The Rev. Kathi Johnson
Lectionary 24, Year B – 13 September 2015 (God’s Work, Our Hands
Weekend)
Text: James 2:14-17
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas
+
INJ +
We’ve reached a really tricky part
of the Epistle of James because this is the part that makes it sound as though
in order for us to achieve salvation, we have to do all kinds of good works.
James says here: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have
faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?...faith by itself, if it has
no works, is dead.”
And so, there it is – right there –
faith alone doesn’t save us. In fact, James says that faith by itself, without
action, is dead faith.
So where does this leave the
Apostle Paul’s idea that we are saved by grace through faith? Paul says it
clearly in Ephesians 2: “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.” In other words, according to this verse in Ephesians,
God doesn’t save us because of the good things that we do but because of God’s grace.
It’s all gift.
But - what else are we also given?
According to the very next verse in
Ephesians 2, Paul says that we are also given life.
“For we are what [God] has made us,”
Paul says – and not only that, but he goes on to say that we are “created in
Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of
life.” Good works are to be our way of life, Paul says. We are created to do
good for others.
So, going back to our reading from
James for today, this is one of those instances in which it is helpful to
remember that the Epistle of James was written by a specific person and to a specific
group of people. We must place James within the context of Jewish and early
Christian life for which it was written. Apparently, the audience for this
letter had forgotten that it is in the living
out of our faith in God that our faith becomes the most living and active.
James uses a concrete example to
make his point: “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?”
James does not say that we must change the entire world with our work. James does say that faith without works is a
dead faith – a faith that has no beating heart, a faith that has no breath within
it.
We know that – just like back then
- there are plenty of needs. Creation needs care, and so yesterday, we sent a
group to help care for a local garden that needed some work. A couple of others
stayed here to work on our lawn and trim our hedges. Children need care, and so
yesterday, we had a group here making blankets for foster children, and today,
we will assemble school supply kits that will be sent all over the world.
We do not know who will eat the
cabbages that were planted by our folks yesterday in the garden. We don’t know the
foster child who will wrap up in one of these blankets as she shuffles from place
to place, longing for safety. We don’t know where in the world these school
kits will be sent, or the name of the child who will write in the notebook or
use the blunt scissors. But we do know that we are created in Christ Jesus for
good works, and that these good works are to be our way of life.
A lawyer once asked Jesus, “Teacher,
which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus answered him, “ ‘You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind. ’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is
like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ’ On these two commandments
hang all the law and the prophets.”[1]
For Jesus, the connection between loving God and loving others was a solid
connection, so solid that every other teaching from God hangs upon loving God
and loving neighbor.
Danish theologian and philosopher Soren
Kierkegaard told this parable: Once upon a time, there was a land inhabited
only by ducks. Every Sunday morning, the ducks got up, washed their faces, put
on their Sunday clothes, and waddled off to church. They waddled through the
door of their duck church, proceeded down the aisle, and took their familiar
places in their seats. The duck minister entered the pulpit and opened the duck
Bible to the place where it talked about God’s greatest gift to ducks—wings.
“With wings we can fly,” the
minister said. “With wings we can soar like eagles. With wings we can escape
the confines of pens and cages. With wings we can become free. With wings we
can become all God meant us to be. So give thanks to God for your wings. And
fly!” All the ducks loudly quacked, “Amen.”
And then all of the ducks waddled
back home.[2]
At the risk of sounding ridiculous,
let us be the ducks that use our wings and fly. We have been created by God and
then re-created at our baptisms to love God and to love our neighbor. Since
this is true, what else can we do?
Amen.
+ INJ +
No comments:
Post a Comment