OK I admit it. It was great. After trying to cram 8 hours worth of work into 6, I'd pick Ryan and Salem up from the bus stop and head for home. We'd arrive and they'd grab a pack of nabs, wheel their bikes out of the garage and off they'd ride the two blocks to Queens College . And I would have a good 90 minutes of peace and quiet. Time to leisurely read the newspaper, check the mail, do a little centering prayer, and fix dinner while listening to my kind of music. Introvert heaven until they returned for dinner and homework. This lasted a good 3 weeks. You see one of the neighbor kids clued Ryan and Salem to the fact the dorm cat at Queens College was a new mother. So every afternoon, the girls would ride off to play with her kittens, and you can then imagine what our dinner conversation consisted of.

Mom, they are so cute. Can we please, please have one of the kittens?

No, we already have cat, and you know I'm allergic to cats, and I just don't think I can handle two.

We'll bath them and keep the dander down.

One cat is plenty. We don't need another cat.

No. No. No.

Ppplleeaaseee???

I don't want to hear anymore about bringing one of those kittens home.

Every night we would repeat this conversation almost word for word. Have you ever had conversations like that with your parents or children?

But one day the girls returned in less than 15 minutes. Mom!! Mom!!

They were clearly in distress. Had one of them taken a spill off the bike? Been hit by a car? Was Ryan having an insulin reaction?? What?? What? I yelled as I ran towards the sound of their voices.

They're putting the kittens out on the street! (they cried).

Sure enough the powers that be at the college discovered the kittens and were evicting them from the dorm.

The long and the short of this story is we ended up taking a box up to the dorm and coming home with all six kittens. Ted dug the baby gate out from the attic and we fenced off one room for the kittens where they could do a minimum amount of damage. We put a sign in our front yard saying “Free Kittens” and spread the word at church, at school, where we worked, wherever we could we let folks know we had six kittens looking for good homes.

I tell you this story because it was of those defining times when Ted and I felt we had to practice what we'd been preaching to our children—about taking care of “the least of these” about not turning your back when there is a need staring you in the face. Even though we really didn't wanna do it. We were both overstretched with commitments and parenting. Even though it was risky, and messy, and my allergies did get worse. In fact we still have one of those kittens, Hadley, 14 years later—now an old epileptic cat who even as I was writing this sermon bugged me to let him outside. Hadley is a daily reminder of what old time religion means in the words of the epistle from James this morning—religion that is pure and undefiled cares for the least of these—even when it's not popular, convenient or short term. Even when it means those who we think ought to be held responsible for creating the problem in the first place get let off the hook. Our cat Hadley is a daily reminder of what it means to be a Doer of the word, not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

For the next four Sundays we will hear extended selections from James' letter to early Christians. The letter of James tells us what old time religion—what pure and undefiled religion is all about. When I'm asked what separates Moravians from other Protestant religions? My standard answer is we Moravians are more concerned about how it is we live our life in Christ, how is it we live in community with one another and the world, than we are about right belief in nonessentials of the faith. So James' letter especially has much value and wisdom for us as Moravian Christians.

Tradition tells us the author of James, is none other than “the James” the brother of Jesus and leader of the church in Jerusalem who dies a martyr's death about 30 years after Jesus, and according to the book of Acts determines the conditions under which gentiles can enter the church. Regardless of who James was, it is clear the primary purpose of his letter is to communicate the practical implications of the gospel to fellow believers. Or said another way, James is concerned with what being a Christian means for our everyday lives. How are we different from non Christians? What gives Christian life wholeness? What in a person's life can you point to and say: “truly, I tell you, this person is a Christian?” How is what we profess to believe—that Jesus Christ is Lord of our lives—how is this declaration of belief embodied in the choices of action and non action we make in our lives? In what we say and how we say it? James' answers to these questions are as pertinent today as they were 2,000 years ago to the first generation of Christians

In the first part of the reading, James insists that whatever trials and sufferings we are currently undergoing cannot have been sent from God. God is not the source of testing or temptation says James because God is unchanging in God's goodness and love—the Giver of all Good gifts, the Father of light in whom there is no darkness, no shadow. God is faithful in God's promises of salvation and mercy. What evil exists on earth comes from our human desires and passions. Jesus says much the same thing in today's gospel reading. It is from te human heart, Jesus tells the crowd, that evil intentions come. Evil comes from the natural consequences of our actions or another's actions. Use your free will, James says, to rid yourself of all the evil and wickedness, the power of our desires that entice us into sin. Instead, James urges us, welcome the word implanted in us that has the power to save our souls. Be quick to listen, slow to speak. Angry speech in Jewish and non-Jewish wisdom literature is a sure sign the speaker lacks wisdom. Human anger, James tells us does not produce God's righteousness.

The question for us 21 st century Moravian Christians is: will we see and think and speak and act according to James' advice? Will we bridle our tongues and not speak ill of one another? Will we speak the truth in love to one another when we disagree or complain, or criticize? Or will our religion, our faith be, in James' words to us, worthless because our speech and our actions do not match our profession of faith?

Now taking in these kittens certainly wasn't the first kind and right thing my family had ever done. It wasn't the first or last time that I was a Doer of the word. But it was one of those times when I said to myself, “you know this is darn inconvenient. I really don't want this responsibility and the headache. But it's the right thing to do because of what it is I say I believe. I wonder if Mary Jean Fones thought much the same thing when Terri Zapalla announced we needed a members' van to go to Mississippi . I didn't get the impression Mary Jean was jumping up and down eager to drive to Gulfport and spend a week there helping out, but I Imagine Mary Jean thinking to herself; “you know, I have a van. I could go and help.” So she did, and because she was a doer of the word, the youth have enough money left over to cover the cost of a youth retreat at Laurel Ridge to help them assimilate new members and plan for the upcoming year.

All of you will have many opportunities over the coming weeks to have similar thoughts. You know, I really don't wanna help cook or clean up after a Wednesday night fellowship meal. I'm tired enough by mid week as it is! It's all I can do to get here on Wednesdays!!

You know, I really don't want to volunteer one Sunday every couple of months to help with children's Sunday school or children's church. Yeah I know it's important to keep the baptismal promise we made to these kids to bring them up in the faith but let someone else do it. I do enough around here.

In our 21 st century consumer American quest to be sure our faith is worth something, like any other commodity or acquisition, it is too easy and tempting for us to calculate, at least to ourselves, the compensation we may receive because of our actions. If we don't receive a payment for it—either the satisfaction of doing something well, or easing our guilt, or wanting to please the person who asked us, or not face their disappointment by saying no, when we are doers of the word for these and similar reasons, we have succumbed to the temptation of the siren call of the powers of this world.

Instead James tells us that doers who act will be blessed in their doing—it is in the doing we are blessed, not because of the satisfaction, or thanks, or relief from guilt that blesses us. It is the act itself that blesses us as we are conduits for God's love and blessing to others through our ministries of doing and speaking in love.

During the 2 nd world war, a German widow hid some Jewish refugees in her home. When her friends found out they became alarmed. “You are risking your life,” they said. “I know.” She replied. “then why do you persist in this foolishness?' Because, she said, the time is now, and I am here.”

The time for First Moravian is now, and all of us are here.

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