Listen Before You Act

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[0:00] And next is our sermon. So that will be our sermon text eventually will be from James chapter 1 verses 19 through 27. And we're getting close to the end here. This is number five of our six-week sermon series on the book Many Colors by Dr. Seung Chan Ra. And next week is the final one. And then the week after that, we're actually going to use the sermon time to kind of dream together. So that'll be more of sort of a collaborative time using chat or in person to say, what have we learned from this book that will change how we do what we do together as a church? What cultural intelligence have we developed and how do we want that to change how we worship, how we do life together, things like that. So I have here a note that it says you can still join a discussion group, but if you haven't yet, I don't know. If you haven't yet by now, you can, but go ahead. Just go ahead and do it. I don't know. I don't have to say. You're getting in at the end, but that's okay. If you've been listening to these, maybe you haven't, you know, you can still join. Just put it that way. You can still join. Now, the goal of all this, of course, was to increase our cultural intelligence and proficiency so we can serve God better in our multicultural society and as a multi-ethnic

[1:15] church. So there's kind of two angles here. One is that we're a multi-ethnic church on some level, and we live in a very multi-ethnic, multicultural place called Silicon Valley, which I don't think is a very multicultural place. I don't think it's a multicultural place. I don't think it's a multicultural place. I don't think there's a more multi-ethnic place in America besides perhaps New York City, you know, or maybe Los Angeles. We're right in the top three, no doubt.

[1:35] So let's go back and just say where have we been, all right? Just kind of a real quick recap of where we've been in the book. We've been learning that God gives culture as a gift to us. God makes culture, and it's good. We kind of mess it up, but God gives it, and it's good. We have our own cultures. Everybody in this room has a different ethnic background and a culture that you grew up with. Cultures are different. They do things differently, and so we have these various spectra that we talked about, you know, and we're different. My culture may be very different from your culture on how we communicate or how we, do I come from an individualistic culture or a collectivist culture, a group culture? And so when we have those differences between each other, then the communication and the expectations, they just take a little more work. They take an awareness that other people's cultures exist. We be aware of that. We be aware of that. We be aware of our own culture is a very good thing to do. And again, we always say this. If you're in a majority culture, it's harder for you to be aware of your own culture because it's like the water you swim in, and you could ask a fish, like, how's the water? And they're like, what's water?

[2:38] You know, well, you're swimming in it. Well, I don't know. I've been in it all my life. So the majority culture has kind of an extra onus on them to learn not just about other cultures, but learn that they have their own culture and how it plays out. Pastor Victoria preached about how power is always at play in culture. And so I think that's a really good thing to do. And in intercultural cooperation, sometimes requires giving up of power if we want to have a better relationship between cultures. And so that's a good word. And then last week, we talked about storytelling. It's a powerful way to communicate identity. We need to tell our stories. We need to listen to other people's stories, and we need to value other stories. So that's kind of where we are now. And today we're on chapters eight and nine, and the topics loosely are togetherness, learning, and how to communicate. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that today. So we're going to talk about togetherness, learning, and hospitality. And I'll say that again, togetherness, learning, and hospitality. And we're getting into some concrete examples. And so if you're from a task-oriented culture, today's your day, because we're going to tell you what

[3:39] you can do. It's not like, oh, all these things exist, and you should know them. That's one thing. But the task-oriented, like all the engineers in the room, raise your hand, or you work for an engineering company, you're like, oh, give me a task. Okay, well, you're going to get some tasks today. So we're never getting to the meat of it if you're in that kind of culture. So I think that's a kind of thing. So we'll get a list of things we can do. So let's go to our reading, though, and we'll see a little bit later how this is related. But I'm going to talk a little bit more about after we do the reading, we'll do chapters eight and nine, and then we'll expand the reading, the both readings, just a bit. So let's go to our reading, James 1.19. James writes this, you must understand this, my beloved. Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For your anger does not produce God's righteousness. Therefore, rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at

[4:48] themselves in a mirror. For they look at themselves and on going away immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect world and look into the perfect world, they are like those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act, they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this word. And we ask you would add your blessing to this. And we ask you would add your blessing to this. And we ask you would add your blessing to this. And we ask you would add your blessing to this. And we ask you would add your blessing to this.

[5:38] end end end end end and they try to pair together a white person with an African-American person, and they travel together, and they're roommates the whole time. They sit together on the bus, and it's a learning experience, but they visit many places that are important in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, and it's a very eye-opening trip for the white people who go, and for the black people who go on the trip, it's kind of more like, this is our life. Now you kind of see a little bit of it, you know, and it's a very eye-opening kind of trip.

[6:28] And I don't know right now if it's possible to do that. You would have to travel to Chicago first. They are still doing it, so there's a way to do it. If you wanna do that trip, I would recommend it. I have not done it, but I believe Pastor Victoria has, so we could ask her about it.

[6:41] They decided to develop a West Coast version of this called Journey to Mosaic, and instead of, since the one from Chicago was mostly just about the African-American experience, this one on the West Coast was a little bit about the Native American experience, the African-American experience, the Asian-American experience, and the Hispanic-American experience. So it was kind of more, it embraced more sort of dynamics and more people groups, which is a bit more of a representation of, I guess, the West Coast.

