Tap Out

Scripture: James 4:1-10

Professional wrestling often gets a bad rap by non-fans as “fake”.   It is true the winners are pre-determined.  Despite being referred to as sports entertainment, though wrestling is not really a sport.  It is a form of theater.   The outcome and some of the big spots are scripted, but often in between those spots the wrestlers work together in the ring to deliver the match.  Professional wrestling mixes improvisation with impressive athletic ability to create a story that masquerades as a sport.  Understandably, this form of storytelling is not for everyone, but for wrestling fans the draw is often the stories that are told.  Professional wrestlers tend to embody larger than life characters and the stories they tell in the ring often do not have a ton of nuance, but that does not make them any less dramatic.   One of the ways that the drama is created is with special stipulation matches, and the most dramatic stipulation is the “loser leaves town” match.   Major wrestling promotions have used this kind of stipulation match for decades, and every single one of them will have a similar sequence at some point.  At some point, the heel (that is the bad guy), will get the face (the good guy) in a submission such as a sleeper hold.   It will look like the good guy is fading, about to tap out, submit, lose the match, and be gone forever.   But then, the face will find some inner reserve and find a way to break the hold before it is too late, the crowd goes wild, and the match continues.

In professional wrestling and in actual combat sports like MMA, submitting and tapping out is one of the ways that a match is lost.  I think it is fair to say the idea of submission has a negative connotation.  It seems to imply giving up at best and just straight up losing at worse.   The idea of submitting does not seem terribly noble or comforting.  In fact, most of our messaging and encouragement seems to be the opposite of submission.  Often the encouragement given is to never give up, to push through, to not throw in the towel and keep fighting.  To give it 100% and not quit no matter what.   The idea of submitting flies in the face of that.   Yet, we find in this morning’s scripture and elsewhere in the bible, “submit yourselves, then to God.”  Submitting to God is not giving up, it is finding greater strength.   It is not accepting loss, but rather it is claiming a victory.

The way this morning’s scripture starts it sounds like the author of James might be a wrestling referee since it talks about fighting, quarreling, and killing.  Taken on its own it sounds like this morning’s scripture was originally written to a particularly rough crowd.  However, James is not addressed to a specific church.  Rather as James 1:1 states it is addressed “to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.”   There is some consensus that this was written to be a general epistle.  This means that it was written with the intention of being passed around from faith community to faith community.  Many biblical scholars see parallels between the book of James and ancient wisdom literature.  We can view James as a collection of small essays about living in a Godly way in all areas of our lives

This morning’s scripture was directed to Christians.  It was written to followers of Jesus across the first century world, to encourage them to be better followers of Jesus.  In doing so this morning’s scripture names an uncomfortable truth:  Followers of Jesus can still behave badly.   People who claim to be saved by grace and follow the prince of peace can still cause harm, and the worst part is sometimes they do it on purpose.  Sadly, it is not hard to find heart breaking example after heart breaking example of fighting and quarreling within faith communities.  Often the fights in church are not worth having.  A number of years ago Thom Rainer, who leads the church resource and research center, Church Answers conducted an informal survey about reasons for conflict in church.   He was flooded with stories.  Some of the more popular reasons are predictable.  Items such as music to use in worship, changes to the worship time, or what color carpet to install.   However, he also received scores of stories that are more specific and even more trivial.   He reported being told about a 45 minute argument over what kind of filing cabinets to purchase.  Apparently this church had serious feelings about how many drawers a filing cabinet was supposed to have.   There were also reports of people leaving a church in protest because the brand of coffee served on Sunday morning was changed.  He also reported a story shared of a church that actually spit over a vacuum cleaner.  This happened because the “good” vacuum kept getting used in parts of the church other than where it was designated for.  This led to one faction hiding the appliance, and the fight over this led to the church dividing into two separate entities.

While this morning’s scripture was not written to address a specific church, it points out that unfortunately Christians can still fight with one another.  This was true in the first century and it is true in the 21^st century.   The reasons for why this is happens is the same.   In verses 1 through 5 of this morning’s scripture, the author gives some of the reasons for why this happens but it can be summed up with one idea.  Fights and quarrels happen among believers and in churches because of wrong motives.  Going back to the examples that were reported to the Church Answers survey, those fights were likely not about filing cabinets or vacuum cleaners.  Those are the objects that were quarreled over, but the fight was actually about something else.  Perhaps it was a fear of change, perhaps it was about control.  In those arguments, both sides clearly believed they were in the right, and likely for at least one side the ugly shift happened where it stopped being about the thing being argued over, it stopped being about the underlying motivation, and it became about winning.  It got to the point where to not get one’s way would have felt like giving up, felt like tapping out, felt like submitting.   So the argument escalated because of a desire not to lose.  The irony is that when a conflict reaches this point it means that there are no real winners and everyone loses.

