Ask About the Works
Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we replaced parts of the Bible with comic strips. While this passage is pretty straight-forward, sometimes it helps to imagine the passage in different ways. Charles Schulz made the perfect comic strip for James 2. It is from his famous Peanuts series.
Imagine Charlie Brown and Linus trudging through the snow. Snows is blowing all around. The characters are bundled up warmly in layers of hats, scarves, socks, and boots.
Then they find Snoopy. Snoopy does not have layers of clothes on, rather Snoopy is cold and shivering. The dog dish is empty. Snoopy looks miserable.
Then Charlie Brown says, “Be of good cheer, Snoopy.”
And, Linus, not to be out done by Chuck, says the same thing: “Yes, Snoopy, be of good cheer.”
Then the two boys move along headed to their sledding hill, snow fort, or wherever they may be headed. Snoopy, however, is left cold, hungry, and naked with a wonderfully quizzical look on his face, as if to say…[i]
Good cheer without works is dead.
Faith without works is dead.
If you don’t believe me, ask Snoopy.
* * *
Or we could ask a child named Tim.
I know it is Labor Day Weekend, but I am strangely reminded of Tim’s role in a Christmas pageant. (I shared this story a couple of years ago on Christmas Eve.)
Tim’s role for the pageant at the Riverside Church in New York City was to the play the innkeeper. He had one line to remember, which was to be spoken resoundingly: “There’s no room for you at the inn.”
In the Christmas story, Jesus’ parents looking for a place to stay and get turned away. Mary was probably a teenager, and she was unmarried and pregnant. She was especially vulnerable. This is what leads Jesus to be born in the manger—because there was no room in the inn.
Tim practiced his one line again and again. He had Down’s Syndrome and was eager to master his part. Here is the story, as it was told to me:
“Tim stood at the altar, bathrobe costume firmly belted over his broad stomach, as Mary and Joseph made their way down the center aisle. They approached him, said their lines as rehearsed, and waited for his reply. Tim’s parents, the pageant director, and the whole congregation almost leaned forward as if willing him to remember his line.
“There’s no room at the inn!” Tim boomed out, just as rehearsed. But then, as Mary and Joseph turned on cue to travel further, Tim suddenly yelled “Wait!” They turned back, startled, and looked at him in surprise.
“You can stay at my house!” he called.[ii]
Faith with “there is no room in the inn” is dead.
Faith with “you can stay at my house” is alive and well!
You can just ask Tim.
* * *
Or you can ask child advocate Marian Wright Edelman who first told me about Tim. I love her reflection on Tim’s improvised revisions to the Christmas pageant. She poses this question:
When will we individually and collectively as congregations, as communities, and as a nation resolve to stop saying to our children, “There’s no room at the inn”? When will we, like Tim, start saying, “You can stay at my house”?
James is asking the same question—seeing an ungodly favoritism towards the rich and powerful in the church. In our scripture reading today, it almost sounds like he is pounding on the table. He is asking the same question Tim asked to the early church.
We don’t know a lot of the context of the book of James, but sometimes it almost like we are reading a counter-point to the writings of Paul. Paul emphasizes that faith is always an act of God, and it is the faith of Jesus Christ that brings grace and acceptance before God. There is nothing we can do to earn it. But never does Paul say that this frees us from responding graciously and compassionately. In fact, he says our faith should bear much fruit in the world.
Some of the people who read Paul may not have made the same distinction. Maybe, they weren’t too thorough with understanding how we respond to grace. These people thought that faith had the sole power to save, but it didn’t manifest any human response. Faith could be forever internal. It didn’t have to bear fruit, and it freed you from any sense of responsibility.
James is refuting this sentiment.
This is the sentiment of Chuck and Linus wishing Snoopy “good cheer.” This is the innkeeper who says “there is no room in the inn” for a vulnerable, poor, pregnant teenager, but I’ll offer you thoughts and prayers.
A faith that doesn’t lead to works of mercy and compassion is mere pretense.
And I’m not so sure that the world need more religious pretense; the world is hungry for a faith that responds to human need.
* * *
Preacher Fred Craddock once described two absolutely essential things about the church: Jesus Christ, of course, and human need.
