James 2:14-18 (The Message)
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, “Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!” and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?
I can already hear one of you agreeing by saying, “Sounds good. You take care of the faith department, I’ll handle the works department.”
Not so fast. You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove.
Last week we pretty much covered all the “nerdy” stuff from James – the who, what, when and why of the writer’s intention – at least, most of it. This week we’ll be looking at two specific teachings. Remember, this is a letter (or perhaps a sermon), not an historical narrative. It is short, but it packs a lot of depth into its brief writing. As I mentioned last week, this is not a theological document, it is a primer on living wisely.
Though James addresses this missive to “the twelve tribes in the Diaspora,” it wasn’t written just to Jews in general, but specifically to Christian Jews – those who had become followers of Jesus. This is an important point for us to understand, because James writes a lot about wisdom here, but because his audience is Jewish Christians, their understanding of wisdom is going to be a distinctly Jewish understanding.
The definition I was taught is that “knowledge is knowing something, but wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know.” Old Testament writing adds an additional layer to our understanding of that word, wisdom, in that it connects it to the Holy Spirit – the Spirit breathes wisdom into to world – and the language of the Wisdom writings often conflate these two – Wisdom and Spirit as two ways of speaking about the same thing.. Wisdom, then, is more than knowledge – it is knowledge given directly from God.
This wisdom is not esoteric or difficult to access – the Spirit speaks to all of us who will listen. And wisdom is easy to recognize in others: Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom [writes James].....the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. (James 3:13, 17-18)
The least well known part of James’ letter are a handful of verses condemning wealth in no uncertain terms: Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. (5:1-3a). Language this harsh, this blunt is applied nowhere else in James except when he is discussing the rich.
What is most interesting is that these anti-wealth passages do not appear anywhere in the lectionary, either Protestant or Catholic, so you were unlikely to ever really know these verses exist unless you are a dedicated bible scholar. Think about why that might be.
The single best known part of the Letter of James is that part we heard read at the beginning -- the writer’s famous assertion that “faith without works is dead.” This is the passage that Martin Luther objected to so strenuously that he wanted the entire letter stripped out of the bible. The letter has been called “scandalous” because of this passage.
Paul wrote that “we are justified by grace through faith.” Luther followed this entirely and therefore entirely rejected James’ famous, though supposedly scandalous, take on faith and works. And because of this, wanted the entire book tossed out, regardless of how much good, solid teaching there is here.
Full disclosure time: I don’t like Martin Luther. I have always found him to be loud and arrogant. Probably heresy for a Protestant, but there it is – I think he’s wrong on many points. Much of what he had to say needed to be said. The errors and excesses of the Catholic Church needed to be reined in – absolutely – but Luther’s arrogant stance that he was right and anyone who disagreed with him was wrong, just turns me off entirely.
I have always sided with James on this one. Paul and Luther want it to be all grace through faith – sola gratia -- and yet, if grace requires our faith before it is efficacious, does not our having to have faith become a “work” in and of itself? James insists we cannot just sit back and say, “I believe that,” and then do nothing with that belief. Any faith that says, “I believe,” and then sits back and does nothing is not true faith in my book. As we heard in our opening reading: You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove.
Jesus explicitly tells us to do: to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to care for each other -- and he is equally explicit on how he feels about us when we don't do these things. If I say, I believe in this, and then do nothing but praise Jesus for my faith, how can I say I am following Jesus?
There is so much in this very short letter, I really recommend you take the time to read it through for yourselves and form your own conclusions. We’ll end today with this brief passage from the first chapter:
- Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror -- they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. (1:22-25)
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