The remedy to this problem, the solution to having the wrong motives, is given in verse 7: “submit yourselves then to God.”   I think this immediately leads to the question, of how do we do that.   This morning’s scripture does offer up some suggestions.  It tells us to draw near to God, to wash our hands, purify our hearts, and humble ourselves.  The first step to submit before God is one of the hardest.  We have to be willing to acknowledge that we are not right.   We have to be willing to confess that we have not loved God with our whole heart, we have not followed God’s will, we have not heard the cries of the needy, and we have not always loved our neighbors as ourselves.   The first step to submission to God, is the gut punch of truthfully acknowledging that our motivations are not always in the right, that we are not always right, and that what we want may not be what God wants.

After the first hard but vital step, I think a couple of scriptures help us understand what it means to submit to God.  The book of James draws parallels to wisdom literature, so it makes sense for us to look in the bible’s wisdom literature. We find that Proverbs 3:5-6 states, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight.”   This proverb reiterates that we should not rely on our motivations but seek to trust in the LORD.   This proverb also emphasizes “in all of your ways”.  Following God, and seeking to live as a Christian should impact everything we do.   Our faith is not meant to be a compartment of our lives that only impacts that compartment.  When we submit to God, it is claiming that God has authority over our lives.  If God has authority, then we do not.  It is a bit of an all or nothing proposition.  If we seek to maintain control then we are wrestling with God, not submitting.

In his letter to the Philippians Paul focuses on how Jesus submitted fully to God.   In the second chapter of Philippians Paul urges disciples to “have the same mindset of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather he made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death- even death on a cross.”   Jesus gave us an example of submitting to God that involves radically loving others by putting them first.  Jesus gave us an example of not using what we have to our personal advantage but using it to benefit others.  Jesus gave us an example of serving others.   Denying our self, denying our more selfish motives, and instead serving others because they are people that God loves and cares for is a large part of what it means to submit to God.

One of the focuses of Lent is a commitment to spiritual disciplines.   Spiritual disciplines are intentional practices that grow our faith and bring us to living more like Jesus.  They are called disciplines, because when we engage in them regularly, we are more likely to see results in our discipleship.  In his classic work on the subject, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster includes submission as a discipline.  He understands submission, as Jesus taught it to be based in self-denial. Foster wrote, “Self-denial is simply a way of coming to understand that we do not have to have our own way.  Our happiness is not dependent upon getting what we want.”  He then goes on to state that in submission we find freedom.  Again, Foster writes, “In the Discipline of submission we are released to drop the matter, to forget it.  Frankly, most of the things in life are not nearly so important as we think they are.  Our lives will not come to an end if this or that does not happen.”

This lines up with what we read in the book of James.  It is a desire to be right, to get our way, and to not drop the matter that causes the fights and quarrels that James warns against.  This kind of fighting does not draw us closer to God, it does not help us live more like Jesus.  In fact, it does the opposite.   Once we find the freedom in letting go, then we can fully submit to God by denying ourselves and serving God.   To quote Foster in the Celebration of Discipline one last time, he wrote, “In submission we are at last free to value other people.  Their dreams and plans become important to us.  We have entered into a new, wonderful, glorious freedom, the freedom to give up our own rights for the good of others.  For the first time we can love people unconditionally.”

This morning, scripture urges us to submit to God-and this friends is what it means in practice.  We submit fully to God when we have the mindset of Christ, releasing our desire to always get our way, and instead love other people unconditionally.  I think there is a lot of value in thinking about submission as a spiritual discipline.  Spiritual disciplines are practices we can engage in regularly.  They are practices we can improve and grow in, and in doing so grow in our faith.  Denying our self and giving up what we want so that we can instead focus on loving people unconditionally may not come naturally.  It is something we have to choose to do, but each time we make that choice we make some gains and it becomes a little easier the next time.

Loving others unconditionally is where following Jesus will eventually lead us.  We daily face the choice to lean on our understanding, to do what feels right by us, and to get our way above all else or we choose to lean on God’s understanding and let God make our way straight.  We face the daily choice to live life by a mindset that puts ourselves first or we live by the mindset of Christ that puts others first.   We face the choice daily to either wrestle with God about what is best in our lives, or choosing to submit and tap out so that God has authority over our lives.  May we choose this day and every day the discipline of submission.  As Thomas a Kempis wrote, in the Imitations of Christ, may our daily prayer and our daily commitment to God be “As thou wilt, what thou wilt, when thou wilt.”  May we practice that daily so that we come to a place that when we sing “All to Jesus I surrender, all to Jesus I freely give”, we truly and fully mean it.