Not Dead Yet ~ James 2:14-26 (a series on James)

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.18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. ¹⁹ You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. ²⁰ You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? ²¹ Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? ²² You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. ²³ And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” he was called God’s friend. ²⁴ You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. ²⁵ In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? ²⁶ As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

We are in our fourth week of our sermon series on James – the first book of the New Testament written by the half-brother of Jesus. We’ve heard about how God is a giver of wisdom and every good gift under heaven, that God cares for the poor and marginal and expects us to care for them as well. We’ve heard that we are to read the Bible with a set of dispositions like humility, patience and gentleness, imagining that, like a mirror that we look into, it seeks to name our sins rather than expose the sins of others. And we learned last week that all of this should lead us to not discriminating against others but practicing mercy. But today – today is what many consider the heart of James. And by “heart” I mean that which gives us heart burn and heart-ache – the relationship of faith to works.

          1.    Don’t be a poser (even demons know better).

A poser refers to a person who pretends to be something they are not, often to be popular or impress others, but who has no

interest or understanding of the values or philosophy of the group. It comes often out of subcultures like skate boarding where someone tries to dress or talk a certain way to seem like they skateboard but they actually don’t.

Posers, according to James,

• ·       like to express their piety aloud rather than quietly act it out (vss. 14, 16)

• ·       want to appear nice (vs. 16)

• ·       like to argue about theology but can’t admit that they are wrong (vs. 18) – this can be confusing with the translation of vs. 18-19 ¹⁸ But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. ¹⁹ You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. A better one, which captures the argument of James’ opponent, is to have: “My opponent says, “One has faith and one has works.” [But James responds], “Show me your faith apart from works and I will you my faith by my works.”

• ·       know the Bible and say they believe it but never shudder - admit it’s hard or challenging (vs. 19)

The challenge is that churches are “poser places.” We subtly communicate that you need to pretend in order to fit in. The biggest obstacle to not being a poser is not simply to “just do it” but sometimes acknowledging that you don’t, or don’t want to, or that you need some help. The demons believe, James tells us, and shudder. As I have been a pastor, I’ve learned that rather than an “amen” sometimes perhaps we too should shudder. Rather than confessing Biblical truths as posers perhaps we should be honest and shake our heads because faith is hard, difficult, and daunting and we often just simply don’t do it. You are as sick as the secrets you keep and being a poser may help you fit in but is soul killing, nonetheless.

In the movie Jerry Maguire, the main character is a fast-talking Sport’s agent who can seemingly talk his way out of anything until he finally has an epiphany that he is not acting on the promises that he often makes – essentially being a hypocrite. So he writes a manifesto which speaks of new business practices (acting on what’s best for the client, having fewer clients, etc.) and is summarily fired. As he tries to get his clients to go with him, however, he continues to fall back on his old ways – promising things he can’t deliver. His last hope is a client who finally calls Jerry out for his untruths, telling him that he doesn’t believe him, and makes him repeatedly

shout over the phone, “Show me the money!”

James doesn’t want nice words. He says, “show me” in vs. 18, show me the money! What’s the money?  For James the “money” is “works of love,” the royal law, vss. 1:25, 27; 2:8. Belief that practices Leviticus 19:18, “love of neighbor.”  In contrast to his opponent, who without works simply cannot prove his faith, James will show his faith by love. Faith for James cannot be reduced to creedal orthodoxy (that’s why the Covenant says we are non-creedal – not because creeds don’t matter, it’s because, James says, they don’t necessarily create love); faith for James produces love towards the poor and marginalized, or it is not saving faith.

          2.    Faith takes work.

It’s not uncommon for people to sometimes to pit faith and works against one another or to imagine that there is a battle between them often leaving either belief or works bruised and bloodied. But James isn’t suggesting that the two are at odds but “work together” [synergei] (vs. 22) demonstrating and supporting one another. John Calvin said, “Faith alone justifies, but the faith which justifies is not alone.” For James, expressions of love and faith are intrinsic to one another. No one confuses a wedding for a marriage – vows are hardly the whole story. They are important, and we might wonder why someone who was truly committed wouldn’t want to make them but marriage is evidenced by how two work and live together. Likewise, a journey of faith demands the daily decisions of a life time. That means that faith is hard because it involves belief that must be acted on. Faith takes risks and can even fail but that’s a good thing – to fail, you see, means that you’re trying. Notice that James for all his hard-hitting style doesn’t use the word “perfect” but the word “complete” or “whole” in vs. 22. It’s what faith is meant to do.

