#05 Worship

[In this passage James gives instructions for the worship of the church. Before his spiritual eyes appear his scattered brethren, meeting in small communities by the house, daily or weekly, taking out the Scriptures, the Epistles of the Apostles, the sayings of Jesus, reading them, explaining them, discussing them, in short, preaching the Word and listening to it. For this is what the Christian church worship consists of: the proclamation and hearing of the Word, whether it is done in a small group of people in a house or in a large church meeting. At the heart of all our worship is the Word, its content, its initiator and its end, the basis, the enabler, the source of our worship of God: the Word! This is the teaching of the letter of James.So the Word. In simpler, more ordinary terms, I could say that it is the word, the speech. And when we say it like that, does it sound very particular to our ears that the word, the word of God, is the basis and the content of our worship? We people today do not attach such great importance to the word, to speech. We used to say that words are only words, and actions are worth more than words. What is a word worth if it is not followed by action? So you can't help a person in distress. Well: they are right, if we think of our human word. Our word is indeed only a word. It flies away, it becomes nothing, it remains powerless, ineffective.
But there is another word, a word which, like a word, is also a deed, a deed, a saving deed, which, when heard, has already received help. God has put all His saving power, His redeeming power, into one word. And if this word of God is spoken somewhere and takes hold of a human life, then there is no need for anything else, because there the full divine help is already at work. For this word speaks of the gracious action of God. It speaks of the fact that we have a Father who sent His second person in the Son after us, and that the Son has done all that He had to do to save us. In this Word God makes known to us that He forgives our sins, takes us as His children, stands by us in our struggles, sanctifies our suffering, shares our destiny, and opens the way from death to life.
That is why this word has such a wonderful power to rebirth me, to comfort me, to strengthen me, to create a new world around me, just as it did in the beginning when the same divine word created a whole world, heaven and earth, out of nothing. That is why we have a special word in our Hungarian language to express this divine word: the Word! The Word of God, the Word of God, as it was spoken and written by the prophets and apostles of old, and as it became flesh, it took on a living human form in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
And if the Word, the Word of God, has such wonderful power, then it is more important than ever that this Word speaks and that I listen. It speaks in the universe, it speaks in history, it speaks in the Bible, it speaks in the Church, it speaks above all in Jesus Christ. It speaks in a condensed form; it speaks especially to us in the congregational worship, in the sermon. He speaks and says what my life and death, my eternal life and eternal death, depend on. Therefore, the foundation, the centre of our worship is the Word of God, his Word, his speaking and addressing.
James says: "Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak." (1,19) This speed does not mean physical movement, in the sense of being in a hurry, not being late for the service - although it would be good to encourage the congregation here in Pasaré - but a spiritual attitude. We should listen with bated breath to what God is saying, like listening to the radio announcing what happened to the boat on which our loved ones were caught in the storm.
"Delayed to speak" - means to quiet all other voices, arguments, counter-arguments, our own righteousness, within ourselves, so that the noise within us does not drown out the Word. "Delayed to speak" - means to be silent before the Word, so that He alone may speak, not the pastor, whoever it may be, who speaks. Let our hearing be attuned not to the preacher, but to the preaching of the Word. It is by hearing that we share in the life-sustaining power that God has placed in His Word, that He works in the world through His Word. As we listen to God's Word of saving action, we are also, in a sense, participating in it. So the first thing is to be quick, ready to hear.
But is it not the doing that is most important, but the hearing, one might ask? Well, of course, action, but hearing, hearing the Word, hearing what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, this hearing is the most fundamental action. This is what must be done first: to hear what God says in His Word, because in the Word He gives the light and the power for what must then be done. Therefore let every man who wants to live according to God's will be quick to hear!
Of course, this hearing should not be the same kind of listening as one listens to a beautiful piece of music or to the sound of the heavens, but James says: "Receive with meekness the word that is grafted in" (v. 21b). With such gentleness does the thirsty field receive the May shower, the trembling bush the falling pollen, so does the bride receive the kiss of her bridegroom, and so did Mary receive the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. In the true hearing, in the true hearing of the Word, there is a spiritual conception, a fertilization with the divine germ of life, a spiritual marriage: a turning away from all others and a devotion to the Only One, Christ! So: in this "meekness receive the word that is grafted in" (v. 21b), says James.
