|
|
|
Sunday September 6, 2009 "The Work of Faith" James 2:1-17 |
 |
|
Location: Blogs Brad's Blog |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 9/8/2009 2:41 PM | Mention the book of James around certain groups of Christians, and you are likely to have a serious discussion. Or maybe even start an argument.
This little book of the Bible has the ability to inflame passions and spark heated theological debate. Ultimately, it seems to me that this is a very good thing. Because unless we really throw our scriptures wide open to scrutiny we will never gain any new insight. Unless we also throw open the possibility for change in our behaviors and actions, we run the risk of being “rote” Christians, too often sticking to the easy stuff.
There are a couple of reasons that the book of James invokes such passions.
Most famously, the great reformation theologian Martin Luther once declared the book “an epistle of straw” and dismissed it on theological grounds. A lot of my Lutheran friends to this day have never heard a sermon preached out of the book of James because of Martin Luther’s stance. A lot of my more fundamental friends also put this book on a lower level of importance because they share Luther’s zeal in reforming Christianity to its true roots, without the trappoings and ecclesial rubric of the Catholic church.
That after all was what Luther was all about. He believed that the church in Rome had moved too far away from the orthodoxy preached by Jesus and the apostles that followed him. Luther believed that the church had become too enamored of the trappings of church and forgotten about the issues of faith and obedience to Christ’s teachings. In fact, Luther’s issues are the basis for our heritage. We are part of the movement that protested the church’s direction and worked to reform the church. We call ourselves Protestants today because of the actions of Luther and his compatriots.
As an individual, Luther hung his hat on a piece of scripture that changed his life. The basis for so very much of his theology and for his writings was a verse from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians where Paul wrote: “We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.”
Luther firmly believed that we are saved by our faith in Christ, and nothing else. Nothing else could be done to justify us. Nothing else could bring us closer to God. Faith and faith alone was the root of our salvation.
So, when James intones at the end of this passage, “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead,” Luther was sent over the top, and in quick fashion, dismissed James and his message.
There is a part of me that says, “Are we allowed to do that? Can we simply dismiss whole chunks of the Bible because it is at odds with our personal theology?” Of course, the answer is that all of us do it to some degree or another.
All of us have our “favorite” parts of scripture. All of us have passages that speak to us clearly and directly. And all of us will at times gloss over a passage that seems contradictory or difficult to understand.
The key phrase here is “SEEMS contradictory.” To Luther, calling into question what he considered to be most sacred truth in all of scripture was devastating. But is that what James was doing?
Let’s take a look at who James was, and what he seems to be saying.
The book of James is commonly believed to have been written by the James who was the brother of Jesus, the oldest of Jesus four younger brothers. James, like others of his family, seemed to be initially sort of skeptical about Jesus and his ministry, but after Jesus death and resurrection became a believer. He emerged as a leader of the church in Jerusalem and indeed, became the leader of the church in Jerusalem. While others traveled the world spreading the Good News, James believed that his presence supporting the church in Jerusalem was most needed. Part of that mission was to be in contact with those Jewish Christians who considered Jerusalem home, but were now living in dispersion because of forced exile.
His mission was mostly aimed at Jewish Christians and helping them traverse the road that led to obedience and salvation. James was martyred for his faith in the mid first century. Tradition tells us that James’ death came when he was taken up to the top of the Jerusalem temple and told to renounce Christ. When he instead declared Christ’s messiahship, he was pushed off. Broken but not dead, James continued to pray for his oppresors until he was stoned to death by an angry crowd.
This then, was James: a little skeptical at first, but a fervent believer and faithful servant once he believed.
And this was his mission: to help the Jewish Christian communities that were living in exile to understand what they were supposed to do.
This letter at first seems disjointed and has little to hold it together. James writes of good works and the law and the importance of watching our tongues and of doing our best to stay close to God. But in fact, it seems less disjointed when we consider what his goal was: to give advice on how to live the Christian life. To instruct how to best honor God with our lives. To help Jewish Christians bridge the apparent contradictions between Judaism and Christianity. To lead those in the exiled church with practical exhortations on how to act.
Our passage this morning begins with a question of how the early Jewish Christians are to treat strangers that come into their midst.
James’ focus is on favoritism or discrimination. He uses the example of the rich person with all the adornments of prosperity and the poor person who is disheveled and dirty. He correctly surmises that it is human nature to welcome the wealthy person heartily and give them the best seat in the house, while welcoming the ragged person grudgingly, telling them to stand aside or sit on the floor.
To do this, says James, is to judge, when you have no right to judge. And this judgement, to James, is rooted in evil. By implication, only God can judge. For the Jewish Christians, hospitality must be unequivocal, even handed and non-judgemental.
James goes on to make his point by saying, “Look around: who has God given the most faith? Why, it’s the poor people. And who is the one who shows their greed and anger by using the courts to sue you? Poor people? Hardly. It is the rich that oppress others, not the poor.”
The lesson to be gained? Welcome the stranger, no matter what they look like, no matter their condition, or their station. Do not judge, because that only leads one astray.
We need to remember that James is writing to Jewish Christians, people who had held close to the tenets of the law of Moses for all their lives. Then, along came Jesus, and the confusion over what law is to be followed was immense. But in this passage, James makes it much, much clearer.