So on the one hand faith involves an ethical orientation to help others, particularly the the poor (e.g. the brother spoken of is not “without clothes” but actually “naked” the text says). But more than simply ethics, faith without works is compared to a body without breath, vs. 26. Without works faith is no faith at all any more than a corpse is a person. So faith both does AND is.

Faith without works, in other words, doesn’t work, James says. Translators say “useless” in vs. 20 but they’re robbing you of James’ clever word play. The word literally is “non-working” –arge combines [a] “non” and [erga] “working” to be both a play on words.

There’s an important truth here for those who find themselves in that place – where faith doesn’t seem to be working, perhaps even terminal or dead. But faith can be resuscitated. Often the temptation is to try and shore up our beliefs but James offer a different remedy – service of others. According to James, the best response to doubt or faithlessness is often not some extended philosophical discussion, not more faith per se, but for the doubter to reach out to others in their need, and doing so consciously in the name of Christ. In our woundedness, our doubt can be healed best when we tend to other’s wounds.
The famous Catholic writer, Flannery O’Connor once corresponded with a college student who expressed his struggle with doubt. She told the student how the agnostic Robert Bridges, struggling with deep doubts about God, wrote to his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet/Jesuit priest. Manley responded with a two-word reply, “Give alms.” Manley was saying that God and faith are to be experienced in love (in the sense of love for the divine image in human beings). Flannery writes, “Don’t get so entangled with intellectual difficulties that you fail to look for God in this way.”

          3.    What you do determines what you believe.

James ends our passage with a quick impromptu Bible study. What motivates James’ vision of faith is what he learned from Jesus – that loving is more revealing of belief than orthodoxy – what one scholar calls the Jesus Creed. Jesus’ spirituality was summarized by two commands – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength (Deut. 6, called the Shema) and Leviticus 19:18, the “royal law,” “works of love,” “love your neighbor as yourself. These two, Jesus said, summarize the whole of the law. And funny enough – they summarize James’ two Biblical examples.

The story of Abraham who demonstrates a willingness to sacrifice his very future for love of God (which itself was an act of trust). Abraham loved God with his whole heart.

The story of Rahab who welcomes strangers, spies, enemies

caring for their safety. She loved them as herself.

Both, James argues, are people of faith

who demonstrate such faith through their behavior. But in the Jesus Creed and James’ example, faith is more than what you do. It’s what you do for others: God and neighbor. And those kinds of acts change you, change your perspective. Faith is not a moral calculation that necessarily helps you or makes you look good, or proper, or nice. Rahab was hardly a moral icon, but demonstrated a faith that is available to all. I

resonate with that.

In the Monty Python movie, The Holy Grail, (I know I’m on a movie kick this Sunday). A man pushing a cart is moving through a medieval village yelling, “Bring out your dead!” Apart from the humor, however, this was a common experience during the time of the bubonic plague in order to let people know that they could dispose of dead bodies to be burned. Anyone who had a friend or relative that had recently died would literally “bring out their dead” and throw the person on top of the pile. In the movie, a man carries a lifeless old man and is about to throw him on the cart when the man looks up and says, “I’m not dead yet.” And then a hilarious conversation ensues in which the elderly man says things like, “I want to go for a walk.”, and “I feel happy.” Maybe you’re here and you are tempted to throw your faith on a cart for the dead.

Don’t do it. Let your faith go for a walk. Let it exercise its limbs, let it run like a child on a playground. Let your faith do as it was meant to – love God and help others. Faith will be faith, James says, it should run around, get into trouble, act out as a body fully alive. That’s what faith is meant to do.