Do Beliefs Matter?



Mark 9:33-50
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’
John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell., And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
‘For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’

Back in the middle of the 19th century, there was a well-known bishop who was traveling through the South Pacific on his way to visit Christian missionaries in Austrailia. One the way, his ship stopped at a small island to take on supplies. Walking around the island, he began to ask the villagers if they believed in Jesus Christ.

Three native men responded “yes.” They said in broken English, “Years ago, a man come to island. Teach us about Jesus. We followers now. Jesus very great.” The bishop, interested in their faith, asked them, “So, when you pray, what do you say?” They responded, “We say to God, ‘You are Three. We are three. Have mercy on us.’”

The bishop was indignant. What ignorance. What blasphemy! This was no way for Christians to pray. He said to the natives, “This way of praying is against God. Let me teach you how to pray properly.” So, he spent the next few days teaching them the words to the Lord’s Prayer. It was difficult work, but slowly they memorized the prayer. His last act on the island was proudly standing on the gangplank, hearing them recite the prayer.

Six months later, the bishop was sailing home, and as his ship sailed by that beautiful South Pacific island at night, he thought back with pride to his work with the three natives. He wondered how they were doing, and if they truly appreciated his work with them. As he looked across the water to the island, he noticed a small point of light coming toward the ship. As he continued to look, the light got closer and closer, and it was moving fairly quickly. Soon he noticed that it wasn’t just one light, but three. As it drew even closer, he noticed that the lights were three lamps being held by aloft the three natives as they ran at incredible speeds across the top of the water. Soon the three natives were standing on the surface of the water along side of the ship. Everyone was stunned.

They shouted up and said, “Bishop, Bishop! We see your boat sail by. We so ashamed. We forget beautiful prayer you teach us. We know we bad Christians. Please teach us again how to pray.” The bishop looked down at them and said with a smile, “When you pray, say ‘You are Three, we are three. Have mercy on us.’”

I love this story because it gets right to the heart of real Christian faith. Basically what it tells us is that to be a Christian is really very simple. It’s a matter of being the right way in our heart, mind, and soul. Let me explain this a bit more.

I think that the heart of Christianity isn’t so much a question of what you believe, or what you do, but who you are. I’m not saying that what you do doesn’t matter, nor that what you believe doesn’t matter. They do. But they matter only to the extent that what you believe and do shapes who you are. God isn’t so much taking note of what we do and believe. What God takes note of is our core. Are we people of love, compassion, grace, peace, and light at our cores, and how are these reflected in our acts and beliefs.

So often in Christianity we get everything reversed. We emphasize aspects of faith that are secondary, making them primary. Let me show you what I mean. Do you recognize the term “works righteousness?” Works righteousness is something that Jesus struggled against, and it was at the heart of the Reformation—the time when the Protestant churches broke away from the Catholic church during the 16th century. The idea behind works righteousness is that in order to get into heaven we have to do enough good deeds to merit inclusion. It’s as though God keeps a big tally sheet of good and bad deeds that we’ve done, and the good deeds have to outweigh the bad ones in order for us to be saved. The Catholic Church, at the time of the Reformation, was fully ensconced in a works righteousness approach to faith. In fact, they used it to pay for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica Rome.

The church declared that giving money to the building of St. Peter’s (what they called “indulgences”) would have the power to release individuals early from Purgatory, getting them to Heaven sooner. So periodically a bishop from the Vatican would travel to a European city in a cart loaded with small, rolled-up documents bound by a red ribbon and embossed with the papal seal. When you gave money to the building of St. Peter’s, you would be given the document certifying your early release from Purgatory. This is works righteousness, and belief in it still exists today when people say that what matters most is how often we go to church, how often we give to charity, and how often we do acts of charity.

