A Sermon on James 1:17-27

By Don Tuttle  

First Christian Church, Corpus Christi, Texas

Preached September 3, 2000

A few years ago, I was visiting with a salesman when I discovered we had a mutual friend. When the salesman asked how I knew Frank, I told him that he was a member of our congregation, in fact that he had once served on staff. At first the salesman looked surprised, then he laughed.

"Frank’s a Christian?" he asked. "I would never have guessed that. "Now I didn’t bother to ask why. I’d just rather not know. But it was clear from the salesman’s reaction that what Frank professed on Sunday was not being translated into the way in which he carried himself through the week.

Now I doubt seriously that Frank is unique. In fact, he may be more the norm than the exception.

Gustav Nelson is a leader in the Presbyterian Church. In his book Service is the Point, Nelson notes that Christians in congregations like ours—mainline congregations—are extremely poor at translating our faith into daily lives. For example, he says that less than 10 percent of those who gather each week for worship typically take part in any specific Christian service like feeding the homeless or working to help the poor or visiting the shut-in. Even in so-called "high commitment" churches where tithing, participation in Bible study and service to the community are supposedly required, less than 50 percent of the people actually move beyond worship to ministry.My own experience would suggest that many Christians can tell you what Jesus means to them as a comfort in times of difficult or as a hope in times of despair, but very, very few are able to articulate how their belief shapes their actions. Most of us would have hard time explaining how our faith influences how we shop or related to co-workers or vote in elections. In short, we have disconnected what we believe from what we practice.

And those outside the church recognize that difference. In Friday’s newspaper, a columnist from Miami took issue with a grass-roots movement to offer unofficial prayers before high school football games. He asked, "Where is the grassroots movement to shelter the homeless, care for those with AIDS and visit nursing homes?" While we can easily dismiss his criticism as ignorant of the tremendous ministries the church has in these areas, we still must recognize that he is playing off of a perceived difference between what we say we believe and what we do each day. Our witness is hampered by the difference between what we say on Sunday and do on Monday. Of course the church in this century is not the first to deal with this issue. It has been an issue for as long as the church has existed. In fact, it was one of the issue that the author of the Letter of James dealt.

Bo Reicke is a biblical scholar. In his commentary on the Letter of James, Reicke says that one of James’ primary concerns is the low-level of commitment within the church of his day. He says that people were coming to worship, listening to the preaching, professing faith in Jesus as Lord, yet never allowing the faith to impact their daily lives. He says they were "satisfied with a formal confession of the...faith, [but unprepared] to assume responsibility for its wider implications and certainly [did] not expect to carry these out in daily life." In other words, they were not connecting what they believed with how they behaved.

The question is "Why?" "Why is there this disconnect between the two?"

James suggests it is because we have deceived ourselves. Normally we hear this part of James and it says: Be doers of the word and not merely hearers. But listen to what it really says: "Be doers of the word," he writes, "not merely hearers who deceive themselves."

Did you hear what he said? People who are hearers are people who have deceived themselves. How? By thinking that the Christian faith is a head trip, by believing that by simply coming to worship, hearing a sermon, pondering a thought or two, saying "amen," and going home that we have fulfilled our calling. We are deceived by the assumption that the sum of our faith is expressed in hearing and believing the Good News.

True faith, James realizes, goes beyond the intellectual to the physical. It doesn’t let us sit passively, it makes us active participants in God’s work. It doesn’t simply stir our emotions; it puts us in motion. True faith is as much about doing the Gospel as believing it. James goes on in this section of his letter to make that point. He doesn’t define pure and undefiled religion as having a clearly orthodox understanding of the Trinity. It is not defined by a detailed understanding of the substitutionary theory of atonement. It is not defined by the number of times one comes to church or takes communion. "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this, he says, "to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

Of course, what James is saying is not new. It is what Jesus taught?

In our tradition, we love to point to Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ as the fundamental conviction by which we live. Confessing Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, has long been the way we measure one’s faithfulness. But what did Jesus say was the measure of one’s faithfulness? In the parable of the sheep and goats, he said it was not just a matter of what we think but a matter of what we do. Those who entered into God’s blessing were welcomed because they had done the Gospel. They had fed the hungry, clothed the naked, sheltered the homeless, and visit the sick and imprisoned. They had not only heard the Good News. They did the Good News.And you know as well as I do that being a doer of the word is essential. Think about the people that we admire, the people that we lift us as examples of true faithfulness. Some of us are drawn to the great minds of the past--Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquina, John Calvin, Paul Tillich. But in reality the true saints, the folks to whom we turn not for information but inspiration, are people who translate what the believe into concrete actions.

They are folks like Beatriz Salazar. One day she noticed a young boy scavenging for food in a dumpster near her home. The mother of five was appalled by that thought. She knew she was called to do something, so she began a local food drive to feed just 12 children who lived in her apartments. Ten years later, her efforts have grown into a full-time summer program called "Bea’s Kids." Businesses and churches have joined her effort and today they provide 150 Dallas and Fort Worth area children with free lunches, reading classes and Bible lessons. She is a doer of the word. And so is ‘the shoe lady." A decade again, Ranya Kelly was search for some packing boxes when she discovered 500 pairs of new shoes in a dumpster behind a department store in Colorado. They were supposedly out of style, not longer worth selling. But Kelly saw the potential for ministry. She started The Redistribution Center. That non-profit organization that has distributed more than $11 million worth of clothes, including 600,000 pairs of shoes, to children, the elderly and others in need. And then there’s Lucy Smith. The 61-year-old could spend her time with her seven grandchildren. But instead she spends eight hours a day in Dallas and Fort Worth jails. It is all part of a faith-based literacy program she launched. Today she oversees 44 tutors teaching 60 inmates per week how to read. So successful has the program been that state prison officials are encouraging the development of other faith-based programs. Lucy Smith is a doer of the word!

Nearly 500 years ago, the great church reformer Martin Luther dismissed the letter of James as a "straw epistle." Later reformers wanted to exclude it from the Bible. And just recently a writer dismissed it as calling for "works righteousness."

Looking at this letter, it should come as no surprise that people of critical of it. The reason is quite simple--James refuses to feed the deception that the Christian faith is just a matter for the mind. He challenges us to give more than lip service to the Christ we so adore. He calls us to a lifestyle rooted in our faith. And that is hard for us to hear. But he promises that those who move beyond hearing to doing, those who not only hear the Gospel but do it, will indeed be people blessed by God.