplified examen of conscience that is a new version of a practice rooted in the Jesuit tradition. And it involves looking at our experiences every day and realizing that life is revelatory, just like the breaking of the bread and the view from a mountain summit. That God can speak to us through our experience and give us new insight.
You begin with lighting a candle. That sets the time aside as holy. It shows intention. And you start with 5 minutes and work your way up to 15. You light your candle and get quiet and call yourself into God’s presence. We’re always in God’s presence; its just a matter of having the discipline to make ourselves aware of that. Breath deeply. Picture Jesus sitting beside you. Feel him giving you the peace that passes all understanding. And then call to mind a time that day when you felt really connected to God or to other people or to your deepest and truest self. And then spend a few minutes reliving it and giving thanks. Ask God to help you re-experience it from your head to your toes and be filled with gratitude. “Thank-you, Lord. Thank-you.” And then after really experiencing that wonderful memory, call to mind a time that day when you felt disconnected from God or to other people or your deepest and truest self. Ask Jesus to help you look at it honestly and see whatever you need to see. Maybe you had a bad interaction with someone in your family or one of your work collegues. Maybe you got judgmental and locked down when someone expressed a opinion different from yours. Maybe you need to ask for forgiveness. Whatever it was, spend some time in that memory, with Jesus there beside you to give you insight. And then go back to that first memory and picture Jesus drawing a ring of light, starting with the good memory, going to the second, encircling it all in light and healing. And then end with the Lord’s Prayer.
You will be amazed at how this simple prayer practice will increase your awareness of God throughout each day, your connection to yourself and your connection with other people. It gives a space for God to transform our anger, heal our hurts and increase our empathy for others. It helps us to move from the 30,000 foot idea of God as the Father of Lights, down to the nitty gritty of each day where we are trying to deal with the visissitudes of life and be in right relationship with others.
“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above . . . You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger . . . and care for orphans and widows in their distress.”