So what’s wrong with the idea of works righteousness? Aren’t good deeds good? What’s wrong is that works righteousness goes against what scripture says. Paul, in the third chapter of Romans, tells us that it’s not our deeds that get us into Heaven, it’s God’s grace. In other words, God saves us as a gift out of love. We don’t get in because we merit getting in. We get in because God wants us there. God wants to save us. When we have faith in God, we accept the gift of grace and Heaven. It’s not the goodness of our works that get us in. In fact, Paul points out that our deeds really can’t be considered good, since even the best deeds have some measure of self-interest in them—especially if we are only doing them to get into heaven. That’s the most selfish reason of all. Salvation isn’t a gift that’s merited. It’s just received.

There’s another form of “righteousness” that goes right along with works righteousness, and it’s the one that afflicts Protestants. Works righteousness is still an issue for the Catholic Church, despite the fact that the Catholic Church’s beliefs are much more like Protestant beliefs on this issue. The Protestant version of works righteousness is something I call “beliefs righteousness.” Beliefs righteousness is the idea that we are saved by virtue of having the right beliefs about God, Jesus, Scripture, and the like. You see people caught in the grips of beliefs righteousness who believe that things such as memorizing the Bible, being expert at Christian theology, and knowing what needs to be known to be saved have the power to save us. Many Protestants ignore the idea that grace and salvation are gifts, and act as though it is the purity of our beliefs that save us. They make the same mistake that those caught in works righteousness do: thinking that it’s up to us, when really it’s all up to God.

The bishop in our story was both a beliefs and works righteousness slave. The three men may have been ignorant of Christian works and beliefs, but they had the right hearts—hearts that allowed them to accept the gift of grace from God in a way that transformed them. You see, what makes us righteous is where our heart and soul are.

Okay, so if it doesn’t matter so much what we do and what we believe, then why is it so important for Christians to believe what we believe, and to do what we do? The answer is that Christian teachings shape our minds, hearts, and souls. Acts of love shape our hearts, minds, and souls, as well as those of others. Christian teachings and acts have the power to deepen our relationship with God and others. Ultimately the goal of Christianity is our relationship with God, and what better way to build that relationship than to be like children with God? This is what God wants of us. God wants us to be God’s adult, mature, loving, and compassionate children.

This gets right to the heart of my vision of Christianity. I believe that we are called to be a community that shapes people to become more open to and responsive to God in all areas of life. We are called to be Christ-bearers and love sharers, not gatekeepers who determine who deserves to be in God’s kingdom and who doesn’t.

What does it means to be a Christian? I believe that it means to be exactly like what Jesus described in our passage. Jesus says, “’Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’’ What he is saying here he says even more clearly Matthew’s gospel: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

We are called to be like children in our faith, in our works, and in our beliefs. Think about the way children are. They don’t spend hours debating weighty matters as we do. They play. They don’t sit around wondering how they can get to heaven. They play. To be like a child as a Christian means to live a life of play, laughter, and joy. That doesn’t mean going out and getting drunk all the time, spending all our time gambling, or engaging in what can often be called “adult fun.” I’m talking about real play where we can enjoy life with others. You hear this sense of play in the deepest Christian words, ones such as love, grace, joy, hope, faith, and peace. We can learn a lot from watching children.

My daughter, Erin, taught me about being a Christian child the other day. Erin and her sister, Shea, both run cross-country. And last Monday they had a meet with two other schools, although Erin didn’t run because she and I had been sick on Monday and Tuesday. So we sat and watched.

I don’t know how many of you have ever been to a cross-country meet, but it’s a bit of a strange event for parents. You rush to get your children to the meet, and once you get there, everyone hangs out waiting for the time when everyone’s there and the coaches can take the kids on a walk-through, which takes about forty minutes as they walk the two-mile course. Then the varsity team lines up, boys first, girls second, and they run. That takes about another 35 minutes. Then the junior varsity lines up—boys first, girls second. So, by the time my daughters are ready to run, I’ve been sitting there for about an hour-and-a-half. Usually I take work and work on something while I’m waiting. Then the girls line up, and I, as a parent, walk over there and shout out, “Go Erin, go Shea!” I also shout out for some of their friends like Abbie and Bailey. In twenty seconds they disappear into the woods. And then all us parents go back to sitting and waiting.

