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Sermon for August 30, 2009

“Mirror Looking”

James 1:17-25

Perhaps no book in scripture better exemplifies the practical, charitable morality of the Christian faith than the little letter of James. In James faith is a set of specific practices that make us realize that disciples walk in a different direction than the world’s way. In James Christians suffer because they follow Jesus. In much of the church, salvation is something you believe or feel. In James, salvation is when you talk and walk like Jesus. The letter to James says it in different way, but verse 22 nails it, we are to be “doers of the word and not hearers only.” James has some very definite ideas of what it takes to live one’s life as a Christian. Never think of James as in conflict with faith. James takes faith to a practical level. He attempts to describe what a life of faith is to be like.

One writer writes that James is “easy to read but hard to digest.” It “encourages its readers to get about the business of living their faith.” (Homiletics, pg. 69, Volume 21)

Now let’s read the scriptures: James 1:17-25

Two stories

A husband and wife are getting ready for bed. The wife is standing in front of a full length mirror taking a hard look at herself. “You know, love,” she says, “I look in the mirror and I see an old woman. My face is all wrinkled, my legs are too big and my arms are all flabby. Tell me something positive to make me feel better about myself.”  “He thinks about it for a minute and then says, “Well, there is nothing wrong with your eyesight.”

Then there is a story told of the people of the remote island of St. Kilda, in the Outer Hebrides. The last permanent residents were evacuated at their own request in 1930. But for many centuries a small community had lived there, isolated from the mainland, living mainly on a diet of seabirds and their eggs. It was a tough life and many of them, especially the women, never left the island.

But gradually during the 19th century they started to build up more links with the mainland. The young men took goods to trade there, and returned with thing the islanders had never seen before. The story goes that on one of these trips, a man came back with something new to St. Kilda, a mirror. He was determined to keep this marvelous thing a secret –his private treasure. But he had a sweetheart among the island women and she began to notice that he was behaving oddly. One day she noticed him take out something from under his pillow where he had hidden it, look intently at it, and put it back again. She started to feel suspicious. What if he had met some other young woman on the mainland? She had heard that you could capture the likeness of someone in a picture these days. The more she thought abut it, the more worried she got. Surely this would be some beautiful and sophisticated mainland girl he had fall in love with; someone she couldn’t possibly compete with. She talked to some other women about it and they agreed that this was very likely to be the truth.

Eventually she could not contain her anxiety any longer. While he was out, she crept into his house and pulled out the mirror. She looked at it for a while. Then she put it back, heaving a sigh of relief. When she told her friends what she had discovered, they asked why she was so relieved. “Well,” she said, “I was right, it was a picture of a woman, but she was as plain as can be, so I’m sure I have not got anything to worry about from her!”

The story may be true, maybe not. It is however, an insight into what must have been the reality for most people through most of human history. In our own age we are bombarded by pictures of ourselves. We see ourselves a thousand times a day. Not a single one of us and I think I can say pretty confidently left home this morning without spending time in front of a mirror. We’re in front of all kinds of objects that cause us to see ourselves…The glass reflecting from our car windows, store fronts and in the windows of our own home when it is dark outside. We have photographs, videos, even mobile phones that send pictures.

It is hard to imagine a world in which people didn’t know what they looked like. Yet until quite recently many people probably never caught more than an occasional glance of themselves. Good quality mirrors made of silvered glass were a luxury. Ordinary people probably only saw distorted reflections of themselves in water or in metal or glass fragments and they knew that what they saw was not really accurate or complete.

It is no wonder, that in folklore and literature mirrors are regarded as magical objects. The mirror is the truth teller. It is unable to lie and has great power. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the fairest of them all?” says Snow White’s evil step mother and the mirror answers with the truth, whether she likes it or not. The mirror in the Harry Potter story shows you what you most desire. Mirrors were the gateway to another world. Fortune tellers looked into mirrors and reflective pools believing that there was a mysterious land beyond them. You had to look through the reflection to see them. Alice’s journey through the looking glass has some of the same thinking.

In many culture mirrors are believed to capture and reflect the soul of those who look in them, Mirrors used to be covered even in our society when someone dies so that the soul doesn’t get trapped. You can recognize a vampire, because he has no reflection, because vampires have no souls. Breaking a mirror brings seven years bad luck, because the souls of those who have looked in it are broken too. You get the idea don’t you?  Mirrors are powerful things. They show us the truth about ourselves, to some extent and that is both enlightening and dangerous. For some people, mostly young women, there is a disorder called “body dysmorphia” which they see an image that is so different from reality. One of the struggles of one dealing with anorexia is that one weighing 90 pounds can look into a mirror and see a reflected body that looks so much larger and heavier.

And then in the scripture from the letter of James, there is another kind of looking in the mirror.  There are those, he says, who look at themselves quickly and forget what they saw. They are the people who hear the word of God, God speaking to them, but don’t do anything about it. They do not understand who they are as believers. I grew up with a girl who was married and she and her husband gave birth to a little girl who had numerous birth defects. Emily did not live but a couple of years.  One of her physical struggles involved the way her brain worked.  Doctors told them that when she looked at anything, any object, person, her parents, if she turned away and then looked again she would never remember that she had seen them before. She would forget who she saw.

James is saying a similar thing to his readers when it comes to their spiritual lives. If they only hear God’s word and do not practice it, they, too, forget what kind of people they are; namely people who have been birthed by God and therefore people who are called to live and do work of God.

The Pharisees Jesus meet in the Gospel are just the kind of people James is referring to. They only notice outward appearances. They take a quick look at themselves and their world, only seeing the outward things.  Jesus would say to them, they might look squeaky clean on the outside, but the inside is different.

They see themselves as better than they are and miss the things that really spoil and distort God’s image in them.  If we are really going to see ourselves, we will need to look carefully, in a mirror that tells us the truth about ourselves.  What kind of mirror do we really need?

Imagine for a moment what it might be like to look at your reflection in the eyes of God. Reflected in His eyes, we look at Him and He looks at us, we see ourselves as we are in the presence of the One who can tell us the truth about ourselves. When we look at God, we will begin to understand where our lives may need to grow and even change.

Of course, it takes courage, lots of courage to look into God’s and see ourselves as we are created to be. James is right. We don’t always want to see reality; we might have to do something about it. We might have to become doers instead of just hearers.

Perhaps we will see that we are not the perfect people we thought we were. Perhaps we will see that even when we look at God and see the truth about ourselves and surprise of all surprises, learn that He will not reject us, whatever the truth may be. And then we can be more open to growth and change. It is hard work to look in the mirror, to look at God face to face and see where we need to grow and change.

The woman from St. Kilda was a stranger to herself. She looked at her own reflection and thought she was looking at someone else. Perhaps it didn’t matter, but it does matter that we should see ourselves as we really are, and that we act on what we see, for our own sake, for the sake of others, so that we can grow into the people we were meant to be. Today may be the day you really need to look at yourself in the eyes of God and give Him a chance to tell you the truth you need to hear. Who knows what God will do when you give Him a chance.

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Address
First Baptist Church, Ashland
800 Thompson Street
Ashland, VA 23005

Phone
(804) 798-9014

Fax
(804) 798-9043

E-mail
fbcashland@verizon.net

Sunday Worship

  8:30 a.m. -  Worship Service
  9:45 a.m. -  Sunday School
11:00 a.m. -  Worship Service