Sunday Sermon: "Going to Paris Man"

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Sunday Sermon: "Going to Paris Man"

PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION: Please pray with me: Holy Spirit, as the Scripture is read, open our hearts and minds to hear the truth; shine your light into our dark places; convict us where our hearts have been hardened; and call us to respond with joy to your Word to us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

SCRIPTURE: James 3:13 - 4:3
13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.

16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. 17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18 Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
James 4:1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.

SERMON-INTRO
Last Sunday, my family went out to a TGIFridays to celebrate my grandmother’s 86th birthday. As we were sitting there waiting for the food to arrive, I looked at the sugar container. Fridays has their own brand of sugar packets and each packet has a random question on it.

The first sugar packet had the question “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?” So I asked my dad; and his answer was “super-accounting powers.”
You have to know my dad to get the humor of his answer; let me assure you, it totally makes sense that’s the kind of answer he would give. But it got me thinking about the question of superpowers: suppose you could either be completely invisible OR you could fly. Which would you pick?

Now, before you answer, think about it: even if you are invisible, anything you pick up or move will still be visible. And even though you can fly, that doesn’t make you invincible, so you can still smash into things. So, which would you choose? Who would want to be invisible? And who would choose to fly? (People raise hands.)

#1
So, if you were invisible, what would you do with your powers? What kinds of things could you do with your invisibility superpower? (wait for answers)

And if you could fly, what would you do with YOUR powers? What sorts of things would you do with your flying superpower? (wait for answer)

A guy named John Hodgman hosts the “This American Life” program on NPR. He asked these very questions as an informal poll for his show. And they people were pretty evenly split between wanting to be invisible and wanting to fly, which is not too surprising.

But the answers to the “what would you do with your superpower” question WERE pretty shocking. “No matter which power people chose, they used it in self-serving ways.”
No one seemed to care about fighting crime or finding justice; nobody wanted to work for peace. No one wanted to be merciful or even helpful.

One typical respondent, who had chosen flight, commented, “I don’t think I’d want to spend a lot of my time using my power for good. I mean, if I don’t have super strength and I’m not invulnerable it would be very dangerous. If you had to rescue somebody from a burning building you might catch on fire. Just having the power of flight, I don’t think it’s necessarily quite enough because you don’t have the super strength. I’d still be weak when I got there. I don’t fight crime now.”

He finished with — “I’d go to Paris, I suppose. I could be ‘Going to Paris Man.’”
If we’re honest with ourselves, we will probably admit thinking the same thing. We might not say it out loud, but deep, down, we might agree with “Going to Paris Man.” Even my dad’s “super-accounting power” isn’t something that’s going to benefit society; it will just make him better at his job and help him to move up the corporate ladder. According to this survey and maybe even our own answers to the questions, nobody’s really interested in helping others; we are all selfish.

#2
But you aren’t really all that surprised at the results of that poll, are you? Whether we’re open and honest about our selfishness or keep it hidden inside, we all have oodles of selfishness.

This is what James is talking about in our Scripture reading this morning. We like to follow the wisdom of the world—the kind of wisdom that says do for yourself first and, if you’ve got something leftover, do for someone else.

Hodgman found that the people who answered his survey revealed their true character with how they would USE their superpower. They followed the wisdom of the world . . . people who chose to be invisible talked about sneaking into movies, steal clothes from a store, spy on their coworkers, follow their exes around, or eavesdrop on conversations about them.

People who could fly would give up their cars and buses, fly from bar to bar, they’d hope they find some groupies who’d be glad to follow them around, or they’d fly to Paris or Barcelona or Vegas.

People were the same in James’ time as they are now. Human desires are very earthly and very unspiritual. People are self-serving. Any superpower people have they will use it only for their own good.

We don’t really need to fly—we have planes and helicopters for that. And we don’t need to be invisible—nothing good seems to come from that either. These are superpowers that will probably just make us more selfish.

#3
But the REAL superpower we need is divine wisdom or “wisdom from above,” and NOT the wisdom of the world. The wisdom of the world says look out for #1. Divine wisdom is pure and peaceful and gentle and submissive. Divine wisdom is full of mercy, not showing favoritism or hypocrisy. And true wisdom, divine wisdom, James says, produces a “righteous harvest.”

James tells us that unless our lives bears witness to divine wisdom, we are suffering from “false wisdom.” FALSE wisdom is full of bitter envy and selfish ambition. False wisdom brings disorder and wickedness of every kind. And false wisdom leads to conflicts and disputes.

James says, “You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.” THIS is false wisdom. Doing whatever you can to get the stuff you want.

James says, “You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” THIS is false wisdom.

And that’s where false wisdom leads us: being at odds with God. Following the wisdom of the world puts us at such odds with God that when we ask, we do not receive because we ask with the wrong motives.

You have heard it said “Ask and you shall receive.” But do you remember the other part of the verse? “Seek FIRST the kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you. Divine wisdom seeks first the kingdom of God. False wisdom seeks first OUR own little kingdoms. Should we really be surprised when we are receive “no” answers from God when our motives are selfish?

When we look to other places or other people for things that only God can supply, we “do not have” because we do not ask God. In a way, we have a hand in answering our own prayers. If we are asking from false motives, should we really be surprised when we get a “no” answer? Which of our prayers might instead be answered by a “yes” instead of a “no” simply because we ask using divine wisdom? It’s something to think about.

CONCLUSION
Without the superpower of divine wisdom, all we are able to do is brag and boast, covet and steal, cause fights and create conflict.

But with divine wisdom, given to us and embodied in the Holy Spirit, with divine wisdom, even in our weakest moments—faced with our very own kryptonite—we can still be people who are filled with mercy and peace and gentleness, which is exactly what
James is telling us disciples need to be.

The superpower of divine wisdom is a gift—a gift which God has given to each one of us. It’s a gift that God expects us to use to make life better for others, not just to make our own lives better.

The wisdom of the world—false wisdom—tells us to love ourselves. But divine wisdom tells us to love one another because God loved us first.

And we won’t need to brag about being wise; our lives will reflect that wisdom. Our lives will be full of “deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.”

Thanks be to the God who makes us each into superheroes who sow in peace and raise a harvest of righteousness and whose prayers He is happy to answer because our motives are pure and unselfish.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.