Alive with Faith and Good Works

 Jesu Juva

James 2:1-10, 14-18                                   

September 8, 2024

Proper 18B               

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Today’s epistle reading is two chunks from James chapter two, verses 1-10, and also verses 14-18.  You should always be a little suspicious when the lectionary cuts, snips, and edits like that.  It doesn’t make you a conspiracy theorist to wonder: What could it be in verses 11, 12, and 13 that they don’t want us to hear? Hmmmm?  After all, if there’s any book of the Bible where slicing, dicing, and editing can land you in big trouble, it’s the book of James.

        James is great.  James is clarifying.  James cuts to the chase, bringing faith and good works to the forefront.  James essentially asks this question:  Are you dead?  Or are you alive?  So, what about you:  Are you dead?  Or are you alive?  And if, as I suspect, you are claiming to be alive (and not dead), how can you prove that right now?  What evidence can you show to support your aliveness?  Might I suggest something simple?  Breathe in. . . . and breathe out.  Inhale . . . . and exhale.  Dead bodies and dead lungs can’t do that.  What goes in and out of your lungs is unmistakable evidence that you—you are not dead.

        But if there’s no breathing going on, well, then you’ve got trouble.  If there’s no breathing going on, the body is dead (or very nearly so).  And, likewise, dear Christian, if there are no good works going on, faith is dead.  Works are to faith as breathing is to the body.  Good works are like breathing for the faithful.  Good works are as natural and ordinary as the breathing done by your body.  St. James frames it this way:  Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

        Luther (and Lutherans) have always taught a lively balance of faith and good works in the Christian life.  Luther famously wrote in his preface to the book of Romans:  Faith is a living, busy, active, mighty thing.  It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly.  It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them.  Whoever does not do such works, however, is an unbeliever.

        When it comes to good works, we go wrong in many ways.  We go off the rails, first of all, when we imagine that works are only good works in God’s eyes when they are extraordinary and spectacular—when you write the check to fund the new addition at children’s hospital, or when you rescue that person who has collapsed on the train tracks, just seconds before the train speeds by, and the media descends and the cameras click and the microphones are in your face.  Most of us will never be in that position. 

        Thankfully, good works in God’s eyes are most often the very ordinary, routine things that we do in faith.  There’s nothing more ordinary or routine than breathing.  Simple, sacrificial acts of service—anything done in faith for the good of my neighbor—those are the good works God places in our path in every hour of the day.

        We likewise go off the rails when we try to make faith and good works a purely spiritual matter.  When we keep everything spiritual and abstract and invisible—when we keep faith and good works carefully confined to our hearts—well, when that happens, St. James calls us back down to earth.

        In today’s reading James takes us to a very concrete scenario where faith and works are completely out of whack.  To judge other people with evil thoughts—to show partiality and favoritism in the church based upon a person’s wealth or wardrobe—live like that, James says, and “you are committing sin and [you] are convicted by the law as transgressors.”  If your idea of good works is just to tell the poor, hungry, shivering soul, “Go in peace, stay warm. Have a blessed day!” then you have utterly failed.

        But we have to be careful here.  Don’t let James push you into the ditch on the other side of the road.  Nothing poisons a life of good works more quickly than when we begin to measure and count according to the Law.  A Christian’s life is sabotaged by thinking that only faith is a gift from God; while works originate with me.  Justification is God’s business; but sanctification—holy living—good works—that’s all up to me.  God did His part; and now I must do my part.  But parts, fractions, measuring and counting—it all diminishes God’s gift and God’s power and the magnitude of the miracle God has worked in you.

        The Christian life is not a recipe:  one part faith and one part works; mix well.  One part God and one part me.  The Christian life is ALL JESUS.  He’s the one who died to make you alive.  He’s the One who has breathed into you His own life-giving breath.  He’s the giver of every good and perfect gift.  In Him you are justified; in Him you are sanctified.  Jesus is the object of faith; and Jesus is the ultimate author of every good work.  From Jesus it all flows to you as gift.  He has done all things well!

        St. James and St. Paul are two sides of the same coin.  There’s really no daylight between them.  For St. Paul makes this amazing claim about us and our good works: [We are] created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.  Each day you are simply walking down a path where God has strewn and sown a harvest of good works (like walking through the apple orchard in September).  You were created for this!  You were designed for this!  Good trees bear good fruit.  Both faith and good works are gifts to us.  You have faith?  How come?  The Lord Jesus forgave me all my sins and I am baptized.  You have works?  How come?  The Lord gave them to me—placed them in my path—and caused me to delight in His will.

        We can only go wrong when we play faith and works against each other—when we forget that both are gifts to us—that both come to us by way of our Lord’s physical body, which hung on the cross for our sins; and by way of the water and blood that flowed from His side—which, today, enliven us from the font of baptism and from the sacrament of the altar.

        We can always refuse the gift.  Sadly.  We can always ignore that poor, needy, disadvantaged person whom God places in our path—or in our pew.  We can always try to create and choose our own works, instead of the works God has created and chosen for us, and given.  But right about then we begin to notice our breathing.  You never notice your breathing until there’s something wrong with it—until fluid and congestion are building up.

        When that happens breathe in . . . breathe out.  Repent of your pride.  And receive again and again the whole gift—the whole package that Jesus Christ has won for you.  You are not dead; but alive—alive with faith and with good works.

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.