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Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

James 2
12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, 13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.


Advice for today: If you’re gonna read your Bible, don’t begin at the beginning.

I know it seems counter-intuitive, since we are often told to begin at the beginning—but for Bible reading it’s just not the best place to start. Maybe that’s why that little Bible you got in the fifth grade was only the New Testament and Psalms, a simple way to solve the problem of beginning at the beginning. Unfortunately, this causes another issue, since Matthew is better read after you read Mark—so again, don’t begin at the beginning.

So why the lack of love for Genesis? Is this guy Genesisist? Is that even a word? In fact, I love the book of Genesis, and I would commend it to anyone, except the person reading the Bible for the first time. And here’s a simple list to explain:

In the first chapter of Genesis, on the first day, God created light, then separated light and darkness.
A few verses later, the sun (which separates night and day) wasn't created until the fourth day.

In Genesis 1, trees were created before humans were created.
In Genesis 2, humans were created before trees were created.

In Genesis 1, birds were created before humans were created.
In Genesis 2, humans were created before birds were created.

In Genesis 1, animals were created before humans were created.
In Genesis 2, humans were created before animals were created.

In Genesis 1, man and woman were created at the same time.
In Genesis 2, man was created first, then woman sometime later.*

I think you see the problem. There is obviously something happening in the first couple of chapters of Genesis, something that the earliest biblical scholars will sort out in the eighteenth century. Early on, it was suggested that maybe there were two separate accounts melded together, each too important to discard. Thus, what we call source criticism was born. Two sources, edited together, one book with obvious contradictions.

But we don’t need to stop there. The very nature and identity of God is described in varied and often contradictory ways. Some examples:

God is a vengeful God (four places)
God is a warrior (three places)
God is a jealous God (seven places)
God is angry (eleven places, but can you blame God—have you read a newspaper lately?)
But God is love (five places)

I think you get the picture. The truth is, the Bible is not a book, but a library. We call it the “good book” but it’s really more like a good library: many books, by many authors, on various topics—but with lots of agreement and lots of disagreement. Go across the street right now (well, not right now) and find a couple of books on Canadian history. What do they emphasize? What do they downplay? Who will be featured and who will be ignored? They may both be excellent treatments of the topic, but they will inevitably disagree on what’s important.

So too with the Bible. Divinely inspired writers took up the story of God and God’s people, and wrote numerous books on the topic. And in the absence of an overall editor (would a library have an overall editor?) in the absence of an overall editor we have received a varied, rich, complex, fulsome, vexing, engaging, frustrating, inspiring, troubling, and glorious collection of sacred writings that we can now spend our life with. Thank God for that.

I share all this this morning to set the table for one of the primary dichotomies found in scripture: “Faith, without works, is dead” (from James 2) and “a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (from Romans 3).

Having spend much of 2017 marinating in Martin Luther’s Reformation ideas, we might be predisposed to the favour the latter, by faith alone we are saved, not by any effort on our part, not by works, but by the grace and mercy of God. But then James speaks:

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

In many ways, this is catnip for the United Church, and for Central in particular. Food, clothing, clean needles, condoms, advice—if we can get it, we will give it away. Going downstairs is like taking a trip to James 2. We begin with physical needs (food, warmth, companionship) then support (housing, harm reduction) and finally advocacy, encouraging people in the face of systems that often seem designed to keep them down. It’s the whole package.

But it’s far from all. Nearly three-quarters of the units next door receive some sort of support, because seniors living in poverty is one of the great scandals of our time. Down the hill, at the Mount Dennis satellite, we’re confronting a “food desert” with cooking classes, a pop-up market, and social enterprise incubation (yes, it’s as cool as it sounds).

Occasionally I’m called upon to offer support to other congregations—congregations who are trying find their way. And I always begin by describing the James 2 congregation I serve. I describe all the outreach we do, I give them all the confusing four-letter names we seem to favour (CKSR-WKNC-MDNC) and then the same question comes every time: “How big is your congregation?”

What would you say? Not big. Big enough. Could be bigger. I tell them that even a relatively small congregation can have a large impact when they put the focus on addressing the needs right outside their front door. There is no magic here. Just faithful people trying to help. Faithful people who read James 2 in the present tense: “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.” What would you do?

(Just as an aside, congregations make other choices, like the congregation I met that gave over 90% of their building to a private school. They had lots of money, but complained that they had no room left over for any kind of programming, especially outreach to the community. We have made the opposite choice, and depend on generous givers instead of a private school who would gladly take over our building. Subtle stewardship plug ended.)

So back to the seeming contradiction between ‘saved by faith alone’ and ‘faith without works is dead.’ Can they both be true? Is there a way to capture the grace and mercy we receive (without any effort on our part) and the grace and mercy we should return in order to have a faith with meaning? I think the answer is in the question.

Like Ol’ Blue Eyes said, you can’t have one without the other. You can’t accept that your life with God is a gift freely given unless you can share the same gift with others. Put the other way, you can’t freely share with others unless you understand that all that you have was a gift to you.

And, of course, whenever it seems that competing verses have gotten us into some kind of mess, we return to the Bible for the answer. And more often than not, the answer is in the letters of St. Paul. And it makes good sense: Paul was helping non-Jews discover the God of Israel through a Jewish rabbi who insisted that faith was for everyone. Talk about a challenging job description!

And he spends plenty of time describing the outward marks of his faith and the extent to which they can be a barrier to new believers. He talks about the law, he talks about conversion, and he talks about faith and belief. And when he’s done talking about all these things, he settles on this: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Gal 5.6)

See what he did there? God is the source of all love, so faith expressing itself through love is accepting the love that God has for us while sharing that love with others. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”

God sent Jesus to show is “faith expressing itself through love—love for the least and the last, love for tax-collectors and sinners, love for the gentiles who sought him out, love for the broken people he surrounded himself with, even love for those who took him to the cross. Paul said it, but no doubt Jesus whispered it in his ear:

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Amen.

*https://infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/contradictions.html”

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 6:16 AM