About eighteen minutes later the first kids show up, and so we start looking for our kids. At about twenty minutes I see my kids running to the finish line. So I shout out “Go Shea, you can do it! Go Erin, you’re almost there!” Then they cross the finish line. By this point, I’ve been there for two hours or more, and I’ve spent a total of thirty seconds cheering my kids and other kids. It’s not like a soccer game where you cheer for an hour.

What’s also hard is that I don’t really know any of the other parents. Being the Protestant parent of children in a Catholic school, I don’t know the parents through church and other activities. So I sort of stand around a bit, feeling like the odd man out. It’s not their fault. I’m not necessarily going out of my way to meet them. So I do work and read while I’m waiting.

Erin taught me something the other day, though, about my attitude, and perhaps the attitude of all us adults. I told her that watching the meets is kind of boring for us parents, so I said to bring books and games, which she did. That only amused her for thirty minutes. Then she told me, “I’m bored!” For the next fifteen minutes I heard, “I’m bored. I’m bored. I’m bored.” I told her that there’s not much I could do. She noticed some younger children, children that she didn’t know very well, and she asked me if she could hang out with them. I said, “Sure, but remember that you are getting over being sick. I don’t want you running around.” So, for the next hour-and-a-half, Erin hung out with those kids, playing games, chatting, and sharing snacks. I sat by myself and did work. Erin played, I worked. Erin laughed, I worked. Erin got along, I worked. Now the truth is that I had a lot to do (believe it or not, we pastors do a lot in-between sermons), but I also realized that Erin had something I didn’t: an ability to overcome differences through prayer. She had that childlike faith that Jesus talked about. She had the ability to get along with others, and not to get hung up on whether or not the other believed what she believed, had the same values she had, or even had the same faith she had.

This ability to live a life of faith-filled love, laughter, and play is so essential to the Christian life, and I think it’s something we miss so much in modern life. I will give credit, though, to this church. Do you remember back in 2005, when Diana Butler-Bass and her assistant, Joseph Stewart-Sicking, spent time with us to research us and other like churches for what eventually became her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us? They were studying churches like ours that were growing, not because we were doing all contemporary worship, but because they were emphasizing spirituality, prayer, and listening to God. They said that they noticed something very unique about our church, which stood out in comparison to other churches. She noticed how easily we laugh in this church. They said that they saw it in worship whenever something didn’t work and we laughed about it. They saw it in our session meetings. Joe said that when he sat in on our session meeting, he heard us have a very intensive discussion about something, and he thought, “Okay, here’s where we’ll see them start to fight.” At the most intense moment, someone on the session said something funny. Then someone else joined in. Pretty soon, all of us were cracking jokes for five minutes. Then we jumped back into the discussion and had it resolved in fifteen minutes. What I love about this church is that we play.

I think that this is what God calls us to. Our beliefs matter. Our works matter. But not to the extent that our love and laughter matter.

Amen.
at

Conspiracy and Conflict



James 3:1-12
September 13, 2009

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.
How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

I don’t know about you, but I really like conspiracy movies. I’m not sure what it is about them, but I love them. Whenever any come on television, I’m glued.

I do have a favorite one, although I haven’t seen it in over fifteen years. It is a movie called Capricorn One. It’s about three astronauts who are scheduled to fly to Mars for the first landing on Mars. One of the astronauts is O. J. Simpson, back in the day when we thought he was okay. As the countdown begins, the astronauts are put into a sleeker, more modern version of the Apollo moon mission capsule. The countdown continues to the final 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,… lift off! You see the rocket lifting off on televisions across the country. Then we see the astronauts in the capsule. They are looking at each other bewildered because nothing is happening. Their rocket is still sitting on the launch pad. Then the door opens and the three are ushered out.

