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