South Presbyterian Church

Founded 1723

150 West Church Street
Bergenfield, NJ 07621

Sunday, September 10, 2006

As Is

In certain stores you will find a section of merchandise available at greatly reduced prices.  The tip-off is a particular tag you will see on all the items in that area.  Each tag carries the same words: “as is.”

It’s their way of saying, “These are damaged goods.”  Sometimes they’re called slightly irregular.  The store is issuing you fair warning. “This is the department of Something’s-Gone-Wrong.  You’re going to find a flaw here; a stain that won’t come out; a zipper that won’t zip; a button that won’t button — whatever  — there will be a problem.  These items are not normal.

“We’re not going to tell you where the flaw is. You’ll have to look for it.  But we know it’s there.  So when you find it — and you will find it — don’t come whining and sniveling to us.  Because there is a fundamental rule when dealing with merchandise in this corner of the store — no returns.  No refunds.  No exchanges.  If you were looking  for perfection, you walked down the wrong aisle.  You have received fair warning.  If you want this item, there in only one way to obtain it.  You must take it “as is.”

Now when it comes to human beings , you have come to the  as is corner of the universe.  Think for a moment about someone in your life.  Maybe the person you know best, love most.  That person is slightly irregular.  That person comes with a little tag;  There’s a flaw here.  A streak of deception, a cruel tongue, a passive spirit, an out of control temper.  I’m not going to tell you where it is, but it’s there.  So when you find it — and you will find it — don’t be surprised.  If you want to enter a relationship with this model, there is only one way, “As is.”  If you were looking for perfection, you’ve walked down the wrong isle.  One of the great marks of maturity, is to accept the fact that everybody comes “as is.”

Of course the most painful part of all of that is realizing that I am in the “as is” department as well.  Throughout  history, human beings have resisted owning up to that little tag.  We try to separate the world into normal people, like us, and difficult people.

That is exactly the point that James was getting at in the second chapter of his letter as he describes what happened when two very different people entered the church, one wealthy and neatly dressed, the other poor and shabby looking.  As the story goes the first person was given the best seat and the second a  seat in the back.  He obviously tells the story to remind the church that all people are equal in God’s sight.  Now you would think that everybody knows that — that we certainly understand that, but as a matter of fact one of the lingering tragedies of human history is that people don’t believe it, or don’t want to believe it.  Yet the bedrock of our faith is the radical idea of human equality.  It might look like God has favorites, that some people are better than others, rich people, white people, religious people, but its just not true.

Our fallenness makes us want to be a part of not just any group, but an exclusive group.  By definition, every society includes people who connect, who belong to one another.  Yet every society includes people who feel left out, who don’t get chosen at recess, whose invitation to dance gets turned down, who get blackballed and cold-shouldered and voted off the island.  We exclude others because of pride or fear or ignorance, or the desire to feel superior.

The late William Sloan Coffin was fond of saying, “If we are not one in love; we are one in sin.”  The scripture says, “That all we like sheep have gone astray…. And all have sinned and fallen short of the  glory of God.”  Everyone of us have habits we can’t control, past deeds we cannot undo, flaws we cannot erase.  Everyone in some way pretends to be healthier and kinder than they really are.  We engage in what some would call “depravity  management.”  So we should not be surprised to find this story from James included in Holy Scripture.

The second thing we learn from this passage in James is that true religion has more to do with how you live than what you say you believe, or even the religious rituals we may perform.  It’s really an old idea. It goes way back to the prophets of Israel who kept insisting that what God really wants is not a lot of bloody, smoking animal carcasses, but justice in the market place, and kindness in society, and mercy and compassion between neighbors and families.  God wants people to act out the implications of their beliefs.  God wants new behavior.  James is issuing a simple reminder that you really don’t believe something until it shapes and forms what you do and how you live.  Even John Calvin, who had a super intellectual knowledge of Christian Theology, wrote, “The Gospel is not a doctrine of tongue, but of life.“Our religion will be unprofitable, if it does not change our heart, pervade our manners, and transform us into new creatures.  What most people are looking for today is a religion that gets into our minds and our hearts, and our behavior, our living.

Dorothy Bass writing in “Practicing our Faith, says we yearn for something that helps us cope with all the demands that are placed upon us from every direction … something that helps us at the end of the day to know that we are not alone  with our little lives.

I say to you that is exactly what the church is for.  The church is here for us to put our faith into practice, to do what we believe and to become what we hope for.

A visitor to the South was ordering breakfast.  He saw grits on the menu, and being a Dutchman who spent most of his life in Michigan , he had never been very clear on the nature of this item.  So he asked the waitress, “What exactly is grit?”   Her response was classic,  “Honey,” she said (in the South, waitresses are required to address all customers as “honey”) , “Honey, they don’t come by themselves.”

Grits don’t come in isolation.  No grit is an island, entire unto itself.  Every grit is a part of the whole.  You just can’t order a single grit.  They’re a package deal.

Call it a clan, a tribe, a network, a family, a congregation.  Whatever you call it you need one.  It is not good for humans to be alone.  You don’t come by yourself.  There is a human need in all of us to sense being a part of something that matters, something larger than ourselves.

The Hebrew prophets had a word for this kind of connectedness  — shalom — “The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight.” Try to imagine what such a state of affairs would look like.

In a world where shalom prevailed, all marriages would be healthy and children would be safe.  Those who have too much, would give to those who have too little.  Israeli and Palestinian children would play together on the West Bank ; their parents would build homes for one another.  Talk shows would feature mothers and daughters who love each other deeply, wives who give birth to their husbands' children.  Tabloids would be filled with accounts of courage and moral beauty.  Disagreements would be settled with grace and civility.  There would still be lawyers, but they would have really useful jobs like delivering pizza, which would be non-fat and low in cholesterol.  Doors would have no locks, cars would have no alarms.  Schools would no longer need police presence and at recess every kid would get picked for a team.  No one would be lonely or afraid.  People of different races would join hands; they would honor and be enriched by their differences and united in their common humanity.

The writers of scripture tell us that this vision is the way things are supposed to be.  It is what we would look like if we all lived up to the norms God set for human life — one day it will be.

Friends, community-living in vital connectedness with others is essential to human life.  It is the place where God meets us and we can practice our faith.  Faith lived in acts of generosity and kindness and healing and love, nourishes not only others, but also us — meets the needs of others, but also our own deepest need.

God has not given up on his dream.  And you and I have a role to play in it.  Our task is not to add to the divisions in our world, not to create barriers between those we perceive different from us — it is to create little islands of shalom.  God’s dream for community encompasses not only our congregational life which should be an example of God’s dream where all are equal and no one is shown partiality over the other, but it also includes the way we relate to our families, our friends, our neighbors, and coworkers; the people you shop with, the person behind the counter, and the one who fills your tank with gas.  There is a better  way.

In this world dwell the rich and the poor, the "haves" and the "have nots," the powerful and the powerless.  There are those who are educated and those who are ignorant.  There are those who believe and those who don’t believe.  There are the high and the mighty and the lowly who nobody knows.  In between is the Church of Jesus Christ.  The church is to be the gospel for all these people.  That is why we are called to act and behave in a way that honestly reflects the best of who we are and what we hope to become.