Sarx

God’s creative love – for which we are thankful to-day and every day… I found this buried deep in the files (from June of 2003). It struck a chord in me. Seems like, at one point, I thought the right response to God’s love was to keep on loving… Asking your prayers. (Reposting tonight… because it’s the source of the motto in the left-hand bar. I’d forgotten what it means.

I picked up this thread over at Pensate Omnia and since it’s one of my favorite texts… I just mulled it over for a while.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
James 1:12-22

Ginesthe de poietai Logou

Be ye doers of the Word.

James makes some distinctions in his Epistle. The important ones to me tonight seem to be between doers and hears (three times in James 1:22, 23, 25) and also between doers and judges (James 4:11). My first thought was the traditional one – doers vrs hearers. Certainly that’s important. I’m more often a hearer than a doer, myself. The “superfluity of naughtiness” in my own life seems like fun more often than not. I’m prone to thinking things like, “Oh, one little bit won’t hurt.” It always does… drawn away of my own lust, and that carries right on to sin. Short and sweet the road is, but it’s rather a thorny way back.

Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy exegesis…

And tonight I’m thinking of some snarky comments I make in blogs with folks. Just chattering mostly, but deucedly less honorable than one would hope. The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. The word rendered “wrath” is Orge – a passion or desire. It is like the word rendered Lust: Epithumia – desire, craving, longing, desire for what is forbidden, lust. Our desire, our lusts, they are our passions, they move in the soul and tear us away from the word, the Logos – Jesus.

But tonight I also noticed something I hadn’t before. James urges us, “Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.” (4:11)

“doer” is Poietas – poet, performer.
“hearer” is Akroates – a hearer
“judge” is Krites – one who participates in judgment – Krino.

These three things are, in our modern world – the performer, the audience and the critic. I don’t pretend this is more than my own rambles. But Krino is to judge, to divide, “to separate, put asunder, to pick out, select, choose.” But a Poietas is “a maker, a producer, author; a doer, performer; a poet.” To divide is the opposite of a poet or producer, which is a Creator. It is another way we share in the image and likeness of God – we are creators. We are not to be consumers, which leads directly to picking some stuff and rejecting other stuff.

But this becomes even more clear in the Greek, I think. Remembering my caveat that a man with a Greek dictionary is dangerous. Ginesthe de poietai Logou which I might render, “Be poets of the Logos” that is, Jesus.

Narnia, Middle Earth, Malacandra… these are creations of poets, these are spinings-out, in poetic fashion, of the Logos. I think also of the hymns of St Ephrem and St Symeon and of St Romanus the Melodist – how they capture mystical tellings of Christ in poetry so beautiful that their hymns are still sung, 1000 years or more after their deaths. Not all of us are poets in the textual sense. Certainly I’ve tried at times, but I’ve not crafted anything so holy as they. But we are urged not to be literal poets, I think, but Poets of the Logos. The Logos made everything that is – from quarks to universes and all in between. How is it that I am Poietas and not just a consumer? How often is it that I lapse and become a Critic instead?

In All about Eve (1950), the opening scene is a voiceover introducing all the main characters – actors and directors, Poietas all. Finally, the speaker introduces himself thusly: “To those of you who do not read, attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programs or know anything of the world in which you live – it is perhaps necessary to introduce myself. My name is Addison De Witt. My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater.” We, the film-goers are the Hearers, with no part, no power, and nothing to do but watch.

How often do I approach the Gospel that way: either powerless, or else assuming to myself all power, despite that “I toil not, neither do I spin”? I am quite willing to wrap myself up in the mantle of “I know how this should be done…” and judge just about everyone else for doing it wrong.

Like the actors in the movie, who devote themselves wholly to their stagecraft, it is for them life. One of them says, “It means concentration of desire or ambition, and sacrifice such as no other profession demands. And I’ll agree that the man or woman who accepts those terms can’t be ordinary, can’t be just someone. To give so much for almost always so little.” Notice that all the desires, all the lusts – all the “desire or ambition” is directed to one goal – of being the Actor, the Poietas.

But one who is nothing more than an interloper, who is a hearer pretending to be a doer, responds saying, “So little. So little, did you say? Why, if there’s nothing else, there’s applause. I’ve listened backstage to people applaud. It’s like, like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine. To know, every night, that different hundreds of people love you. They smile, and their eyes shine. You’ve pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.”

And that is, I think, the differences between doers, hearers and judges. A hearer of the word is a pretender… one who sees in it a means of appearing to others as something he or she is not. It’s a beauty pageant. I can look Christian if I try really hard.

The doer, the poet, does it, even when there is no reward.

The words of the critic are meaningless to the doer – but they are everything to the hearer. She can change her entire life to bend to the will of the critic (as, indeed, happens in the movie and also in real life).

James puts the hearers and the judges both outside of the realm of the Poietas. They fall out of the Gospel, succumbing to the “superfluity of naughtiness.” The lust in their hearts conceives and brings forth sins. They divide even the Law itself, because they think they can play it like a game to their own ends.

Lord save me from being a hearer only or a judge. Give me grace to do, to be a Poietas of the Logos – in my own life let the gifts you gave me be shining forth, give me “concentration of desire or ambition, and sacrifice such as no other profession demands.”