A Tangle of Flags--November 18, 2019

"A Tangle of Flags"--November 18, 2019

"...Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.  Or do you suppose it is for nothing that the scripture says, 'God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us'? But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, 'God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.' Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." [James 4:4-8]

I saw something rather telling along my morning drive to work the other day, something up on a flagpole.  Two somethings, actually, but neither was waving despite the brisk November breeze.

The residents at this particular house along the highway had two flags on their flagpole, but they had become entangled with each other. The one on top was clearly an American flag--I could at least make out the stripes. But the second was so close to the first that somehow the two had gotten wrapped up in each such that neither could flap in the dawn's early light. The other, slightly lower, flag was blue with white letters, but you couldn't read any of the text because of the entanglement.  

That meant neither flag was doing what it was meant to do. Neither could fly. The American flag was practically hamstrung by the lower flag which wrapped around it, and the lower flag was illegible because it had gotten itself caught in the top flag.  Whatever its message, it was unreadable, which strikes me as rather self-defeating.

Well, this observation took all of fifteen seconds in real time as I drove past, but the image has been percolating for me ever since.  This is simply what happens when you fly two flags from your pole--whether literally or metaphorically.  The tangle of banners, star-spangled or otherwise, is exactly what James has in mind when he talks about being "double-minded."  Essentially, when we try to live with competing allegiances in our lives, we end up doing neither very well.  When we SAY that God is our first priority, for example, but then fly a second, third, fourth, or fifth flag on the same pole underneath, we should expect the all to get tangled up with each other.  It's not just the lower flags that won't fly well, but they just might get wrapped up in whatever we INTEND to be our top priority, too.  At some point, the different entities in our lives vying for our attention, time, affections, donations, and loyalty will be in competition with one another--all trying to catch the same breeze, but snagging each other as they try to wave.  And instead we end up with a tangle instead of a banner blowing in the breeze.

James pulls no punches about just how stark the contrast is: ultimately the question for him is whether God's flag--and God's alone--will be flying from our flagpoles.  Trying to have both God and anything else as our top allegiance is a recipe for disaster, and honestly, anything that gets a second spot on the pole is just inviting a mess with the first.  James simplifies all the many voices around us into one catch-all, "the world."  And he doesn't mean that Christians should retreat into the desert or shun all their non-church-going friends and acquaintances, so much as he means that ultimately we have to be prepared to choose what--and who--matters most to us in life.  Much like Jesus himself notes that you can't serve two masters, but will eventually give way to serving one over the other, James says that in the end you can't fly two flags in life.  

What's especially tricky in all of that is that most of the things we think we can run up the flagpole don't look wicked or evil on face value.  And maybe on their own they're not--but when they compete for the spot at the top of the flagpole, they become problems.  So your job is a lovely and fine thing--it is indeed good to do something useful and productive with your labor and skills.  But when "my job" becomes the driving force in life, it has really become "my god."  When my want list gets top billing, it has become my idol.  When my bank account or my car or that vacation I'm saving up for becomes most important in my life, it has a way of getting my allegiance even if I say I want God to be first in my life.  Same thing with how I spend my free time, what I do in my social life, who gets my minutes, and what I spend my energy on.  Even if I tell myself all those other things are secondary to God, if I put them way up close to the top of the flagpole, they'll crowd out God's flag on top, and they'll all get tangled up with each other.  And then, nothing will wave in the wind.

This, I think, is really the problem for so many of us churchgoing folks.  We know the Sunday School answer is to put God first in our lives, but we have been fooled into thinking that that's just a matter of saying we are putting God first, while we then go about business as usual with everything else. We assume that as long as we SAY God is our first priority, then there must be room on the flagpole for the American Dream right below that, and maybe the Cookie Cutter Family Life with a spouse, and 2.5 kids right after that, and then allegiances to political leaders, our 401(k), and that promotion at work along down the line, too.  

We were told we could chase after all of it--and we could have it all!--as long as we said that we were putting God as the top flag on the pole first.  We were lied to.

What James challenges us to see, instead, is that every day, and every moment, is a choice about whether we recognize the presence of God, or we push God aside in the pursuit of some grand "Something Else."  When James says, "Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you," he's not suggesting that there's any place in the universe that is "distant" from God.  But rather, like the sound of a person speaking to you on the other side of the room, you can choose whether you will grant them your undivided attention, or whether you will drown them out with the buzzing on your phone, the noises from your laptop, and the sound the talking heads yelling at each other on television.  When you give someone half-hearted attention, they will eventually take your cue and stop trying to get your attention at all, and the conversation will just fall silent--not as punishment or passive-aggressiveness, but simply as the natural consequence of your divided attention.  On the other hand, when you give someone else your undivided attention, you find that they engage you more and more and more in the conversation.  James says that God is much the same: always in the room with us, but willing to risk being rejected by folks who won't muster enough focus to give God their undivided attention.  James simply dares us to see the One who is already in the room trying to have a conversation with us... and to let God have our whole selves, whole hearts, and whole minds.

The question to ask today is simply this: what am I flying on the flagpole of my life?  If my answer is plural, I should be prepared that all of them will get tangled, and none of them will catch the wind.  

Oh, say, in your heart, does God's banner still wave?  That really depends on what we have tried to run up the pole at the same time, too.

Lord God, give us whole hearts, rather than divided selves. Let us love you with uncontested allegiance.