Handling Hassles in the Church

Text: James 4:1-12
August 20, 2005, Dave Philips

 

 

 

            The Twentieth Century painters, Modigliani and Utrillo, were great admirers of each other’s work.  When the two met for the first time, they began to exchange extravagant compliments.  “You are the greatest painter in the world,” said Modigliani.  “No,” said Utrillo, “you are the world’s greatest painter.”

            “I forbid you to contradict me,” said Modigliani.

            “Well,” said Utrillo, “I forbid you to forbid me.”

            The argument got so heated that finally Modigliani said to Utrillo, “If you tell me I’m the world’s greatest painter one more time, I’m going to punch you.”  Guess what!  Utrillo did, and Modigliani punched him.  They kept punching each other until they were both exhausted.  Then they made it up over several bottles of wine in a nearby bistro.  As they stumbled out of the bistro, Utrillo said, “You know, you really are the world’s greatest painter!”  And again they began punching each other until both were lying unconscious in the gutter.  The next morning they woke up and found that they had been robbed.

            Christians can, and do, get into stupid and destructive fights, and when the fight is over we wake up to the reality that we have been robbed.  We have been robbed of  precious time, we have been robbed of fellowship, we may even have driven a brother or sister -- or a whole great bunch of brothers or sisters -- away from the church altogether. 

            James, the supreme realist and practical teacher, is aware of the reality of conflict among Christians as was his brother and mentor, Jesus Christ.¹  It is absolutely unrealistic to paper over conflict in the church.  Kenneth Haugk who founded the Stephen Ministries says flatly that, “The ‘conflict free’ church is a myth.”²  The point is not to avoid church conflict.  It is unavoidable.  The point is to learn how to manage it so it strengthens rather than weakens the church.

            James shows us the source of conflict among Christians, its danger, and its solution.

 

THE SOURCE OF CONFLICT

 

            Why do Christians have fights?  A whole variety of reasons, so we say: we fight over money, we fight over music, we fight over turf, we fight over theology.  At all times we have excellent rationales, frequently highly theological rationales, for our fights.  We are fighting to save the church from irresponsible hotheads who will bring us to financial ruin if they aren’t stopped.  We are fighting to keep the church from being just a bean-counting agency that is more concerned with financial solvency than the mission of Jesus Christ to the world.  We are fighting to keep Christ at the center of a Bible based church, or we are fighting to bring the church out of the theological stone age into the 21st century.

            James cuts to the quick.  “Why do you have fights?” he asks.  One reason only: “your passions that battle within you.”  The word for passions is also translated “lusts” which has a fine Puritan ring to it.  The Greek word is hedon from which we get our English word “hedonism.”  Hedon as James uses it here means, basically, the passionate desire to get your own way.  You remember that hedonism is the philosophy that says that pleasure is the highest good in life.  And what is the highest pleasure of the human race?  Getting your own way!  What is the cause of conflict in the Church?  Christians who passionately want to get their own way.

            Where did we ever get the idea that we were entitled to get our own way?  Our Constitution guarantees the right to pursue happiness, but it doesn’t guarantee that we will achieve it.  There’s no guarantee that we will consistently shoot in the 70's when we play golf, or buy stocks that invariably rise, or marry a man or woman who is beautiful and rich, or be well thought of, or get into Who’s Who.  That’s the perversion, not the fulfilling of the American Dream.  We know it’s unrealistic, but deep down many of us think getting our own way will make us happy.  It won’t!  Getting your own way will not make you happy, but many of us still spend our lives chasing this elusive rainbow.  And when getting your own way is all there is in life, life is pretty empty.

            Getting your own way is also the source of conflict.  What gets in the way of getting your own way?  The other person who wants his or her own way.  What happens when wanting your own way conflicts with the other person’s wanting his or her own way?

            You got it!  War!  Listen again to James’ description of what happens when my wanting to have my own way butts up against  your wanting to have your own way: “You want something but don’t get it,” James says. “You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

            Now, that’s as bluntly as it can be put.  It cuts through a lot of the smokescreens that we throw up when someone asks us why we are fighting.  Not to save Western Democracy, not to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, not to evangelize the world in our generation, not to make affordable housing available to the poor, not really.  Why then? 

            To get our own way.  That’s it, that’s all.  The letter of James is not an essay on ethics written for the general public.  James is directing these words to the Church.  The Church is by no means free from this human tendency to want our own way no matter what. Why are you fighting with your Christian neighbor? Simply, James would say, because you didn’t get your way.  And because you don’t  get your way, you murder your fellow Christian, not with a gun or a knife, but with smoldering, hateful thoughts that keep the conflict alive.

 

THE DANGER OF CONFLICT

 

            James points out the danger of such conflict.  The main danger is that we’ll get sucked into the way of the world, the flesh, and the devil.  We’ll lose the way of God, the way of Jesus Christ.  Being a friend of the world, James tells us, means being an enemy of God.  You remember, of course, that “the world” in the vocabulary of the New Testament does not mean the creation.  I love the ride out to First Pres Grants.  I love the desert, I love the vast grasslands, I love the red rock canyons -- I love New Mexico.  And I love God’s world -- it moves me to praise and thanksgiving. 

            Furthermore, you know what else I love?  I love pizza!  I’m sure the recipe for pizza is divinely inspired.  The way the cheese and the tomatoes and the golden crust and the various toppings go together also moves me to praise and thanksgiving.  Surely God was in some sense whispering in the ear of that wonderful Italian cook back in Naples or Sicily who first came up with pizza.