[7:13] And that was a great trip. So I look back in my records, because I have a memory of this. I went on this trip with Pastor Jim on March 15th, 2007. So almost exactly 15 years ago, which is crazy. And I went with Pastor Kevin Budd, who's the pastor of New Life Covenant Church, used to be First Covenant Church of San Jose. There was another pastor I knew who said, I don't need to go on that trip. You know, it's fine. He didn't go.

[7:41] And that was really an interesting trip. And I was paired up actually with a member of Grace at the time, he doesn't attend there anymore. So we were paired up and we traveled to Oakland. We traveled down the Central Valley. And met people who were migrant farmer, migrant farm workers. We ended up in Los Angeles. And we went to the Asian American Museum there, or Japanese, I think it was the Japanese American Museum.

[8:08] And I learned a lot that trip. That was the first time anyone had told me about white privilege. Like that was the first time I even heard that phrase. And I didn't honestly, you know, you can tell stories like you did a good thing and you're the hero. So I'm not the hero of this story. You gotta be careful as a pastor, especially to tell a story where you're the hero and you pat yourself on the back. I didn't get it. I didn't really get it at that time. I didn't quite understand what they were explaining to me. I think I've learned more since then. And I think I even resisted a bit. I was like, well, I didn't do anything to deserve this, which is kind of the point.

[8:41] But it was despite myself that I was making, I was like, why am I, you know, why are they, why are they saying that I'm the problem? I haven't done anything, you know, but that's very common. And as you learn, you realize that, you know, to be, to have your eyes open in this world, so to speak, you would say, yes, I have privilege and other people don't. And as a follower of Jesus, that puts some kind of obligation on you to also, not just to understand that other people don't have the same privileges as you, but that there's gotta be some leveling that has to happen in your interactions with them. And it looks different in different situations. So I didn't get that then, but I think I'm getting more of it now. And I have, I'm on a journey too, I'll tell you, I'm still on a journey. I'm on a journey in this. So we're journeying together in this whole process and this book, and that's kind of the point. Now, it's theoretically possible to take the journey to a Mosaic trip now, but the person who ran it all the time was named Greg Yee. And he's moved up to the Northwest, not the Northwest, but the Pacific Northwest Conference. He's their superintendent now. So they have done this trip for some seminary students,

[9:52] but they haven't opened it up to people at large. But as soon as it is, I think the whole church needs to go, okay? We're all just gonna go. We're gonna go on this trip. It's a three-day trip. Get on the bus. Adele's got her finger up. We're gonna go on this trip. And if it, you know, we're just gonna do it. We're just gonna do it. So we were gonna offer it. I'm not gonna, can't make you do anything, you know?

[10:11] So that was, that's chapter eight, journeying together, go on one of these trips. It's an immersive trip where you learn about the reality of racial relationships in California. Kind of in America at large. Okay. Chapter nine. It's a bit more of a mix. He talks a lot. Actually, this is the laundry list. If you want the laundry list, chapter nine is your book.

[10:34] Practice hospitality. Do table fellowship together. Learn other languages. Do you have time for that? He says, even if you don't have time for that, just learn a few words in another language so that when you visit another country, people appreciate that. Like you learn, at least you learn the word for thank you. I mean, just kind of show some, you know, engagement with the other cultures.

[10:54] Learn other languages. Read about other cultures. There's books about other cultures. Watch foreign films. I mean, this is really specific stuff, right? Watch foreign films. So I think we could screen some foreign films together and discuss them. That would be fun, you know? And I'm open to, you know, open to suggestions on what films we could watch. There's probably a lot of great films.

[11:20] How about worship, right? I mean, I think that's a great question. You know, I think about how we worship together. Does it reflect just one culture? Is there a way to make worship operate in such a way that many cultures feel welcome, either because it celebrates part of their culture or is not so beholden to one majority culture? We have a format in our worship. It's right there in your bulletin. It's a list of things that we do, the order we do it in. It's relatively unchanged in my time here, and I don't think it's too different from the years before I came, right? I think it looks to me like a metaphor, right? A mesh of Lutheran and Baptist styles, kind of just kind of nice. It's good. Nothing wrong with it. I like it. But it might be improved. There might be ways to improve it. We want to incorporate other cultural elements into it maybe. That's a discussion that we could have. We could ask for input on worship. The deacons could ask for cultural input on worship, right? So that could work. That could happen. Again, we're in the, we're in, we're in solution mode right here, if you want to call it that. Right? Solution zone. The things that we could do. So he also mentions, have a mentor from another culture.

[12:29] Some of these things are hard to do, but not impossible. Find somebody older and wiser than you from another culture who has the time and inclination to mentor you. A lot of ifs there. But if you can find that, great. That's good to just help your own cultural competence and intelligence.

[12:46] So today's sermon is a little shorter, too, by the way, in case anybody cares. I realize some of mine have gone long on this topic, right? Let's take a look at the last section of chapter 9, and it's about listening, right? Listening and learning. He talks about a posture of learning. And that's kind of an, I think, almost a sort of a decision you make about your life. Like, I'm, you could decide, and I'm 52, Blake's 45, you know, I only said that because I just heard that, you know.