But let this reception not remain an experience, an aesthetic or cultic religiosity, but let new life be born from it and through it. That is why he immediately adds: 'But be ye keepers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves' (v. 22). We listen to it, we admit that the Word is true, we assent to it, then we leave it in the church, closed up among the pages of the Bible, - and we go on about our business, living our lives without the Word, without Christ, as one turns away from the mirror because it is not good to think of the tired, aging, wrinkled, disappointed face he saw in it. It can't be helped anyway!
Of course there is, says James! It can be helped! No matter how ugly, helpless, dirty, deadly you may have seen yourself in the light of the Word: it can be helped, - and as James says: be keepers - or rather, doers - of the Word!
The power of the Word, its regenerating power, its saving energy, its true help, is experienced by you in and through action. As you become doers of the Word, the Word becomes for you a help, a real power! As you do the Word, you experience its saving power.
Stanley Jones tells of his encounter with a Chinese engineer who told him he could not believe in the deity of Christ. "Well, how far do you believe, how far does your faith go?" asked Stanley Jones. "That Christ was the best man in the world. If Christ is the best man, then He must be your ideal. Are you prepared to do everything according to that ideal and to eliminate from your life everything that Christ would not think right? And if it should turn out, Stanley Jones went on, that Christ is a man, or even more than a man, would you not be stronger and better in any case if He lived always with you and in you? "Of course I would be different then," said the Chinaman.Well, wouldn't you want to receive Him into your life? "But I don't know how? "Say after me this prayer, sentence by sentence. Here and now I agree to eliminate from my life anything that You cannot accept Lord Jesus Christ, Amen! "This is something different from what I have heard before. I have always been told that I must first believe. At least here is something I can start right away. The next day, the Chinese engineer returned with a beaming face: 'I never imagined that people could be as happy as I am. I could not have imagined how happy I could be like this man. And besides, I've talked to my wife about it and she's very keen to have what I've found!
This Chinese woman has experienced what James expressed, "He who "is not a forgetful hearer, but a follower of works, will be happy in his works." (v. 25b) - Therefore, be not only hearers of the Word, but doers of it!
To do the Word means to surrender to it, to be in its power body and soul, to be an inspired soul dependent on the Word in all my outer and inner world, a lover of the Word, the Word made flesh. I am still a worker or a scientist, a clerk or a housewife, a student or a tram driver, doing what I have always done. But now I experience all this as one who has heard the Word, as one who has been captured by the Word, as one whose feelings, thoughts and actions have been overcome and captured by the creative Word of God. This is what it means to do the Word. Yes, the doer of the Word today and always will be "happy in his work"!
And so that this may not remain a general truth, the Word immediately indicates the direction in which this action is to begin: "This is the worship of God and of the Father, pure and undefiled: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself from the world without spot." (verse 27) Behold, this is the action of the Word we have heard. And what the Word does to me, I do to others. The Word of God means that God has had mercy on me, fallen, sinful, has stooped down to me, has shared my fate, has lifted me up, has healed me, has loved me - and this Word is realized in me with effective power by doing the Word I have heard: having mercy on the fallen, the wretched, the abandoned, standing by my side, lifting me up, helping me, loving me!
True worship is when God's mercy, as revealed in His Word, becomes mercy in me, a service of love. This is the sign that I have heard His Word. This is the space for me to act on His Word. James mentions widows and orphans as the most typical of those members of humanity who need help. Abandoned, sad, disappointed, helpless, so small that everyone looks over them. To bend down here is a service of the least showy, not profitable in glory or in money, and not even profitable! Helping those where the least expectation of return service is. A waste of love that will never be repaid - on earth! It is the fruit of the mercy born in deeds, by which the soul is made fruitful through the reception of the Word. So it is truly pure and undefiled worship.
This is how our worship becomes a cult, a source of life, and how our life becomes a cult of worship of God! Therefore, let us worship in this way with the words of the song:
Break now our hearts, all our feelings, From all the vanity of this deceitful world,
That we may be hearers of the Word, Keepers of the Word;
Which shall take root in our hearts, and bring forth fruit.
Amen
Date: 26 April 1953.