A Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 18 – Year B – 6 September 2015
John Edward Miller, Rector
My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. – James 2:1-17
The Collect
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
“So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
This memorable proverb comes from what Scripture labels as “The Letter of James.” However, it is less a letter than it is a sermon, and it is not at all clear that the author is James the brother of Jesus. Although tradition has sought to associate the piece with Jesus’ sibling (therefore giving it credence and authority), its literary style and smooth Greek lead most to identify the text with an unknown Hellenistic Christian writing at the end of the first century. It hardly reads like a product of an Aramaic-speaking Judean.
Nevertheless, James is an important contribution to the New Testament. It exists because it was clearly called for; it responds to a need – perhaps the need for a serious “pep talk” to arouse the careless, and afflict the comfortable among the first generation of Christians. The matters highlighted in today’s reading – especially those about showing favoritism and partiality to the wealthy at the expense and abuse of the poor, show that the early Church was beginning to lapse into a default position of moral sloth and compromised values. It seems as though there were pro-forma Christians who had reverted to playing the game of social hierarchy and lobbying for special favors rather than keeping their eye on the ball and following the “royal law” that calls for “loving your neighbor as yourself.” It appears as if they had forgotten that all lives matter to God.
So it’s reasonable to think that James was a necessary corrective for those who’d gone off the rails. Its role was to respond to laxity and spiritual atrophy by serving as a practical guide to the Christian life. More than half of its 108 verses are imperatives that urge the faithful to behave as they say they believe, to put into action what they profess with their lips. And given the survival and longevity of the Christian way, James appears to have fulfilled its purpose. It has prompted followers of Jesus to be “doers of the Word, and not hearers only.”
But ever since the Reformation of the 16th century, James has gotten a bad rap. Martin Luther called it the “epistle of straw,” and threw it out of his German translation of the New Testament. He detested it because he thought it was dangerous. Luther feared that people who followed James’ exhortations would treat the letter as a self-help book. He said that regarding it that way flies in the face of Paul’s emphasis on grace as the only means of salvation. Since Luther followed Paul, he got rid of James. Others, however, continue to this day to revere the Letter of James as a valuable exhortation to Christian living.
As you hear about this old debate, you may decide that this sounds like much ado about nothing, wondering why anyone but a preacher would care about this stuff, especially on the last big weekend of summer. Or, if you’re politically inclined, you may see something in this that resembles the polarization of Congress, and take a side. However, if you think about theological things, then you’ll know that the fuss about grace versus works is a high stakes issue for us. Barbara Brown Taylor, one of the most insightful interpreters of things that matter most in the realm of faith and ethics explains it this way:
The choices we make – about what we will believe and how we will act, about where we will live whom we will love and what we will do for a living – they are all very important, and we would be crazy to take them lightly, as if they did not matter. Belonging to God is not a matter of going limp in God’s arms, after all. We are called to love, to serve, to heal, to forgive. We are called to imitate Christ, and to make choices that resemble his.
When we agonize too much over them, however, we fall into the ancient trap of works-righteousness – that comfortable old delusion that we can, by our own decisions and good deeds, save ourselves. If we will just work hard enough, we tell ourselves, if we pray enough and help enough and give enough, then God will claim us in the end. Christ will recognize us as his own true disciples because of all the good things we have accomplished. “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
This overemphasis on my choices, on my acts, she says, is a form of idolatry. It takes the self more seriously than God. And it regards my own strength of character and will to achieve as more important than the power of God’s grace.
If the Christian life were a matter of following rules, amassing merit points, and garnering awards for good behavior, then it would cease to be “Christian.” That is to say, if it were that simple, that straightforward, and that easy to know and do what is right, then we would not need a Christ to save us. And without a Savior, whose grace bridges the chasm between what we intend and what we do, it is all about me, and what I do. Like Little Jack Horner, we could then exclaim, “What a good boy am I!” But none of us has that kind of track record, and that attitude is not the Christian faith.
The fact is that most of us wonder why it is so hard to live a truly Christian life. William Barclay responded to this question, saying:
We often wonder why the Christian life is so difficult, especially in the ordinary everyday relationships. The answer may very well be that we are trying to live it by ourselves. The person who goes out in the morning without prayer is, in effect, saying: “I can tackle today quite well on my own.” The person who goes to bed without speaking to God is, in effect, saying, “I can bear on my own whatever circumstances today has brought.”It may well be that our failure to live the Christian life well is due to our trying to live it without the help of God – which is an impossible assignment.