They are told that there is a problem with the rocket. Eventually they are taken out into the desert where they are placed in a makeshift filming studio that looks exactly like the surface of Mars. They are told that the government couldn’t afford a real Mars mission trip, so they are to fake it for he sake of the country.

After complying for a while, the astronauts eventually rebel. At that point they are threatened with death. Meanwhile, the public is told that they all died in a fiery explosion on Mars. The three astronauts escape into the desert and are hunted by government agents in black helicopters. One-by-one they are killed until the last one finally makes it to civilization and tells the world he is alive. The conspiracy is revealed.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always loved conspiracy films, novels, and theories. For instance, I like History Channel conspiracy documentaries on the assassination of JFK, shows on the conspiracies of secret societies and government agencies, and even cover-ups of UFO sightings. Now, to be honest, I rarely believe any of them, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like watching them, especially if I’m folding laundry. Conspiracy makes for great entertainment, which is good because we are bombarded nowadays by conspiracy. I spent about 15 minutes on Saturday afternoon listing all the recent popular films that have conspiracies at their core. Here’s my list:

Eagle Eye
Star Wars: Phantom Menace Attack of the Clones Revenge of the Sith
The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum
JFK, No Way Out the X-Files movies
Enemy of the State Conspiracy Theory The Manchurian Candidate Syriana Clear and Present Danger The Da Vinci Code Angels and Demons and even,… Harry Potter

What’s our obsession with conspiracies? Obviously I find them entertaining, but there’s something more here. Our culture is obsessed with conspiracies. Think about all the conspiracies theories people in our culture believe in. Again, I spent about fifteen minutes thinking about conspiracy theories, and here’s what I came up with:

The Assassinations of JFK by either the Russians, the Cubans, or the CIA. The assassination of RFK by the FBI or the Mafia. The assassination of Martin Luther King either by the FBI or the KKK. The assassination of Malcom X by either the FBI or the Muslim Nation (the FBI is popular among conspiracy theorists, as is the CIA). The faking of the 1969 Moon Landing. The secret plot for Jewish World Domination, which is based on the book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Nixon cover-up, which, well… actually was a conspiracy. The New World Order, which through the United Nations is planning on taking over the world. The Skull and Bones secret society at Yale University, which has had a number of U.S. presidents and other powerful figures as their members. The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy cited by Hillary Clinton. The suicide of Vince Foster, an aide to President Clinton, who was said to have really been killed by Clinton or his minions back in the 1990s. In fact, there is a whole conspiracy theory about what is called “The Clinton Body Count,” which is a suspicion that Bill Clinton killed or had killed 50 to 60 people who stood in the way of his becoming president. The Freemasons, which I believe is the next conspiracy target of Dan Brown’s new novel (Brown is the author of the The DaVinci Code). The 9/11 conspiracy, which says that 9/11 either was orchestrated by the Jews to get the world to hate Muslims, or by the Bush Administration for their own nefarious reasons. There’s the whole Obama birther conspiracy, the belief that he was really born in Kenya and faked his U.S. birth certificate. A recent one I’ve heard is that Obama is hiding his college transcripts from the public for some sinister reason. There is also a conspiracy theory surrounding the digital television conversion. The theory is that the converter boxes and the new digital televisions have secret cameras integrated in them so that we can be watched (so make sure you don’t dress in front of your television, or Big Brother will see you naked).

I look around at our culture, and I’m now wondering if our collective love of conspiracies is infecting our souls. I’m wondering if all this belief in conspiracy is leading to our increase in conflict. The fact is that nowadays, especially in the political arena, people constantly see diabolical reasons behind every idea. I think this has an eroding effect in which people don’t trust each other because we suspect everyone of having hidden, evil motives. The result is that nobody trusts anyone else, at least on a large scale, and it is leading to a tremendous amount of conflict. Everyone is right, and everyone else is wrong. And we are a culture in severe conflict.

