原文英文，孫志硯漢譯。經文：雅各書1-17-27 啟應文：詩篇23 聖詩：296 (Eng. 461),59,516

I have recently finished with my chaplaincy program, to start back to school to finish the last of my Ph.D. program. As I conclude with my program and start with a new chapter in my life, I thought about what it means to answer God’s call. I thought about what life will be like when I go back to school because soon, I will no longer be in a position to do God’s work every single day. Soon, I will just be a student. Soon, I will be like everyone else who is not a professional “God person,” who has to find a way to serve God in their everyday life.

On the one hand, it is very easy to be a professional God person, because I don’t have to think about what serving God looks like—I can just do it. In fact, I’ve been doing it for so long, I can do it without a second thought. But on the other hand, God does not only exist in and around and about the church, or with God’s professionals. Rather, God is in the world—our world—in everything that we do, including the secular and the mundane.

So how do we find God in the world?

Today’s passage is encouraging us to just do that: to really hear what God is calling us to—not just to live our lives as though God is not really involved. We have to hear God’s word and then act upon it.

We’re always being told in church what we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to live. We’re supposed to help others, we’re supposed to speak the truth, we’re supposed to be pure and undefiled, to be righteous, quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, etc. And once again, in this passage, we’re being told that we have to do; that it’s not enough to just hear, but we must always just do.

We are supposed to have an active faith rather than a passive faith.

So what does that mean?

As a chaplain, I have spent hours talking to different people about mundane things. For example, there a patient who comes to the hospital every day for treatment. And boy does he love to talk, for hours on end if he could. He would talk to me about his previous hospital experience, his career, his family, his love of travel and world cuisines, and making jokes. But what he did not do is talk about God. I mean, eventually, we were got there for a few minutes. However, I would say maybe 95% of my many visits with him over the span of a month did not come anywhere near a “religious” conversation.

Then, there are those visits where I don’t say anything at all.

Last week, I was called to the emergency room because a 20 month old Hispanic girl had just died. Her family was devastated. The father spoke no English; the grandmother spoke very limited English. They were all speaking to God, to the little girl, to each other, begging for the situation not to be real. I spent over 3 hours with this family, giving them tissues, hugs, ushering them as needed, but in all that time, I did not offer them a prayer.

If I simply gave you those two examples, perhaps you would not think that I was a very good chaplain—or at least a very good representative of God. After all, I am the representative of God in times of difficulty and crisis. So if I don’t talk about God, how am I representing God?

I think this is an important question to ask, because, well—you are all in professions where you don’t talk about God very much. So where is God in your daily life? Is it just before mealtimes when you say grace? Is it just at home when you read your Bible? Is it when you gather with your family to have a family service?

Or—maybe God is with you and you are ALWAYS a representative of God—just by being intentional about it.

You must understand this.

My beloved. Be quick to listen. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. Be quick to listen.

What I did for the man who comes into treatment is to share in his frustration and give him a sense of normalcy. It was a miserable experience for him to have to come to the hospital for hours on a daily basis. That’s his entire day, completely shot. He cannot do anything because the best times of the day he has spent in the hospital. His wife brings him to the hospital and spends the day there as well. His wife was a ball of anxiety, which she springs onto him, because she just exudes fear and anxiousness.

What my patient needed was just someone who would hear his faith and hope that everything will be OK. He had to stay strong for his wife, who was a mess. So I offered to talk to him calmly and peacefully, to help him keep his mind of the potential scary future he has in front of him, to treat him like a normal human being.

Be slow to speak.

What the Mexican family needed was to have someone hear their pain. I created a space for her to grieve, mourn, and wail. Her life IS over. She will NEVER let this go. Her little girl is dead. That will never change. God wasn’t about to tell her to get over it, and neither was I.

Be slow to anger.

For this Mexican family.… Well, there was another representative of the hospital in the

room trying to console them. She was from the patient relations department. When the mother would wail that her life is over, she cannot go on, the lady responded to her, trying to encourage her by telling her to think about her other daughter; that she can be strong. To tell you the truth, I wanted to smack that woman, to tell her to shut up. But I didn’t. She, too, was in a tough spot. She, like most people, just wanted to sweep the unpleasantness under the rug, to focus on getting on with life. She wanted to believe that if they stopped wailing and crying, it would mean that they could move on.

Be a doer. 

God created each and everyone one of us to be. Being able to do is simply a bonus. I encourage you to spend some time to think about the little things people have done for you in your life and how these little things have been representative of God’s love for you. And then think about how you can be a representative of God in the world—not because you’re telling people about God, but by just being you.

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.

You are the generous act of giving.

You are the perfect gift.

God does not ask you to change the world. God is asking you to live out your faith.

Therefore… you must understand this, my beloved: Be a hearer and be a doer.