“Here is the most important law,” James said. “In fact, I would even call it the royal law: Love your neighbor as yourself. If you don’t, you are showing favoritism and partiality, and you have committed a sin. Because we are called to uphold the entire law – not just the parts we decide we want to follow.”
He then goes on to use an example from the Hebrew scriptures to show that anytime you break the law, you have sinned, no matter which part of the law you break.
And then came the beginning of what riled up Martin Luther so much: James declares that not only are we not to judge, but we are to forgive those who hurt us, those who sin against us. We are, says James, to be judged by the law of liberty. In short, how we act matters. “For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgement.” In this turn of the phrase, James is paraphrasing his brother Jesus from the Gospel according to Matthew. “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive others, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
To James, the law is clear: do not judge others. If others judge you, forgive them. When we show mercy, mercy will be shown to us.
Just so the readers didn’t miss the point, James hammers it home. How we act matters! How we live our lives matters! What good is faith if we do not live a life worthy of God? And then, in order to make his point, he goes one step further: for James, it is not enough to be welcoming and hospitable, we must do something positive to help!
Martin Luther may have thought that James was saying that works were more important that faith, but I think Luther got this one wrong. I believe that James was saying that our faith saves us, but when we embrace this amazing gift of faith, things are expected of us, too.
“What good is it,” James asks, “if we simply act non-judgmentally to the person in need? What good does it do to the poor person for us to say, “Good luck to you…I’ll be thinking of you? If we see people who are in need and we don’t help with those needs, what is the good of that?”
James all but bellows it at the top of his lungs: what we do matters! How we live our daily life matters! It matters to us; it matters to those we come in contact with; it matters to God! Faith is fine, but without backing it up with actions, what good is it?”
Martin Luther got mad.
Some of us get a little mad, too.
Even more of us get uncomfortable.
And that, I think, is the point.
We who are touched by the saving grace of Jesus Christ need to ask the question long and hard: How are we to live? And until we struggle with that question, we have not fully grasped the importance of all that has been done for us.
I mentioned early on that there were two reasons that the book of James seems is so controversial. The first is Martin Luther’s declarations against this book. The second is that James hits us where we live. Today. In 21st century America. James makes us uncomfortable because he is directly challenging us to live out what Jesus taught.
Let’s be clear about that: James is not saying anything that Jesus didn’t say.
We are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus said it was the most important of all the law.
We are to exhibit mercy to all who wrong us. Jesus said that as we forgive, God will forgive us.
We are to work on behalf of the poor, the marginalized, the voiceless and the disenfranchised. Jesus began his ministry in earnest by saying that his mission was God’s mission: to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.
Over and over, the gospel accounts of Jesus life and of his own words point to the same idea: we are called into the world to be Jesus’ hands and feet. How we live matters.
Does James really need to be so direct? Does he need to be so abrasive?
Absolutely.
Because the stakes were high for the Jewish Christians in dispersion; and the stakes are high for us today. The Jewish Christians needed to hear James message directly and forcefully. And so do we.
Martin Luther thought that James should be ignored. He thought that James denigrated the notion of faith in Christ. As I read this epistle in the beginning of the 21st century, I must respectfully disagree.
What I hear James saying is that true faith can never be passive. Faith is a verb, requiring action on our part. Faith is not something we simply possess. Faith is not something we keep to ourselves. Faith is something we do.
The fact that James speaks to us so clearly and unequivocally across the centuries is testament to the possibility that Martin Luther was wrong. The words we read make us somewhat uncomfortable. That’s because the message is true and continues to be important to this day.
So here we are, and the first question on our lips is probably, “How are we to live today?”
We all have to answer that for ourselves, but I think James is clear on the fact that we are called into the world to help those in need. It is not simply something we should do as part of our religious obligation. It is, rather, how we should live our whole life – always looking out for those who are in need. In need of comfort, in need of food, in need of clothing, in need of prayer, in need of friendship.
We know this. We do our best to practice it. But it good to reminded of it every once in awhile.
As a congregation, we have had and we will have many organized opportunities to reach out and live out our faith through the works of our hands. We can take part in one way or another with “More Hands for God Day” on October 31. We are looking at offering service days at the Metro Atlanta Food Bank and the Interfaith Outreach Home, at Campbell Stone Christian Centers and others over the next year. We are not making these plans because we are looking to make ourselves feel better. We are making these plans because Jesus exhorts us to. We are making these plans to put actions to our faith. We are making these plans because as James makes clear, how we live our lives is important. When we live them in service to others, God is glorified.
The church can supply these opportunities, but the most important decision to be made about how we live our lives resides with each and every one of us. It is up to us individually how we react to James exhortation. It is up to us to decide how to put our faith into action, every day of our lives. My reading of James convicts me that service to those in need should not be an addendum to my life; it should not be something I do after I have taken care of my own needs and desires. My reading of James convicts me that service to others should be at the very center of my faith, and therefore, at the very center of my life.
My challenge to you as you leave this place today, is to take this slip of paper with this simple question on it, put it in your bible, on your refrigerator, pray about it, think about it, and decide what your answer is. And then, as the commercial says, “Just do it.”
There is work to done. The work of faith. Let’s get started.
Let us pray: Loving God, help us to turn our attention away from ourselves and turn it outward toward those in need. Give us strength so that we might have the courage to truly discern how we can help those in need, and in so doing, spread the good news of Jesus Christ to all we meet. It is in his name that we pray, Amen. | | | Permalink | Trackback |
|
|
 | |