This conflict has even infected our churches. It’s amazing nowadays how many on the right see a liberal conspiracy in the offices of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to erode the morality and belief in Christ, and how many on the left see an evangelical conspiracy to destroy our denomination for their own purposes.

Everywhere I look I see conflict, and it’s leading to the point where treating others with disdain is becoming more acceptable. Because we see others who disagree with us as less than us, it gives us permission to treat them with disdain. Here’s the thing that gets me: We say we’re a Christian nation, but where’s the evidence? It certainly isn’t in how we treat each other. I suppose many of us measure our Christianity based on thinking that we believe the right things or do the right things, but how we behave towards others is the real outward mark of our faith, and I look at the behavior of Americans, and much of it is embarrassing. I hear Barney Frank, a congressman from Massachusetts, say to a protester at a town hall meeting (who herself ignorantly asked, “Why are you supporting this Nazi policy?"), "On what planet do you spend most of your time?... Trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table." Then, a few weeks later, Joe Wilson, a congressman from South Carolina, during a speech by President Obama, yells out, “You lie!” And his apologies are less than convincing.

This stuff is just the tip of a very ugly iceberg. Whether we are talking about Serena Williams’ treatment of a line judge in the finals of the U.S. Open, or Kanye West’s protest at the Video Music Awards, there’s an incivility that it ripping apart the culture. I believe that what sparks a lot of this conspiracy and conflict is talk radio, the internet, and the media. The funny thing is that I hear so much that the mainstream media has a liberal bias, but I have to tell you that I don’t see it. And there’s a good reason. Fox News, who often who promotes the “media-is-liberal” talk, is more popular than the other cable news channels combined. That makes them a large part of the mainstream media. Consider also that in this city, and many others, right-wing talk radio dominates the ratings. That makes them the mainstream media. I do believe the mainstream media is biased, but not as much politically as in another way. Their politics go all over the map, but they all share a common bias, which is that they are all biased toward conflict. The mainstream media, the radio, and the Internet love conflict. They can’t get enough. If a leading figure gave a tremendous speech about any topic, but said in the middle of it something critical of another, that’s the part the media would focus on.

This raises a significant problem for us Christians. We love conflict, but at the same time we are called to something more. So many of us Christians have terrible behavior in the way we treat others on scales large and small. They excuse their behavior by saying that because they are right, and they are only speaking truth, they can act that way. For a Christian, even being right doesn’t excuse poor behavior. And the behavior of Christians right and left is actually hurting our brand. Take a look at this recent research by the Barna Group, an evangelical polling organization. They polled a sample of 16-29 year-old non-Christians, and here’s what they found:
• 91% say we are antihomosexual
• 87% say we are judgmental
• 85% say we are hypocritical
• 78% say we are old-fashioned
• 75% say we are too involved in politics
• 72% say we are out of touch with reality
• 70% say we are insensitive to others

I find these statistics appalling. I realize that much of what sparks those beliefs are not the kinds of actions folks from our church engage in, but we are still lumped in with them.

We Christians are called not only to a standard of belief, but especially to one of behavior that rises above the conflict of today. I want you to look at scripture and see what it tells us about how we are to treat others, especially those with whom we disagree. Read our passage above, and listen to what James says about the power of the tongue. Or look in Matthew’s gospel at what Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”

Read what Paul says in his Letter to the Ephesians: “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” In his Letter to the Philippians he says, “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” What if we took these passages seriously not only on a personal level, but in our country? What if we made these beliefs the mark of being a Christian nation?

So how do we get to this better standard of behavior? I think the answer is found in the writings of a Jewish philosopher named Martin Buber. Back in 1923 he wrote a small, groundbreaking book titled I and Thou. In it he stated that the problem with much of human life comes through how we regard each other. He says that when we use a word like “thou” (which is an old English word used to call another “you” in a very personal, intimate way), we are using a word that says “I care about you.” He says that God looks upon each of us a “thou,” and hopes that we will look upon God as “Thou.” When we see ourselves as “I” and another as “thou,” we bind ourselves in a respectful, caring relationship. Regarding others as a “thou” removes conflict and enhances love.

