Sermon Text

September 6, 2009
The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

“DOING FAITH”
James 2:1-10, 14-17

What if our congregation were set in a secular culture which was dedicated to the eventual death of the Christian faith -- not by physical persecution, but by more patient, subtle means? What if no new church buildings were permitted, and, where new towns sprung up, church buildings were not allowed at all? Certainly, the Church doesn’t hold the place in our culture that it had a couple of generations ago, but we still have it pretty good. What if we did not have the privileged status we have come to enjoy?

What if we were prevented from printing any Christian literature, including Bibles? What if two ministers could not even speak to one another on the street without a permit, and congregations could not hold Sunday School for children under 18? What if being a Christian meant you couldn’t be a teacher in the public schools or hold any professional position? What if being a Christian meant your children had little chance of receiving any higher education?

Well, for many people, this situation would raise a prior question -- whether or not to be a Christian! But that’s not the question I’m headed for. I want to ask the communication question. If all our usual means of communication were closed to us, would we survive as a Christian community or would we wither and die? How would we go about proclaiming the gospel? How would we testify to God’s love in Jesus Christ?

Those questions may seem academic to us, but in many parts of the world-wide church these are real issues. There are even some folks who would tell us that much the same kind of things are happening right here, right now, only much more subtly than I have outlined. But the question remains. Can the Christian faith survive, and perhaps even thrive, under adverse circumstances? Is it dependent for its survival on the kind of religious freedom usually associated with the west?

A friend of mine, who lived the young years of his life in Hungary, and who had to leave during the Hungarian revolution in the mid-50’s, told me that the only way they were allowed to witness to their faith was to live it. To this, James would say, “Yes, that is what I mean. There is no such thing as a viable faith that doesn’t live and move and find expression in action.”

The Letter of James is actually a “no-holds-barred” sermon in letter form. It was relevant to the people who first heard it, and it is relevant to us today. In our day, and at many points in the past, the book has been ignored or misinterpreted. Sooner or later, you will run into someone who will tell you that James and the Apostle Paul are in direct conflict, and that James says we are saved by our works, and not by our faith.

That simply isn’t the case. The differences between James and Paul are largely differences in vocabulary. Both James and Paul believe that we are saved by God’s grace alone. Both James and Paul say that good works -- the works of love -- are essential parts of the Christian life. Paul emphasizes God’s grace and teaches that it is through faith that we receive God’s gift of new life. James stresses the kind of faith by which we lay hold of this gift.

The debate often centers around the question of what part God plays in our salvation and what part we play, if any. Let’s look at these two views for a moment. On the one hand, there are those who say that we are saved solely by God’s grace, a freely given gift, and all we have to do is to accept the gift. On the face of it, this view recognizes that we can’t save ourselves, and that’s true. But this truth is often twisted into a kind of self-deception. We tend to look for the easy way out, and we move from the valid position “that by God’s grace alone we are saved, and not by works, lest anyone should boast,” to the abused position that says, “It doesn’t really matter what I do, so long as I believe.” This misappropriation of the truth robs the gospel of its power in our lives and relationships and frees us only for a “Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde” split, between our Sunday words about the love of God and our weekday attitudes and actions. It is a convenient lie, because it stresses the content of the faith without any form.

On the other extreme are those who take the position that we somehow have to earn our salvation. We believe that we can win God over by our good works, by “works righteousness.” The problem with this position is all the different works that people believe will do the trick. In some cases, the list is mostly negative: don’t drink, don’t cuss, don’t dance, don’t whatever. In other cases, good works may mean nothing more than observing certain rituals.

For example, let’s say you decide that the good work necessary for salvation is faithful attendance at a weekly service of worship. In that service, among other things, you hear the words, “God is love,” “Love one another as I have loved you,” “But if you have the world’s goods and see others in need, yet you close your hearts against them, how does God’s love abide in you?” You pray a prayer of personal confession, seeking God’s mercy for yourself, and you receive the good news: “You are forgiven. Go and sin no more.”

But, since you have decided that the important good work is simply being there at the service, you may fail to see any connection at all between those words and your attitudes and actions. This position, too, is a convenient lie, because it stresses the form of the faith without the content.

So, both these positions bring us to the same place -- avoiding the implications of servant discipleship. Yet, at the same time, both positions contain important truth, truth we must not overlook.
We are saved freely by God’s grace. No amount of even the best, most love-motivated acts of human caring can earn that free gift for us. We can’t put God in our debt. But on the other hand, being a disciple of Christ does mean living according to the example of Christ’s love for all people. It means giving form to the content of the faith. This is what James is talking about when he says: “As the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.”

Why is that? Why is faith without works dead? Well, one reason might be found in the fact that, if we don’t live according to what we say we believe, then we probably don’t really believe it! More simply put, “actions speak louder than words.” Taking action on the basis of our convictions forces us off the fence, and we discover that action refines and informs our beliefs, and we grow.

One commentator draws an interesting distinction between involvement and commitment. We often speak of people being “involved” in the church, but how often do we speak of someone being “committed” to the church? This particular commentator asks us to consider the difference between involvement and commitment in terms of a ham-and-eggs breakfast. In a ham-and-eggs breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed! It is this commitment, more than just involvement, that James writes about.

In his book, Shantung Compound, Langdon Gilkey writes about his experiences in a internment camp in China during World War II. While the prisoners were not persecuted, they were crowded together, sanitary conditions were poor, and food was minimal. Gilkey discovered that the vast majority of people in that situation made their decisions at the most basic level of self-interest. For example, there were two rooms of equal size. Nine men were housed in one, and eleven in the other. Obviously, the fair and reasonable thing to do was to move one man out of the 11-man room into the 9-man room. To Gilkey’s amazement, the 9 men refused to take in the extra man, even to the point of violence.

Only a few people in the camp could be counted upon to make consistently constructive decisions, and these were people who had some point of reference outside themselves, which enabled them to overcome the selfishness with which we all have to contend. Unfortunately, many in the camp who called themselves Christians were in the self-interest group, and not among those who felt a higher allegiance.

This “higher allegiance” is very important to the kind of faith James is talking about. Our allegiance is to be to a God who calls us out beyond ourselves, out of the crippling and blinding cycle of self-interest.

James has hit the nail right on the head: faith without works is dead. We are called to live out our faith in such a way that the works of love which are done through us point unerringly to the God who in Jesus Christ never stops loving us. That’s the kind of God who loves us, and who has acted to save us, not just for life eternal, but for this life, too. That’s the kind of love we are called to live in the world. Without it, our faith is empty, and is probably the most effective witness against our faith. With it, our inheritance begins now, and life on this earth moves toward what God has always intended for all his children -- life abundant, life eternal.