Pentecost 14, Proper 18, Year B, 9/6/2009

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Ps. 125; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

This text from James has given me a lot to think about this week.

It can be confusing and challenging because of the way that it talks to us about faith and works and being saved.

All of which seems uber simple and uber complicated all at the same time.

We are saved by faith through God’s grace and mercy.

Simple. Jesus died on the cross, was resurrected and we’re good to go with the grace.

Complex. Somehow God both doesn’t expect anything from us in return and does expect something from us in how we live our lives.

Add to that all the fascinating stuff I’ve been reading this week in Bible commentaries and books about the culture and rhetorical style at the time James wrote this letter.

My head started to swim and I’ve found it hard to narrow down just what to say.

I read something in Christian Century magazine this week that was alarming to me.

The article started out by telling a story about a philosophy and ethics teacher at a Catholic university.

This teacher likes to ask students a question on the first day of her introductory ethics class.

The question is this.

If you were to live to the age of 80 what would you like to be able to say about yourself?

She began to notice an increase in one particular response.

The students increasingly have answered that they want to be able to say that they have no regrets, that they wouldn’t do anything differently.

The article goes on to discuss this growing desire for what the author calls “avoidance of moral regret”.

The article quotes a famous actor who basically said that even though he had done things that he would describe as “despicable”…

He wouldn’t do a thing differently because it all made him what he is today.

I find that logic alarming.

I definitely have regrets and there are definitely things I would do differently.

The author of the article makes this statement:

It is only when we have things to regret that we come to realize how merciful God is.

So I began to think about this flow of events or experiences.

Regret to mercy to gratitude to living faith to good works.

That is the flow that I see in James.

Now people tend to focus on verse 14.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?

From that one verse has sprung hundreds of years of fierce debates about the relationship of mercy and faith and works…and salvation.

On the one hand Paul writes in Romans 3:28: For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from the good works prescribed by the law.

And on the other hand James writes: so faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Trust me there is a lot going on in Roman and James and we are not going to unravel it all to anyone’s complete satisfaction in the next 10 minutes.

The bottom line is that we are not saved by being good, that only the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus makes reconciliation with God possible.

We cannot be good enough to get that job done.

But James is talking about something else, not the power of the cross per se.

James is talking about actually experiencing in our lives the power of Jesus’ life, Jesus’ faith and faithfulness.

Think about it.

Jesus lived out mercy to the ultimate degree.

He ate with the sinners and healed the unclean and hung out with the women and men who were at the fringes of acceptable society.

At the fringes and beyond.

Jesus lived out mercy for the powerless and the unloved.

The widows and orphans, like we heard last week.

The poor, the hungry, the naked.

We hear Jesus over and over in the Gospels talk about God’s love and God’s favor for the poor, the weak.

Read the beatitudes…blessed are…

And yet, back then and now…the rich and powerful were much more likely to get the good seat, the good stuff, to be shown favoritism.

That human problem has not changed.

James is saying that we do not have the faith or the faithfulness of Jesus if we show favoritism towards the rich or if we show indifference towards the poor.

And he says that in pretty strong language.

If you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

Yikes.

And read on.

For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

Listen to Jesus in the beatitudes…blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

How do we sort through these ideas that seem contrary to each other and are flat out confusing?

Are we saved by faith or by works or by both?

Are we judged by God by how we judge others?

Let’s all think about the Lord’s Prayer.

So what is James trying to tell us?

Last week we heard the call to be doers of the word.

To bridle our tongues, and to defend those who have no one to defend them, and to stay unstained from the world.

Here James points to the faithfulness of Jesus in reaching out with the love of God to all people.

And then he simply says that if we have faith like that we cannot continue to show favoritism or indifference.

James is saying that Jesus changed all that and that we need to live differently if we have received God’s gifts of faith and grace.

If we truly experience having regrets and know that we need God’s love in Jesus…

Then we have the possibility of experiencing real mercy.

And if we truly experience mercy in our hearts and minds…in our very bones…

Then we will experience gratitude…compelling gratitude for the amazing gift given to us freely.

And if we experience real gratitude we will find chances for good works crossing our paths every day.

So let’s talk about good works for a minute.

What makes something we do or say a good work?

Look in the Gospels at how Jesus lives his life.

He is our example, right?

Jesus sought out the unclean, the sinners, the powerless, the poor, the people who were beaten down by life.

He constantly told stories about loving our enemies and giving a drink of water to the least among us.

Jesus described our neighbor not as the one like us or the who is easy to be with.

He described our neighbor as the we must be merciful to, like the Good Samaritan.

Our neighbor is the one in the second of the two commandments…

Our neighbor is the one we must love as we love ourselves.

Good works are not the things that we do to make ourselves feel good about ourselves.

Good works are the things we do to make someone else’s life better.

And if we take Jesus seriously that means especially the poorest and the one’s with the least power and influence.

So if we do those kinds of good works we’re good enough to be saved?

No, only grace can do that.

But good works can save us from having faith that is dead and pointless for anyone except our little selves.

There’s the flow.

Regrets, to mercy, to gratitude, to living faith, to good works.

That doesn’t happen with just head understanding of God and what God is up to.

What I have seen in people, and in myself, is that only when we truly experience something are we transformed.

When it goes from our head to our heart, that’s when Jesus and the Holy Spirit can get somewhere in us.

James makes a simple but very important point.

We can have dead faith or living faith.

And living faith is recognizable.

Listen to this from the second chapter of the book of Ephesians:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Believing in God is not enough.

Jesus talked frequently about that.

Following some set of rules or rituals is not enough.

Another hot topic for Jesus.

Our regrets and God’s mercy…

Those experiences can lead us to gratitude and living faith and good works.

That is the plan, the way of life as Ephesians says, that God set up for all of God’s people.

Gratitude compels us to ask who God has made us to be and what God wants us to be doing with our lives.

Have you seen the purple posters around the church?

They have another quote from Ephesians:

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…

Who are you in God’s eyes?

What did God create you to be and to do?

God gave you gifts, God is equipping you for your ministry in your everyday life.

Do you see yourself that way?

What acts of gratitude and love have crossed your path recently?

Did you see them?

Did you reach out to the poor, the struggling, those who might even make you uncomfortable?

Is your faith alive?

It’s not an easy question but your life may depend on it.

It’s worth asking.