Ante Up or Quit Bluffing
Ante Up or Quit Bluffing
“What good is it , my brothers and sisters, if you say we have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? …faith by itself, if it has no works is dead. …You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe – and shudder.”
– James 2: 14-20
“Put your money where your mouth is.” It is a familiar refrain, often used when a person’s true commitments and allegiances are being challenged. It is easy enough to make verbal pronouncements, but experience has taught us that eloquent rhetoric does not always result in concrete action. At some point, we have to ante up and demonstrate that we are not just bluffing our way through life. Words and deeds can no longer cohabitate in our bodies like strangers that are shacking up. They must learn to enter into a deep and abiding union.
“Put your money where your mouth is.” It is the phrase that came to mind at a recent gathering of the NC Annual Conference as we meet at St. Mark’s UMC in Raleigh to reflect on the General Church study: “Steps Toward Wholeness: Learning and Repentance.” The day was spent in prayer and historical reflection on the racial sins of the church that resulted in the creation of the AME, AMEZ, and CME churches. The training event was well attended – an unexpected blessing given the all too familiar reluctance to discuss racism and white privilege. Near the end of the day the leader and author of the study, Dr. Carolyn Oehler, asked the question: “What can the NC Annual Conference do to signal that we are serious about acknowledging, confessing, and repenting of our racial sin and prejudice? Some responses came, but only after a long, pregnant silence.
I believe that St. James had an answer when he said: “be doers of the word and not just hearers”(1:22). James is saying more than “put your money where your mouth is.” We must put our body there. Yes, it is a good thing to take the study guide back to our local churches and invite our AME, AMEZ, CME, and African American UMC brothers and sisters to join us. Yes, it is a good thing to have pulpit exchanges, choir exchanges, and joint mission projects. Yes, it is a good thing to learn to tell our history truthfully, warts and all. Yet true acknowledgement, confession, and repentance go deeper. We have to put our body where our mouth is – and that means taking a critical look at where we live, whom we invite into our homes, and who is (and is not) sitting next to us in the pew. If we find most of those persons look “just like us,” then we have yet to heed this piercing judgment from James. It is time to ante up or quit bluffing. It is time to put our body where our mouth is.
