James 2:14-26
(CEB)
My brothers
and sisters, what good is it if people say they have faith but do nothing to
show it? Claiming to have faith can’t save anyone, can it? Imagine a brother or
sister who is naked and never has enough food to eat. What if one of you said,
“Go in peace! Stay warm! Have a nice meal!”? What good is it if you don’t actually
give
them what their body needs? In the same way, faith is dead when it doesn’t
result in faithful activity.
Someone might
claim, “You have faith and I have action.” But how can I see your faith apart
from your actions? Instead, I’ll show you my faith by putting it into practice
in faithful action. It’s good that you believe that God is one. Ha! Even the
demons believe this, and they tremble with fear. Are you so slow? Do you need to
be shown that faith without actions has no value at all? What about Abraham,
our father? Wasn’t he shown to be righteous through his actions when he offered
his son Isaac on the altar? See, his faith was at work along with his actions.
In fact, his faith was made complete by his faithful actions. So the
scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and God regarded him
as righteous. What is more, Abraham was called God’s friend. So you see that
a person is shown to be righteous through faithful actions and not through
faith alone. In the same way, wasn’t Rahab the prostitute shown to be righteous
when she received the messengers as her guests and then sent them on by another
road? As the lifeless body is dead, so faith without actions is dead.
In the fall of 2002, Biblical Archeology Review (BAR) shared
an announcement with the world.
An Ossuary (a
bone box) had surfaced in Israel.
Now this in itself is not an uncommon occurrence
For about two hundred years ending when the Romans destroyed
Jerusalem and burned the Temple -- there was a widely accepted practice among the
Jewish people using what we call ossuaries in their burial practices.
According to BAR what would take place is:
"A corpse would first be laid
in a niche carved into the wall of a burial cave; about a year after this
primary burial, when the corpse’s flesh had decayed, the bones of the deceased
were gathered together and placed in a box or chest, usually made of Jerusalem
limestone, called an ossuary. Sometimes the bones of more than one person were
placed in the same ossuary. The practice . . . made room for additional primary
burials inside the burial cave.
But what made this particular ossuary intriguing was an
inscription written in clear Aramaic letters: “James, son of Joseph, brother of
Jesus.”
For the past 17 years, there has been a fight over whether
or not this inscription is authentic.
In 2012, after a seven-year trial, an Israeli court
concluded that the ossuary was not a fake and cleared a number of people who
had been under accusation for making a forgery.
Hershel Shanks, then editor of BAR, in an opinion piece
concluded:
In all the hubbub and flurry of the
verdict last March in the “forgery case of the century,” one question—the
central question—seems to have gotten lost: Is the ossuary inscription “James,
son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” genuine or not? And if it is, does it refer to
Jesus of Nazareth? After all, “Jesus” was a common name at the time.
These are enormously important
questions to the world of Christianity, as well as to anyone else interested in
the material world as it existed at the time Jesus walked this earth.
As to the authenticity of the
inscription, while we should not avoid reasons for doubting the authenticity,
neither should we dismiss it simply because it is “too good to be true.”
Is the inscription authentic? The
court held only that the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that the inscription was a forgery. But it surely did not find that the
inscription was authentic.
My bottom line is simply this:
There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the inscription on the James
Ossuary. Whether it refers to Jesus of Nazareth remains a question.
Since that discovery, I have been fascinated by James, the
brother of Jesus in ways that I was not before.
For the next month, Mary and I will share some of the key
themes from the letter that James, the brother of Jesus wrote to the Jewish
Christian community.
James can be rather uncomfortable for many in the protestant
traditions.
Elisa Tamez, professor of theology at the Latin American
Biblical University in Costa Rica in her powerful book: The Scandalous Message
of James wrote:
If the Letter of James were sent to
the Christian Communities of certain countries that suffer from violence and
exploitation, it would very possibly be intercepted by government security
agencies. The document would be branded
as subversive.
I hope that you have taken the time to read the Letter of
James. If not, I strongly encourage you
to do so --- and to read it and compare the ways it has been translated.
Like I often say -- Jesus has been homogenized and
pasteurized by the church today --- it is clear that many translators struggled
what to do with some of his challenges to us.
James 2:14 in the translation The Message says:
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?
Or as the NRSV has it: "Can faith save you?"
For many of us, we have grown up with the idea of FAITH
ALONE --- faith is all we need --- but James, here in this second chapter wants
to challenge that idea.
For James, faith alone is never enough
There is no part of the Bible, other than the Letter of
James, that better illustrates what Jesus meant when he was asked: What must
one do to inherit eternal life.
Do you remember what Jesus answer was?
For years, Evangelical Christianity has argued that the way
to eternal life begins with praying what is known as The Sinner's Prayer.
Campus Crusade and Billy Graham may have been its biggest
proponents:
Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a
sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose
from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and
life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior.
But is that what Jesus said?
Nope!
Jesus said: ‘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.’
For James, "works" means a life of loving God and
loving others,
and loving
others means deeds of compassion toward those in need.
James would go so far as suggesting that you can have all
the faith in the world, but if there is no action behind the faith --- then you
will not be saved.