Luther knew that well. His efforts to win God’s approval by his acts of piety and self-discipline proved futile. Even though he was extraordinarily focused on achieving a record of merit, Luther never felt worthy of God, or of his vocation as a monk and priest. Miserable, and certain that he was doomed to hell, he appealed to his monastic confessor, who was so tired of hearing Martin recount his list of sins, that he recommended that the tiresome monk pursue a new course. He told him to go to graduate school.
Whether it was simply to get Martin Luther out of his confession booth, or his openness to divine guidance, the confessor did a very good thing. Luther had a gift for translating Scripture and studying its implications for the life of faith. When he turned to Paul’s letters, Luther was transformed by what he found. As he translated Romans and Galatians, the young scholar encountered something that ran counter to everything he had formerly believed. Suddenly he realized that it is God’s acts, not ours, that finally matter. With Paul, he came to believe that we cannot do anything to earn our salvation; we are saved by God’s grace alone, achieved for us in Christ Jesus, and received by us in faith and trust.
Our Anglican tradition expresses that same biblical teaching in a Prayer Book collect for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany:
O God, the strength of all who put their trust in thee:
Mercifully accept our prayers; and because through the
weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing
without thee, give us the help of thy grace, that in keeping
thy commandments we may please thee both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with
thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The prayer speaks of our common need of God’s grace, but it also calls for action in the keeping of His commandments with that essential help, that we “please [God] both in will and deed.” In the Anglican spirit of compromise, the collect brings together Paul’s principle of grace and the practical prompting of James. It takes seriously the truth both grace and works fulfill our Christian calling.
Luther (like Paul) understood this, of course, but his worry about do-it-yourself disciples led him to deemphasize the worth of good works in order to promote our trust in the primacy of grace. He knew that an unredeemed, yet free will would inevitably fall prey to the trap of self-righteousness. Extending a gospel analogy of Jesus about the relationship between a tree and its fruit, Luther said, “Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.” It takes the grace of God to redeem and change the human spirit, equipping the baptized to act.
But what if a person who professes Christian faith does not act? What if he or she shows no evidence of transformation? Does not that apathy and inaction mock the grace so freely poured out for the sake of all, including the haves and the have-nots, the just and the unjust, as well as all sorts of conditions of mankind? This is where the Letter of James steps up, and reminds us of our bounden duty as Christian men and women. It spurs us to action in the name of Christ, warning us that, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” Words such as these are necessary – from Scripture and pulpit, from martyred prophets and from the responders to suffering and oppression, for we are human and not God. Our conscience needs to be convicted, and our will needs to be re-committed to the calling of Christ – today and always.
There’s a preacher’s quip that never seems to lose its effectiveness. It’s a question that asks: “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” The Scriptures say that loving God without reservation, and loving your neighbor as yourself is all you need; that’s the summary of the law. It’s the reason why the liturgy follows it with “Lord, have mercy upon us.” And yet, Jesus said, “Do this, and you shall live.” But getting that done needs more than we have in our moral inventory; it’s the reason for receiving before we are able to give.
A good friend reminded me recently that in the old days doctors placed mirrors near the nostrils of a patient to check for evidence of life. Breath exhaled (at least in theory) would fog the mirror, indicating that the patient was still alive. But you can’t exhale unless you first inhale. Those are the mechanics of breathing; that’s how we live. If we apply that to the Christian living, the comparable signs of life would be acts of love, and mercy, and understanding, and courage, and compassion. However, none of these actions can happen unless we first receive life-giving power. We must be open to grace, trusting that God accepts us, and sets us free to go and do what love asks us to do.
There is a song from the genre of Alternative Rock that offers a fresh look at God’s breathing lessons. The tune is by an artist named Tiffany Arbuckle Lee, who goes by the recording name of “Plumb.” Appropriately enough, Plumb entitled her song, “Exhale.” Here are some excerpts from the lyrics:
It’s okay to not be okay
This is a safe place
This is a safe place
Don’t be afraid
Don’t be ashamed
There’s still hope here
There’s still hope here
No matter what you’ve done or who you are
Everyone is welcome His arms
Just let go let His love wrap around you
And hold you close
Get lost in the surrender
Breathe it in until your heart breaks
Then exhale
Exhale
Oh God We breathe in your grace
We breathe in your grace
And exhale
Oh God we do not exist for us
But to share Your grace and love
And exhale
Just let go let His love wrap around you
And hold you close
Get lost in the surrender
Breathe it in until your heart breaks
Then exhale
Exhale
Exhale
Exhale
Exhale
Amen.