Seed or Shell

1. Seed or Shell Peter Fitch, St. Croix Vineyard Sunday, May 24, 2015

2. Walt’s idea: fits well with true religion

3. James on true religion . . . 19 This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.

4. James 1:19-27 22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; 24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.

5. James 1:19-27 25 But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. 26 If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.

6. James 1:19-27 27 Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

7. A comparison of 2 types of religion? • Forgetful hearers or effectual doers • One is very polemical, the other gentle • One angry and proud, the other humble and concerned with its own messes • Hearers like people who look in a mirror and then forget the image • Doers like people who dip in a stream called the Law of Liberty and then become changed by it

8. More . . . • Unbridled tongue, self-deceptive (telling everyone else how to live?) • People who visit orphans and widows in their distress, and try to keep themselves unstained by the world (caring for the broken, trying to live well)

9. Norman Rockwell (1961)

10. Spirit and Letter Exodus 32:27 He said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor.’” 28 So the sons of Levi did as Moses instructed, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day.

11. Acts 2:41 So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. 42 They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

12. 2 Corinthians 3:4 Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. . . 6 who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

13. This was promised . . . Jeremiah 32:31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

14. Jeremiah 32:31-34 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

15. Jeremiah 32:31-34 34 They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

16. Is it possible . . . • That most religious traditions misuse their sacred texts? • That treating the Bible the wrong way is very much like relying on tablets of stone? • That this leads to problem after problem as people refuse to care for others in line with the spirit of liberty, the Golden Rule, as they try to protect an older written standard?

17. A Better Mirror . . . 2 Corinthians 3:12 Therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, 13 and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away. 14 But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ.

18. 2 Corinthians 3:12-17 15 But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; 16 but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

19. Two illustrations of this idea • Zoe’s song (Me and the Coupland Kids) • A visual message from Ireland