James 2:1-17
September 8
David A. Davis
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A parent has to learn early on how best to respond when a child hits their head, has a fall, or gets a scrape. It is that balance between necessary and appropriate love and care and not overreacting so as to further frighten the young one already in tears.
When I was young and on the receiving end of my parent’s aid and response to me getting banged up, my father’s response was pretty consistent. To this day, I can hear my father’s voice in my head. “Run it out! Run it out!” Occasionally it was “rub some dirt on it,” but “run it out” was his go-to. Whether I took a knockout in the yard, fell on my bike, got hit by a pitch in Little League, or was slow to get up on the football field, my father would yell, “Run it out!” Where at home with just the family and a few friends or at a game with lots of parents or in a Friday Night Lights crowd of a few thousand, I could hear his voice, “Run it out!” To be honest, I am not sure that is the best parenting response but I confess to hearing myself say it to my children more than once over the years. Truth is it became something of a verbal meme in the extended family. Now with a span of four generations, it is mostly said in jest and understood as a word of encouragement. It is deeply ingrained. A sort of non-musical example of that earworm of a song that never goes away in your head. “Run it out!”
Here in the epistle of James, the biblical author provides a phrase now ingrained, or perhaps one that ought to be ingrained in the church and in the life of discipleship. It is here at the end of chapter two. “Faith without works is dead.”
“Brothers and sisters,” James begins the chapter, “do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” He goes on to describe the reality of classism, power, and privilege so deeply rooted in humanity forever that the reader, the church, you and I really can’t bat an eye. “What good is it, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?” Well, actually, James, yes, yes it can. “For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God not the result of works..” The Apostle Paul, Ephesians 2:8. But James is just getting started. “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 no supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead”
And you and I, along with generations of theologians and the church in every generation start to squirm. Somewhere, the reformer Martin Luther shakes his head no and raises his hand. Salvation can’t be earned. Grace alone. Faith alone. James doesn’t stop. “Someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” But what about the prison guard in the Book of Acts? He fell on his knees before Paul and Silas, asking “What must I do to be saved? “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.” Acts 16:31
James doesn’t stop for a breath. He points a finger into the chest of what would become the theological tradition. “You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren?” He tells of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham’s faith, in James’s words, “was brought to completion by the works.” He tells of Rahab whose works were evident as she welcomed strangers and sent them out by another road. “For just as the body, without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.”
Faith without works is dead. Faith without works is dead. The Epistle of James and a mic drop kind of phrase. James and his hot take. You can’t get away from it. Like irritating dinner guests who don’t read the room and drop the topic of conversation. James never lets it go away. The quote hangs in the air waiting for the response. The response of discipleship. The response of your life. It doesn’t seem to matter who says it, or where you hear it, or when it happens. Once you hear it, it never goes away. Faith without works is dead. Whether you hear it from a co-worker who loves to toss digs at the church writ large, from a man sitting at the intersection with a handwritten sign, or your kid who came home fired up from a great conversation at youth group. Faith without works is dead.
Douglas Brinkley’s biography of Jimmy Carter focused on his life after leaving the White House. Brinkley tells that sometime in 1984 the former president spent a week on a Habitat for Humanity site in New York. At a press conference, he stood alongside the other volunteers covered with sweat, dirt, and soot. Asked to sum up his week-long effort, President Carter offered a simple conclusion that some may not have heard as a reference to the practice of his Christian faith. He said, “Talking about doing is one thing. Doing is something else.” At that point in that news conference somewhere in the kingdom of heaven, James said “Yes”. “Talking about doing is one thing. Doing is something else.” Yes a reference to Jimmy Carter’s life of discipleship and perhaps a lasting allusion to the perils of Christian faith and empty words. Faith without works is dead.
If you are person of faith who struggles to understand and so live as Jesus would have us live, if you are struck sometimes at how hard it is to live and be as Christian in the world, in the nation these days, if your head spins and your heart churns when you find yourself yet again pondering the genuine need of hurting people, if you shake your head wondering how on earth in 2024 kids in our community are starting going back to school and some of them go to school hungry day by day, if you ever find yourself overcome with weariness as you hold the gifts you have to offer in one hand and you try to grasp the suffering of the world in the other, if you find yourself lamenting deep down how often in the name of Jesus is invoked to reflect an interpretation, a policy, an opinion so contrary to the gospel that it makes your head explode, if you believe that all that we say and do when we are in this room empowers each one of us to help to make the world out there more like what God intends, then cling to these words from James not as some kind of theological conundrum but as words of encouragement. Faith without works is dead.
Faith without works is dead. You can’t get away from it because it really does matter. The way we live out our discipleship. What we do out there in the world and in here in the community of faith. The actions we take or don’t take. The decisions we make pretty much every day. Our ethics in the workplace. How we raise our kids. How we treat others. How we help others. How we spend our time and money and talent. How we behave when away from our parents, away from home. How often do we offer a kind word or display patience when waiting in line, speak up for someone who has been wronged, or smile at a server who is clearly having a bad day? Because faith without works is dead.
The decisions we make when the curtain closes in the voting booth. How we act and live with those we love most and those we don’t know but try to love. The example you set for teenagers around the house. What you do to welcome a new student at school or break the cycle of harmful talk about others in your grade or stand for the classmate who is out there on the fringe. How you wield your power and privilege in the board room, at a sales meeting, on the trading floor, in the classroom. How you choose to advocate for those pretty much the rest of the world labels as other or worse. It really does matter because faith without works is dead.
Rehabbing a house, marching for justice and ceasefire and peace, or just waiting in line. Faith without works is dead. We can go down the street to the theological seminary and argue the theology regarding faith and works until Jesus comes again, but you can’t explain it away because faith without works is dead. You can work to thread the needle when it comes to James, Paul, and Jesus, but you can’t explain it all away because faith without works is dead.”
Peter Gomes served as Plummer Professor of Christin Morals and Minister of Memorial Chapel at Harvard for a generation. He was one of my mentors in preaching. Peter told me one day of a conversation he had with a former president of the university in the president’s office. It was pretty well known around campus that the two did not get along all that well. In Harvard Yard, Memorial Church sits in a very prominent place directly opposite the main library. It is the backdrop for commencement as well. The president could see the church out his window. In this conversation, the president said to Professor Gomes., “I wish that blasted church was sitting right there in the middle of campus.” To which Peter Gomes quickly responded, “But it is there, isn’t it.” That’s sort of how it is with James and all that hand ringing when trying to figure out the relationship of faith and works. When it comes to “Faith without works is dead,” well, it is there, isn’t it?
My father had another phrase in his life ingrained in him. He would never shout it and was pretty private about it. It was his own word of encouragement in his struggles for sobriety. Words he held onto to the end of his life. It’s a verse of scripture. I don’t know how it came to him, who shared it with him. My father was not a student of the bible and didn’t memorize scripture. But somewhere in his journey of discipleship, the words found him and he never let them go. “I can all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13.
It is the better pairing really; a better pairing for Faith without works is dead. Better than stirring the pot with Paul and Ephesians and being saved by grace. Because the only way to fathom the work of our faith is through the grace and promise of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. You and I are called to bear the very fruit of Christ in our lives and into the world. Faith without works is dead. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.