Dr. Jon Burnham preached this sermon from James 1:17-27
on September 3, 2006 at Batesville Presbyterian Church
Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames , talks about "watering the seeds of happiness." He suggests the importance of watering the seeds of happiness especially in our family relationships, husband and wife, parent and child. We water the seeds of happiness when we value and compliment the positive aspects of those whom we love. Instead of trying to change them we love them as they are and bring out the best in them. We encourage the good in one another. We emphasize what they excel at. Promote the positive within them.
This is what Mrs. Young did for me when I was a student in her 5th grade math class, and this is what she did for me when I visited her home, and this is what she did for me when she led my youth group at church. She watered the seeds of happiness in me. Mrs. Young is the mother of a good friend. She recently died and as I conducted her funeral I remembered the ways Mrs. Young had watered the seeds of happiness in me.
I remember the 5th grade classroom where she taught. It was a clean, well organized room. And she came to class to do business. She wasn't marking time on the pay clock. She meant for math to be learned and I must say that I learned in her classroom.
Mrs. Young will always be associated in my mind with my home church where she and her family were active in the church. She helped rear me in the faith. She and her husband, led the Sunday night Training Union class for the youth when I was in the youth group. The Young's were good youth leaders. They kept us straight. They put up with us. I always felt safe when they were in charge because I knew things would not get out of hand. I wouldn't have to do anything too stupid or embarrass myself in front of the gang as long as Mr. and Mrs. Young were in charge because there wasn't going to be any kind of radical silliness going on in the room. Mrs. Young watered the seeds of happiness in me through her leadership in the youth group at church.
She also watered the seeds of happiness in me when I visited her home to play with her son, Phil, a close friend. This play was always educational for me because Phil is smarter than I am and I usually learned something new when I visited Phil. Mrs. Young had the good sense to make presence known when I arrived at the house and then to generally stay out of the way so Phil could educate me on the symphonies of Beethoven or the finer points about what made Napoleon the greatest general in the history of warfare. And of course there were the war games we played, usually created by Phil which meant that half way through the game, just when I was getting my momentum going and had finally figured out how to beat him and made my big move Phil would nearly always say with a contrived, disappointed look on his face, "You can't do that."
"What? What do you mean you can't do that? I'm doing it!"
"No. You can't do that. That's against the rules."
The best thing about making up your own games is that you get to write the rules and if they're not working for you can always change them if you need to. Seriously, I was never going to beat Phil in a strategy game and I knew and he knew it too. That's why he was always happy to see me come over. My friendship with Mrs. Young's son watered the seeds of happiness in me.
We water the seeds of happiness in our children, our friends, and even among people whom we've never met.
The writer of the epistle of James wants us to water the seeds of happiness in others even God waters the seeds of our own happiness. I love Eugene Peterson's translation of James 1:21, "In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life." God waters the seeds of happiness by landscaping up with the divine Word, making a salvation-garden of our lives.
We sometimes make the mistake of limiting God. Sometimes we in the church put religion in a box. Some of us got this message from the church when we were growing up: Jesus is nice and he wants us to be nice too. How surprised we are then when later in life we find the Holy Spirit moving us to acts of charity beyond our wildest imagination.
That is what happened to Rev. Rick Warren. Rick is the pastor of a mega-church in California and the author of a book called The Purpose Driven Life that has sold over 20 million copies. One of his passions is training pastors and one of his wife's passions is working for healing the millions of women and children in Africa who are victims of AIDS. Mr. and Mrs. Warren recently went to South Africa where she was attending a conference on AIDS and he was training pastors. After his seminar, Rick took a tour out into the bush country and visited a small church of less than 100 members. This congregation was so poor they met in a run-down tent. They had none of the material things we associate with a successful church. And in that run-down tent this small congregation was taking care of 20 AIDS orphans. I saw Rick Warren tell this story on the Charlie Rose Show. Rev. Warren said that one little side-trip to a small church out in the bush country had changed his life and his ministry. He was completely humbled to learn that this poor little church that took full-time responsibility for the care and education of 20 AIDS orphans. This poor, tiny church in rural South Africa was doing more the loveless and homeless of the world than Warren's 20,000 member church in prosperous Southern California. Rev. Warren returned to his church in California and set about organizing his 20,000 member congregation to water the seeds of happiness among AIDS victims around the world. We never know how God may use once we open up our lives to the Holy Spirit and allow God to begin watering the seeds of happiness in others.
We can being watering the seeds of happiness by doing what James suggests: "Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear." (James 5:19) Learning to listen is a vital first step. Learning to lead with our ears. Learning to control our tongues is also necessary. Someone has said "Silence is God's first language" and we should learn to speak that language well. Converting our anger into positive energy for spiritual transformation is another step along the way. In a recent sermon, I spoke about the power of the "Welcome Prayer" to transform anger into quantum spiritual growth. We welcome God into our anger and work it out that way.
Let's follow the program James lays out in our reading today and we will learn to sow the seeds of happiness. "Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear." Let's use our ears for listening and so begin watering the seeds of happiness in others. Let's use our tongue for blessing, encouraging and laughter to water the seeds of happiness in others. And let's let anger straggle along in the rear. We never know where such sowing may lead. James makes it very simple for to understand, saying: "Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight." (James 1:27) Sowing the seeds of happiness is about more than being nice. It is an intentional form of spreading God's love in a dry and thirsty world. Let's water the seeds of happiness in others as a demonstration that our religion is real.