The problem is that we only rarely look at others as “thou.” Instead, we look upon others as a “she,” “he,” “they,” or “it,” meaning that we consider others to be of lesser value or as an object. To consider another as a “she” or “he” means to consider another to be distant and of less importance. When we consider another as an “it,” we consider that person to be almost as nothing. For Buber, the answer to our conflict is to work personally to consider others in the same way God considers them—as a “thou.” We see them as a “thou” even if we disagree with them. This is a key to breaking the cycle of conflict, at least in our lives.

My point here hasn’t been just to blast right-wing talk radio, left-wing blogging, and all your favorite media sources. My point is to remind all of us that we have a higher calling, one that extends beyond the agendas of the media. We have a calling to listen, to be careful in how we speak, to build up. And to get there we have to make a decision to root our thinking and our behavior in Christian values, not the culture’s values.

So, with that, I have a question for you to ponder: What’s the foundation of your behavior? Is it Christianity or something else?

Amen.
at

What Good Is Faith without Deeds?



James 2:1-17
September 4, 2009

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please’, while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’, or, ‘Sit at my feet’, have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the one who said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’, also said, ‘You shall not murder.’ Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 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? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.


A number of years ago, in the small Southern town of Shively, there used to be two main churches, the Shively Christian Church and the Shively Baptist Church. Both churches were very active in the community, both attracted a large number of people from the community, and both agreed on one thing: that the other church was the wrong church.

One August Saturday morning the youth pastor of the Shively Christian Church gathered the youth members together for a “What Would Jesus Do?” day. He split them up into five groups, giving them a charge to go out and do what Jesus might do to help others for at least two hours. He used John 13 as a guide, which is the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. So off the youth went to act as Jesus for a day.

When they returned, they told their stories. The first group found an elderly man in their congregation and trimmed his bushes and raked his yard for two hours. The second bought and shared ice cream treats with the residents of a retirement community in town. The third group visited hospitalized church members. The fourth group went around the community and sang Christmas carols to homebound members, causing one woman to declare that this was the warmest Christmas she could remember.

When the fifth group started to tell the others what they had done, the youth group let out a massive groan. They had gone to the pastor of the hated Shively Baptist Church and asked the pastor how they could help his church. He told them that there was a widow in the congregation who needed help with her yard. So they went and did her yard work for two hours. When they finished, the woman thanked them profusely and said, “You’ve confirmed what I’ve always believed. That the youth of the Shively Baptist Church are the best around, and so much better than those of the Shively Christian Church!”

After hearing that, the youth pastor said, “Well, I hope you straightened her out and told her that you were from the Shively Christian Church.” The youth said, “No. We didn’t really think it mattered” (adapted from “It Really Didn’t Matter,” by Charles Colson, found in Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, 1997).

Looking at each group, what do you think their motivation was for doing a good deed? Do you think they did they good deeds because that’s what was expected? Their parents expected it, the youth pastor expected it, perhaps even God expected it. So maybe they did their deeds merely to meet others’ expectations. Or do you think they did their good deeds because that’s what everyone else was doing? Peer pressure is an powerful thing. Perhaps most were doing good deeds to fit in. Do you think they did their good deeds to get in their “good deed hours” as a way of eventually getting into heaven? A lot of people seem to think that we need to live our lives filling out a “good deed timecard” that we can hand to St. Peter or St. Paul, or whomever is staffing the pearly gates when we die. We think that if we get enough good deeds on the timecard, we’ll be let in. So, what do you think the motivation was of the last group? Personally, I think that they are motivated because they were living la vida Diego.

What’s living la vida Diego? It’s Spanish for “living the life of James.” What does that mean? It means living life the way James spells it out in our passage. He says, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 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? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” The last group let their deeds flow from their faith. What makes the story compelling is that somewhere deep inside we know that the last group had the right motivation.