            Don’t you love pizza, too?  Or something else equally delicious?  William Barclay tells the story of a Puritan and his friend who went for a walk in the countryside.  The friend noticed a beautiful flower growing beside the road.  “That is a beautiful flower,” he said.  The Puritan, however, with a sour look on his face, replied, “I have learned to call nothing lovely in this lost and sinful world.”³

            No, no, no!  That’s not what James, or Paul, or Jesus are saying.  God loves it that we love this beautiful creation that he has made for us.  God loves it when we enjoy his good gifts.  It is God’s desire that all people everywhere enjoy these good gifts.  No, “the world” in the New Testament vocabulary means something else entirely than God’s good creation.  It means the whole pretentious arrogant establishment that sets itself against God, that says in cynical pride, “There is no God, there is no right or wrong, there is only what I want.”

            To be a friend of this “world” means to be the enemy of God.  It also means to be the enemy of everybody else.  There’s a book that has been on the best seller list in recent days that tells about an incident in a restaurant.  A panda walked into this restaurant, ordered lunch, ate it, and when the waiter brought him his check, the panda pulled out a gun and shot him.  As the panda was walking casually toward the door, the manager came running up to him.  “Hey!”  he shouted.  “You can’t do that!”

            “Sure I can,” he said, “I’m a panda.”

            “What’s that got to do with it?”  yelled the manager.

            “Do you have a dictionary?”  said the panda.

            “Of course,” said the manager.

            “Then just look up ‘panda,’” said the panda.  The manager got out his dictionary, looked up ‘panda’, and read the following: “Panda -- a white-and-black bear-like mammal.  Eats shoots and leaves.”⁴

            That’s the human predicament.  We think we have the license to eat, shoot, and leave.  We think, in the words of the philosopher, that Man, especially moi, is the measure of all things, the center of the universe.  Rampant selfishness is the source of all conflict.  Inevitably this very human tendency rears in its ugly head in the Church.  Every day of our lives we have to cope with it.  One important reason we urge people to read their Bibles, to attend worship, and to engage in some form of Christian ministry is so that we’ll keep clearly in mind every day of our lives the difference between the way of the world and the way of Jesus.

            A study done recently by sociologists in thirty-nine countries and published in the journal, Social Indicators Research, came to a startling conclusion: money can’t buy happiness!  The study said, “Neither increasing income at the individual level nor country level were accompanied by increases in subjective well-being.”  In fact, the researchers discovered that rapid increase in wealth results in less, not more, happiness.  Ed Diener, a University Of Illinois psychologist, said, “A lot of people think, If only I had a million dollars, I’d be happy. . . . for most people, on average, this appears not to be true.”

            Can we extrapolate a little?  Isn’t it true that getting what you want doesn’t make you any happier than unlimited wealth?  True happiness is not getting what you want, it’s wanting what you get.  True happiness comes from following Jesus.

 

THE SOLUTION TO CONFLICT

 

            And the solution to the hassles we have in the Church is very simply coming back to the way of Jesus.  James has a detailed prescription for getting ourselves back on track.  Read it in verses 7-11 in chapter 4:  “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection.  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”

            There are at least seven sermons in those four verses, and -- how are we doing on time?! -- Oh, all right, I will not preach them this morning!  Mark this passage, though, in your Bible and keep it handy for the next time you have a hassle with your spouse, your parent, your brother or sister in and out of the Church.  It is a specific prescription for handling conflict. 

            Think it over:

            What pokes a hole in human arrogance and deflates it more quickly than submitting to God? 

            What channels human anger more creatively than directing our anger against Satan and Satan’s horrendous system instead of against each other? 

            What brings us closer to our brothers and sisters than drawing near to God? 

            What helps us deal with our brother’s or sister’s sin more sensitively than the frank admission that we ourselves are sinners? 

            What disarms our opponents and turns them into friends more quickly than our genuine humility before God?

            What gives more joy, more exultation than admitting that God is God and we are not?

            Jesus demonstrated this powerful method of conflict resolution in his own life and ministry.  It works!  If we will work it!

            Let me close with a couple of exhortations.  First exhortation: being good-natured and maintaining a sense of humor helps us tremendously when we have hassles among Christians.  Every board and every committee of the church needs a court jester.  I have a friend back in Phoenix named Doug McFetters.  I wish Doug could be a member of every church in the world and be on every church committee so that every committee could have this very funny guy sitting in on their meetings.  Doug usually has the perfect one liner that helps us all laugh at ourselves when things got too intense. We Christians need to quit taking ourselves so seriously and have a good laugh at ourselves. 

            The English surgeon, Humphrey Howarth, was challenged to a duel by one of his enemies.  Pistols were chosen as the weapons and a time and a place for the duel were agreed on.  On the appointed day, Dr. Howarth arrived and stepped out of his coach stark naked.

            His opponent was flabbergasted.  “What on earth do you think you’re doing, Howarth?” he stammered.  Howarth solemnly explained that as a physician he had learned that if any bit of clothing was carried into the body by a gunshot, infection would inevitably result.  “I’m just trying to protect myself against the possibility of infection,” he said.  When his opponent realized that win or lose he was going to look like a fool, he called the duel off.

            I’m just trying to picture leaders of our congregation using similar tactics at a congregational meeting.  One thing for sure: no one would ever forget such a meeting!

            Final exhortation: when we give up our grand passion in life to have our own way, we need another grand passion.  How about the grand passion to follow Jesus, the supreme controversialist and the greatest peace maker who ever lived, who leads us through conflict to discover truth, to deepen our love for each other, and to get us off the dime and moving forward to do what he is asking us to do!