He goes on and in an example that would be funny if it were
not so tragic and often true says:
"Imagine a brother or sister
who is naked and never has enough food to eat. What if one of you said, “Go in
peace! Stay warm! Have a nice meal!”? What good is it if you don’t actually
give them what their body needs? In the same way, faith is dead when it doesn’t
result in faithful activity."
How often have we driven past a needy brother or sister on a
winter morning --- maybe even on our way to church.
James doesn't mince words to us.
Scot McKnight in his commentary writes:
The description here is tragic: the
messianic community is connected to the Messiah who became poor in order to
make others rich and who taught in word and deed to show mercy to those in
need; the community is connected to the Scriptures of Israel, which from
beginning to end advocate mercy and compassion for those in need; and the
community is filled with poor who know the underside of oppression. Yet --- and this is what perplexes James into
strong words --- this group of those who say they have faith in Jesus the
Messiah, the glorious one who became poor, does nothing for those who make
their needs obvious.
I don't know about you --- but those words hurt!
I have lots of rationalizations and explanations of why I
didn't stop --- or a list of the few times that I did help --- but James keeps
asking: WHAT GOOD IS THAT?
Suppose I told you about a family that has stayed as our
guests here at Meridian Street, they are close to getting back into their own
home, but just as they are about to move the only car they have breaks down and
needs $500 in repairs, and now they are stuck with a choice of getting the car
fixed (so that they can get to work and keep their job) or moving into their
own place.
Do you care
about their plight?
Of
course you do --- many of you are filled with compassion and empathy
But what if I took $100 out of my
pocket and said --- I care this much --- how about you?
Faith for James is not simply trust, or the ability to
recite creeds --- faith for James always flowers into full blown acts of mercy
toward the poor and marginalized --- or it isn't faith.
James then uses two examples from the Hebrew tradition to
demonstrate what he means.
He uses the
stories of Abraham and Rahab
When we talk about Abraham we get the argument of
Justification by faith, that is developed by Paul particularly in his letter to
the Romans.
I could spend another 20 or 30 minutes just on these two
little sentences of James, but let me just say that for James: "To be
justified is to be brought into a saving relationship with God thought the new
birth (1:18), in which one lives out God's will as taught by Jesus, particularly
in showing mercy to those in need." (McKnight p247)
James wants to articulate a working faith --- not a faith plus works.
What I mean is faith works itself out in works and faith is
completed by works.
Scot McKnight concludes this section of his commentary on
James with these words (you may want to grab on to your seat or walk out now):
James has argued that, since faith
and works are inseparable, (1) the messianic community's prejudice against the
poor and favoritism toward the rich are contrary to faith (2:1-4), (2)
experience itself should inform the community's members that God is with the
poor, while the rich are oppressing the community (2:5-7), and (3) the royal
law to love one's neighbor as oneself demands care for the poor, while the community's
disrespect for the poor proves that its members are transgressors. . . . Faith
can only be shown to be saving by works (2:18b), creedal faith is not enough
because even the demons that have (2:19), and the examples of the unquestioned
faith of Abraham and Rahab prove that they had the kind of faith that worked.
McKnight goes on:
faith is confessional and works
behavioral, but for James a saving faith is one in which the confession is
manifested in works of mercy toward those in need. Faith alone, by which he means a minimal
creedal faith, cannot save. It is
useless, ineffective and dead.
What motivates us?
What gets you
to do good or to do as James would say: Works?
Sure, we’re saved by
faith alone, but not by a faith that remains alone.
If we are not changed by our relationship with Jesus,
something isn't right.
Joey Prusak began working at his local Minneapolis Dairy
Queen at the age of 14.
He was now
the manager at age 19.
One of his regular customers, who is visually impaired,
dropped a $20 bill on the floor.
Standing directly behind this man was another customer in
line, a woman, who picked up the $20 and put it in her purse.
When the woman who picked up the $20 came to the counter
Joey refused to serve this woman until she returned the money to its rightful
owner.
The woman herself refused and stormed out of the store.
So Joey took $20 out of his own pocket, found the visually
impaired man outside and gave him the money he had lost.
What motivates you?
What gets you
to do good or to do as James would say: Works?
James demands that we pay attention to the ragged homeless
person who stands on the street corner.
He demands that we pay attention to the orphans and widows.
He demands that we pay attention to the alien in our country.
If you’ve really put your faith in Jesus, it’s going to
change you.
The Spirit is going to move into your live, and start to
make changes.
You won’t be perfect, but you’re sure going to be different.
You’ll move in fits and starts, and sometimes take backward
steps, but over time you’ll see real change.
It will change the way you see people.
It will
change your heart for God.
It will cause
you to struggle with sins you used to love.
You won’t be perfect — we never are in this life — but your
faith will start to change you.
James says if you don’t see that happening, you may say you
believe, but you really don’t.
Real faith is believing and acting.
And it is available to anyone who
wants it.
Don’t settle for assent to ideas or even creeds.
Come and encounter the real Jesus.
Receive Jesus' grace in your life, and you’ll never be the
same.