James, in saying to us that our faith has to be demonstrated in our deeds, is really just building on what Paul taught. Unfortunately, a problem arises when we compare what James and Paul said about faith and deeds. A lot of people say that Paul and James were at odds. Their belief in this comes from reading what Paul said in Romans 3:28, “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” Many Christians read this and think that what Paul is saying is that we are saved not by our deeds, but by our faith, or at least by grace that we receive through our faith. In fact, he is saying that, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about what we do. They misunderstand what Paul is saying and so say that our deeds are empty, and that all that matters is the quality of our faith. They say this because they only hear one-half of the story. James gives the other half. I think he would agree with Paul, but then he would say that if we truly have faith it would be reflected in our deeds. The reason? True faith isn’t content to remain internal. It wants to flow through life, and it does so by sharing God’s love in tangible deeds.

Paul and James are really saying the same thing. They are saying what John Calvin taught: good deeds are a response, not a responsibility or a commodity. Dwell on that sentence for a bit: good deeds are a response, not a responsibility or a commodity. What does this mean? It means first that truly good deeds aren’t a commodity, something we do to purchase something else. Many people believe that we should do good deeds in order to get into heaven. That’s treating deeds like a commodity with the thought that if we do enough good deeds we can purchase entrance into heaven. Both James and Paul would recoil at that idea. Both believed that faith-based deeds are not done to purchase any kind of reward, whether that may be entrance to getting into heaven, or getting someone to do something good for us.

Good deeds also aren’t a responsibility. What that means is that the true Christian doesn’t do good deeds simply because we are told to do so and because someone has told us that this is what responsible Christians do. We do them for another reason. We do them as a response to God’s grace. In other words, the more mature we become, the more we recognize how much grace God’s blessed us in our lives. We recognize that even if our lives our tough, God created us, gave us life, gave us friends and family, and has given us opportunities to share in God’s blessings. Good deeds become a response to this grace—a way of saying “thank you” to God and to share so much of what we’ve had with others.

Here’s what I think: deeds that aren’t motivated by faith are really just selfish deeds, but faith that doesn’t lead to selfless deeds is really just empty faith. This is the crux of Christianity. Don’t say you’re a Christian. Show me that you’re a Christian. Don’t say that you have faith. Show that you have faith. What are your acts of faith? What are your acts of love?

The whole question is this. You say you’re a good Christian? Where’s the evidence? This whole discussion reminds me so much of a story I heard years ago. There was a man, many years ago, who was known as “Starfish Man.” Why? Because every morning he walked along the same five-mile strip of beach, and as he walked he would pick up the starfish that had been washed ashore the previous night and throw them back into the ocean. Eventually he became infamous. One day, a reporter showed up on the beach to interview him. She asked him questions about his life, his work, and more. Finally, she asked him why he cared so much about throwing starfish back into the ocean. He said that he did it because he didn’t like to see starfish suffer. She responded, “Yeah, but don’t you know it really doesn’t make a difference because the starfish will just be washed ashore the next night?” He smiled at her, reached down, picked up a starfish, and threw it Frisbee-style back into the sea. Then he said, “Made a difference to that one, didn’t it?”

The Starfish man presented us with a model. It’s not so much a matter of how good our deed is. What matters is the love and faith behind it. I think James and Paul present us with a paradox related to this story: It’s not so much what you do as it is why you do it; and It’s not so much why you do it as that you do it. What this means is that the moment you get caught up with whether what you do matters, let it go and just act out of faith and love. But the moment you get caught up in saying that you have faith and love and that’s enough, you need to let your faith free and do something good.

We are called to have a deep faith, but also one that is manifested in our deeds. Here are some questions I want you to reflect on:

  1. To what extent is your life filled with good, caring, loving, giving, compassionate deeds?
  2. To what extent do you base your deeds on responding to God’s good deeds in your life?
  3. To what extent is your life a conduit of grace so that God’s goodness can flow through you?

Amen.
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