James makes it clear: The Church are people who supply bodily needs. James says, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”
Fred Craddock develops some of the tension between Jesus Christ and human needs. He says that the “place where the church dwells are the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots, the powerful and the powerless. There are those who are educated and those who are ignorant. There are those who believe and those who don’t believe. There are the high and the mighty and the lowly who nobody knows. In between is the Church of Jesus Christ. The church is called to help both the haves and the have nots, the powerful and the powerless. The church is to be the gospel for all these people. As long as you have Christ and as long as you have needs, you have the church.”[iii]
Then Fred tells a fascinating story about when he was reminded that the church is about Jesus Christ and human needs. It was when he was the keynote speaker at a conference Clemson University.
Just before he was about take the podium, the organizers invited a woman to open his keynote speech with a short devotional.
And I think it would be okay if we asked her whether or not faith without works is dead?
She was a plain, earnest young woman and as she approached the microphone he could see that she had a yellow legal pad that had a lot of writing on it. “Uh oh,” Craddock thought, “we’re here for the night.”
She spoke softly and in what he thought was a foreign language, and then another language, and then another one, and on and on it went. One sentence in sixty or seventy languages of the world . . . the one sentence said more perhaps than any other sentence in the world. When she got to German and Spanish and French, he began to recognize it. The last time she spoke it, she spoke it in English. She said, “Mommy, I’m hungry,” and then she sat down.
Faith without works is dead.
As the children of God, we live at the intersection of Jesus Christ and the needs of the world. Christian faith does not drive us away from material concerns, rather it demands that we face these needs and name them. Christian faith demands that we cry out to God, “Mommy, I’m hungry,” and Christian faith demands that we respond to that cry on behalf of Jesus Christ.
As the church of Jesus Christ, we can no longer say “there is no room in the inn.” We must say “you can stay here.”
* * *
Faith without works is dead. Faith never gets us off the hook for action. In fact, God demands that our faith be put into action into the world. Faith that is guarded; faith is kept to one’s self; faith that never takes risk; faith that is only internal; is no faith at all.
James has been a difficult book for some people in the church. Luther did not even want it included. But I wonder how James might have been heard a little differently if he drew more soon the narrative of Jesus—that is one of the unique aspects of the book of James. After all, everything James witnesses to the same truth as Jesus.
Jesus said “whenever you feed the hungry, clothe the poor, visit the prisoner, welcome the immigrant,” you are doing that to me because faith without works is dead.
But what would it look like if James had asked this question to Jesus?
I’m pretty sure he did because he is writing in faith, but he never makes it explicit. How would James make a rhetorical argument in making a comparison to the life of Christ?
This is my take for him: Jesus demonstrates that God’s own faithfulness and steadfast love moves towards humanity was not simply internal affection of God. Rather, it poured over into creation and manifest in our world. It action in the world. This faith wasn’t something that had to be kept to God. Instead, God’s own faith needed to demonstrate works. God joined us in the world as a child. God lived among us. God suffered in the hands of oppressors. God joined the impoverished and the marginalized. When James says that faith without works is dead, we could also clarify that some as what Paul once said “be imitators of Christ.”
You know, I bet you, if we asked Paul that’s what he would say: Be imitators of Christ. Otherwise, faith is dead.
* * *
Or we could ask John Calvin, who once said: “The point is that faith without love give no profit, indeed it is sheer loss.
Or we could ask Gregory the Great—a sixth century pope: “Show me you faith apart form your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.”
Or we could ask Eliza Doolittle in the music My Fair Lady, who says to her suitor: “Don’t talk of stars burning above, if you’re in love, show me!”[iv]
We could ask Snoopy, Tim, Marian Wright Edelman, Fred’s friend with the yellow legal pad, or even Jesus, but I really just want to ask you. Do you profess faith in a God that is merciful and compassionate? Then how can you not show that mercy and compassion in your own lives?
One without the other makes faith false and unconvincing.
Faith without works is dead.
And Jesus shows us how to make our faith alive.
Endnotes
[i] I was directed to this comic strip and the Fred Craddock story by John Buchanan’s sermon “Faith Is Something You Do,” preached September 7, 2003, at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, IL.
[ii] Marian Wright Edelman, “Two Christmas Eve Lessons, Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/two-christmas-eve-lessons_b_801125
[iii] Fred Craddock, Cherry Log Sermons, 87-88.
[iv] The Calvin, Gregory, and Doolittle quotes are from Martha L. Moore-Keish’s commentary on James from Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible.