For, what we do here makes a difference.

In that regard,
I pass on to you an e-mail message
I received yesterday from Michael Johnson.

He and Pam were members of this faith community
until last March
when they moved to Charlottesville
where he is to become a professor of medicine.

He writes that Saint James was a formative presence
for them
and continues to feed them through their memories
and their regular reading of the sermons
of this place, which we place on the internet.

This community can be such a formative presence for us.
Today each person here just might adopt an attitude
toward our spiritual life
that can carry through the entire season.

How will we each engage the message of the Gospel
this year?

In my heart
today is a pivotal moment for us
as we define ourselves for God's future, our future.

It is not unlike the place
we find ourselves as a nation.

We have been climbing a false peak for years
and now have experienced a wake-up call
from the evil done to us one year ago.

Everywhere, people wave flags
and speak of being a Nation under God,

but, what does that really mean?
What choices will we as a world power make?
and, will they be godly choices or not?

It seems to me that the rhetoric
tends to be more like,
"My god can whip your god"
than
"How can we respond, individually and corporately,
to these challenges
using God's perspectives
God's tools, God's love?

Paul, in today's epistle,
writes to the church in Rome,
which was the seat of empire in his day.

Rome was the defining power in the world,
and heaped abuse on people
who did not comply with its paradigms.

Yet, Paul dares to say to the people,
"Do not be conformed to this world,
but, be transformed by the renewing of your minds,
so that you may discern what is the will of God,
that which is good, and acceptable, and perfect."

It was a risky thing to say, and do;
yet, the first step in defining ourselves
as spiritual persons
is to notice the difference
and make that same choice;
and it is a real choice.

Several years ago,
as some of you will remember,
I wrote a theological paper on the death penalty,
showing it to be unsupportable in scripture
and unacceptable to a people of faith.
I argued it to be injurious to our society
and supportive of the false concepts
that violence is a solution to evil
and retribution curative of the injured soul.

Pretty much knowing the response it would receive,
I sent the piece on
to a well-known national political figure.

I received a strongly-worded letter back
saying that my conclusion was wrong (that's his word)
because I had based it on theology
and not the will of the people.

That is exactly why Paul wrote,
"Do not be conformed to the world."

These readings today, all three,
call us to an integration
of theology and our words and actions.

Saint James, season after season,
exists to help us to do just that.

Jeremiah railed at the people of Jerusalem
in the 6th century BC,
calling them all sorts of names
because he didn't think they lived
honorable, godly lives.

Jeremiah finally discovered that God's words
were for him
and not for his use as weapons against others.

"Your words were found, and I consumed them hungrily,"
said Jeremiah in today's first reading.

They became part of him
and became to him, "a joy and a delight of his heart."

"I will take you back," says God to Jeremiah.
Jeremiah until that time
had not thought he had wandered away.

"If you utter what is precious
and not what is worthless
you shall serve as my mouth," says God,
"and the people shall turn to you."

Only with self realization
and transformation
did Jeremiah come actually
to speak on behalf of God
rather than on behalf
of his misperceptions of God.

We wear the mantle of the church,
you and I.

It is an awesome responsibility
and a powerful possibility.

What we say and do
will be interpreted by our children
and by some in this generation and the world
to be the word of God.

But what god do we represent?
Is what we say and do really of God
or does it proclaim something else?
Does it say things about us that we really don't want said?
Does it say things about God
that God really doesn't want said?

Who are we, anyhow? Do we know?

As our nation, our world,
continues to try to define God
in the post 9-11 age
the future of civilization
depends on that definition, or lack thereof.

Our own lives nearer to home
are defined by the same choices.
Our task, our obligation, our joy
is to be so transformed
that we begin to speak God's words to each other
and to a hurting world.

Is our response to be that of the god, Thor, and destroy?
or perhaps Baccus, and we can medicate ourselves
into oblivion?
Or Hermes, and run and tell.
or Diana, and go hide in the woods?

Our task is to be so integrated in our concept of God
as a God of compassion and gentleness
and patience
that our words and deeds will reflect that God,
and we will speak and do for that God
in his world.

Perhaps Nathan told you this antidote.
If so, it is worth repeating.

Wally Dow recently organized and led a group of people
from his retirement home
to Saint James.

He stood right here, where he was married long ago
and proudly recited the history of this place,

and, with tears in his eyes, said,
"This is a place where when you come
seeking the love of God
you find it."

Friends, here it is:
a gift from God to us all,
an opportunity, a time, a place
in which to discover God's Love.

Find it, consume it
feel it, speak it, do it.

May God, this season, transform us,
heal our assumptions and presumptions,
and bring us to be that which is
good, and acceptable, and perfect.