As many of you know, my mother is coming to visit me in a couple of weeks. As a matter of fact, she'll be playing for the Sunday service on the 23rd. And guess what? I'm going to finish emptying out my boxes before she arrives. This is because I know my mother, and I know she'll be here. Because I really believe that she'll do what she says, and that she has already bought her tickets, I am going to act on my knowledge and belief.
What we believe determines how we act.
It's not what we say we believe, but what we actually believe, that governs our behavior. For instance, I may say I believe that exercise is good for me. And I actually do believe that. But since I'm not following through on what I say I believe, I must be acting on another, stronger belief - one that I may not want to acknowledge.
There is only one reason that belief isn't followed by action.
And that is that another, stronger belief is getting in the way.
The story that is always told to illustrate the principle that true faith results in action is the one about the great tightrope walker, Blondin. At one time during his long and illustrious career, he crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope. He did this several times before the awestruck audience, and then he turned to them and asked, "How many believe I can walk across the falls pushing a wheelbarrow?" People cheered loudly — they were sure the great Blondin could do it. Then he asked, "How many believe I can push a wheelbarrow across the tightrope with a man sitting in it?" Again, the cheers almost drowned out the sound of the falls. Blondin then pointed to one of the most enthusiastic men in the audience, and said, "Okay, you get into the wheelbarrow." The man quickly disappeared into the crowd.
Why didn't he accept the challenge? Either he really didn't believe that Blondin could do it, or the fleeting fame it would have brought him wasn't worth the risk.
We hold a lot of conflicting beliefs, beliefs that fight against each other every time we have to make a decision. Here's a simple example. Two proverbs, that is, wise sayings that help guide us through life, give diametrically opposite advice. How many of you have heard, the saying "Look before you leap" ? Here's the second one: "He who hesitates is lost."
Which one should you follow?
The anser is, "it depends." That's not a whole lot of help, is it. But - like most important decisions in life - whose advice to listen to takes discernment, and an understanding of the context.
Think about it. If you were speaking to a bungee jumper, you might want to remind them to "Look before you leap." But if you're dithering about whether or not to snap up the bargain of a lifetime, you might need to remind yourself that "He who hesitates is lost." It also depends on the person. Some people need to be held back, others need to be urged forward. And in either case, whatever you decide depends on how badly you want whatever it is you're thinking about pursuing.
There seems to be a similar contradiction in this passage. The Apostle Paul goes to great pains to emphasize that we are not saved by works, but by faith alone, writing to the Ephesians, "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, so that no one may boast." [Eph 2:8-9] Martin Luther didn't like this book of the Bible, this letter from James, with its emphasis on right action. And that is because his whole life had been transformed through an encounter with the Paul's letter to the Romans, where he quotes Habbakuk, saying "the just shall live by faith." [Hab 2:4, Rom 1:17] In fact, Luther called the letter "a right strawy epistle."
So when James seems to say says that we are justified by our works, on the surface it looks as though James and Paul are at odds with how they view the teachings of Jesus.
But remember that whenever Paul talks about the law, he is talking about what it takes to get right with God, that is, what do you have to do to be considered one of God's people. There were a lot of very sincere and faithful people who believed that you had to be circumcised and eat kosher. Paul had a really uphill climb to convince them otherwise, and in the end the Jewish leaders disowned the followers of Christ because they couldn't abandon their centuries old identification of godliness with specific external symbols.
James doesn't have that problem. His congregation - the home church in Jerusalem - was Jewish. His problem was that people thought that just saying the words "Jesus is Lord" was all they needed to do. Their problem was that they weren't acting like it.
Remember what I said at the beginning - that true belief results in action, unless some other belief is standing in the way. Now, first of all, James starts out by dismissing the first option - that there is no faith at all. Notice that he doesn't say ". . .if someone has faith. . ." , but ". . .if someone SAYS he has faith. . ." There is a huge difference between having faith and saying you have faith. Later on in the life of the church there were a lot of people who converted for social reasons, from peer pressure to the emperor's edicts to seeing no other route to upper mobility except through the church. But that's not the case here. There's no real advantage to falsely claiming to believe that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah.
So what we have is something called intellectual assent. James illustrates what that means with a pretty vivid illustration: " You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe-- and shudder." [v. 19] Unfortunately, a lot of people think that this kind of faith is enough to be getting on with. A recent Harris poll showed that 82% of the adults in this country say they believe in God. But does it have any effect on their behavior?
The difference between what we say we believe, and how we behave, is the difference between "functional belief" and "formal belief." Formal belief is how we answer pollsters' questions. Functional belief is how we make our daily decisions.
Functional belief is what James calls "true faith." That is, a belief that is strong enough to influence our behavior.
A man named Bruce Olson went to Colombia many years ago as a missionary to the headhunters in the far southern jungle, near the border with Brazil. The book that tells his story is Bruchko, the name the Indians called him since they couldn't wrap their tongues around "Bruce." It's an incredible tale of danger and grace, adventure and miracles. He wasn't trained, had no denominational or organizational backup, just a profound sense that he had been called to this work by God. One of the hardest things he had to do was communicate with them before they decided to have him for dinner. Literally. The process of learning their language was also extremely difficult, as many of the words and concepts he needed to explain who Jesus was and what he had done simply didn't appear to exist in their culture. And one of those ideas Bruce couldn't seem to get across to them was "faith." But after a lot of false starts - and funny stories - he finally found it. It was the word they used to describe hooking their hammocks to the poles that held up the roofs of their huts. It was risking their lives on a conviction of real safety.
Where do you hook your hammock?
If you don't think the pole will support your hammock, you may hook the hammock up, but will you really climb into it and go to sleep? Maybe you hook it up to look like everyone else, but after the lights are out, you go back to sleeping on the floor.
If you really believe that what Jesus is teaching is true, you will act. Unless, of course, you don't want what he offers. Or unless you want something else more. What did those rich people in James' church really believe, the ones who say to their poor and hungry brothers and sisters, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill, and yet ... do not supply their bodily needs." [v. 16] Think about it. Did they believe they had no obligation to help? Did they believe the poor deserved to be cold and hungry? Did they think it was someone else's problem? Did they think that if they helped one person, they would be surrounded by hordes of beggars? Did they believe that it was more important to save for a rainy day than to honor Christ's teaching?
That is why James responds to the one who says, "You have faith and I have works" with "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith." Faith that isn't visible on the outside, in a person's actions and speech, in their priorities and their habits, is not only empty, it is dead. James uses the word "barren," which simply means that no life flows from such faith. Remember last week when we talked about Jesus calling the Pharisees "unmarked graves, [which] people walk over ... without realizing it." [Lk 11:44] They look alive on the outside, but are dead on the inside. They have not received the life-giving fountain of living water fro the Holy Spirit, they are not powered and motivated by the love which gives life, which only God can supply. And that is the kind of behavior James is talking about.
Jesus illustrated his point in the previous chapter of Luke with a story that is very familiar to us, but was shocking to the first people who heard it. You may remember that he was talking one day to a one of the Jewish legal experts, a man steeped in the Law of Moses, a devoutly religious man, no doubt a good church member. But he asked Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus replied, "Well, you know God's law, what do you think it says?" And the man responded, quoting Leviticus, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself. [Lev 19:18] And Jesus said, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." [Lk 10:28] But somehow the scribe knows this isn't enough, he's still missing something. He has faith, he believes, so he asks Jesus, "who is my neighbor?" And Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan. You probably remember that a priest and a Levite, both religious leaders, passed by the injured man. The one man who did something when he saw the need was that he was a Samaritan, someone that the young lawyer Jesus is speaking with wouldn't have given the time of day. The first two claimed to be men of faith, but the Samaritan was the one who showed that he had faith.
Well, the first two undoubtedly did have faith. But it was faith in the wrong thing. They believed that doing all the right religious things was what God wanted. They also believed that God's purity would be polluted if they touched a corpse, which the injured man might very well become. But the Samaritan believed - or at least we can assume that he did - that giving life was more important than staying clean.
On the other hand, the priest and the Levite should both have known better. Hadn't God told them often enough that religious observance wasn't the most important thing? "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. . . . learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." [Is 1:11,17]
We, too, should know better. In fact, we do know better. But even people who know better often do not act on what they say they believe, because other things seem to be more important. People with this kind of faith know the church talk, they may even pray eloquently and know where all the right verses can be found. But they don't do their faith.
And there's the rub. James asks, "Can faith [that doesn't result in action] save you?" [v. 14] This is a rhetorical question that begs the answer, "No of course not!" Because it is dead faith. It is faith that has no life, faith that doesn't bring forth life, faith that doesn't stem from a vital connection to the living God. And God, as Jesus reminds us in another context,"is God not of the dead, but of the living." [Mt 22:32]
In the ancient world, someone who came upon a person who appeared to be dead would hold a mirror up under the person's nose. If a mist appeared on the mirror, then they knew the person was still breathing, there was still life in the body. If the mirror stayed clear, they knew the body was dead. In much the same way, James puts the mirror of God's Word under our noses. If the marks of works appear, then faith is alive. However, if no marks of good works appear, then our faith is barren, without fruit.
Remember, though, that it's not just "good works" that demonstrate faith. It is obedience in all walks of life. The illustration that James uses is Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. None of us would recognize that as the kind of action Jesus is calling us to! And yet - it was reckoned to him as righteousness. God asked Abraham to do something hard, and because Abraham believed that God was good, that God would keep his promises, that God was worth listening to, in fact that God was God, Abraham was called not only righteous, but a friend of God.
Christians today have much the same track record as non-Christians in things like cohabitation, divorce, abortion, shady business practices, domestic violence, and cheating in school. What kind of faith is that? Where do your actions not match your words? Where do your choices show that - at some level - you don't really believe that God's rules for living are good, and that you will benefit from following them even when it inconveniences you. Is it money or sex or time? None of us is perfect - even those of us who have living faith. Let the Holy Spirit blow new life into you. Let your faith get a real workout. It'll be good for you.