[13:24] But you're almost 45. You get to a point where you're like, I'm done learning. I kind of got it figured out. Well, I think we, no matter how old you are, you could orient your life to be, say, I'm a lifelong learner. I'm always, there's always more I could know. There's always more that I could absorb. And there's a humility that's sort of baked into that, that I don't, I haven't arrived. My views could still change on things, right? My ideas are not, you know, they're not, you know, they're not fully formed yet. And so he talks about that, just to be in a posture of learning. And I think James echoes a little bit of this in his letter in chapter one. I read it just a little while ago. This is kind of advice to the Christian community. But underneath it all is the kind of humility that Jesus models, that we still have a lot to learn, right? That one culture is not superior to another. That's a little bit of, I think, what James is getting at. But this is really the part that struck me, the very first part that we read. He writes, You must understand this, my beloved. Let everyone be quick to listen and slow to speak. And slow to anger, which is more about community. But be quick to listen and slow to speak.

[14:32] Right? It might seem like it's about conflict, and some of it is. But also later we get a warning about the tongue. He says the tongue is dangerous. It causes division. It's a source of trouble. And there's a command to be hearers of the word and then doers of the same word. So hearing is important. And doing is important too. So this is listening. This is learning. And it's putting things into action. And when I read this passage, I always think about that saying that you've heard it probably from people older than you when you were growing up. That God gave us one mouth and two ears.

[15:07] So maybe we should listen twice as much as we talk. Right? Isn't that interesting? It's just simple biology. Wouldn't it be weird if we had two mouths and one ear? It would be horrifying actually. So it's advice from James about community. But it's this idea of be listeners. Listen. Quick to listen. Slow to speak. But when you do hear, be doers of what you hear. Watch out for the tongue. The tongue is the way in which all of our arrogance becomes on display for the world to see. And so that's just challenging. So to talk half as much as we listen? That's a great way to start. The problem is if you were those two people, there would be never any conversation. So you'd need at least three or something. So take a look at our first reading. And we don't have to put it up there because it's not queued up in here. But that was Psalm 1, which is so beautiful. And you hear it where he says, The law of the Lord, I delight in the law of the Lord, and on it I meditate day and night. And that word for law, which sounds like, Oh, I'm reading the Ten Commandments or something like that. It's more than just the law. It's the law in the Ten Commandments or in Deuteronomy or places like that. That word is Torah, which is often translated as law, but it has a bigger meaning than just law.

[16:26] It can be law or instruction or teaching. All three of those words are appropriate translations of the word Torah. And in this case, I would like to think of it more as the instruction or the teaching of God. It's not just the law that you would meditate on day and night, but the instruction. And what God teaches us day and night. Blessed are the ones who take a posture of lifelong learning to the teaching of God. Isn't that great? You know, this idea that this is some blessing in the Psalms for us. They meditate on it all the time. And then we get this nice word image. They're like a tree planted by a stream of water. Not a still, stagnant pond, right? With water that's kind of brackish or something. But it's this water that's always fresh and always new. Cool and clean. And life-giving. And this is the posture of discipleship. Of learning all our lives from God and His instructions. And the reality of that life-giving fresh water is always flowing past that tree. That there's no end to the new things that we can learn. I've said this to you before when I sit to prepare a sermon on a text. And the text, if we do the lectionary, they repeat every three years. So by the time I've been here 12 years, I'll have preached one of these texts four times.

[17:41] You know? But I've been a pastor before I came here. So it might have been a text that I've preached almost six or seven times. And I've found that even seven times, you can't run out of things to say about a particular text. Because there's always more to learn. Even about that one thing. So there's always this fresh stream going past these trees of new things to learn. And this is, I think, this is discipleship. It's deciding that we learn all our lives. And that it makes us as trees planted by streams. By streams of water. And I think that we as a church are in a season of learning new things. It has been thrust upon us. And by events in this world that were deeply concerning and difficult to watch. And we had a prayer meeting about the murder of George Floyd. And we prayed about that. It was so difficult. And from that we said we need to start doing, we need to do something. And so we started the racial justice team. And now we're doing this book study. And there's an invitation here to be in a learning mode about racial injustice in the world. About the culture. Becoming a more culturally intelligent church. And I think that for the season that we're in, this is the next frontier of discipleship. This is where we direct our discipleship.

[18:59] And say how can we learn? How can we grow in this area? Can we be lifelong learners in this? And not just because it pleases God to do those things. And it seems to please God when we learn. But because it's how we do it. And we need to do this evangelism faithfully in the multicultural place that we call Silicon Valley. We need these skills so that our church can bring salt and light into this valley. We need to do this well. And we need to do it first and foremost amongst ourselves so that we know how to do it. And that we welcome all cultures that are presently in our church. But then we need to learn this cultural intelligence so that we go out and we welcome new people in. And I'm not going to say anymore because that's it. That's the end. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for this work that you've given us. And we pray we are faithful to it. To be hearers not only but also doers of this word. And we ask it in Jesus' name.