“Yielding All Things: Doing What it says on the Package”
James 2:14-26
When I go to toy stores with Owen, I often marvel at how little things have changed since I was a kid.
Alongside all the miracles of modern toy science are dozens of things that I remember seeing on store shelves 40 years ago or more, and they look almost exactly the same—except for the price.
Slinkies.
Rubix Cubes.
Ant Farms.
Silly Putty.
Nerf Balls.
Do you remember Sea Monkeys?
I vividly remember the ads in comic books promising: “A Bowlful of Happiness—Instant Pets.”
“Just add water—that’s all!”
“So Eager to please, they can be trained!”
And the pictures on the ads are hilarious.
They show these strange humanlike sea creatures with arms, legs, and smiling faces.
The female ones even wear a bow on one of their tentacles.
I mean, what child wouldn’t want these kinds of pets?
I was never able to talk my parents into springing for some Sea Monkeys, but I remember a friend who had ordered some.
And to say that they weren’t what was promised on the package is an understatement.
For one thing, they look nothing like the happy family of smiling Sea Monkeys on the advertisements.
They are actually an itsy, bitsy translucent variety of brine shrimp that are pretty boring to watch—if you can spot them at all—as they swim around in their little tanks.
In the real world, brine shrimp are often sold as food for other fish, which says something about not only their size but also their mental capacity.
Compared to even the most ordinary tropical fish, Sea Monkeys are not terribly impressive pets.
What a disappointment they have been for, who knows how many, young children over the years.
In our Scripture Passage for this morning, James is writing to the early Church.
And he’s very concerned about a problem that’s arising and is still with us today.
It’s people who call themselves Christian but do not live like the Christ they are called to follow and emulate.
And it’s very disappointing for folks, kind of like those crazy Sea Monkeys.
What you’re told you are going to see is not what you get.
Ghandhi, after having been hurt by his experiences with Christians during apartheid, while he was in South Africa said, “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians.
Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
And that’s how the folks James was writing too were acting as well.
Their Christianity was not a rich, loving trust in the living God, but rather an empty affirmation, like a dead body without a spirit.
We can see this in verse 19.
“You believe there is one God. Good!” James writes rather sarcastically, “Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”
“You believe there is one God, or God is one.”
That was or still is at the heart of Jewish daily prayer: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and mind, and soul and strength.”
And then Jesus added what James, in Chapter 2:8, calls the “royal law” which is “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
What James is saying is simply believing, “God is one,” doesn’t get us very far if it doesn’t make a difference in our lives.
After all, as James points out, the demons know all this too, and it doesn’t do them any good; it just scares them out of their minds!
So, it’s clear that what James means by faith is a transforming faith.
It’s a faith that believes Jesus is both our Savior and our Lord and that we can depend on Him and Him alone to forgive us and set us free from the law of sin and death.
It’s a faith that falls in love with Jesus because of this.
And that love for Jesus manifests itself in a life-giving love for others.
As Paul writes in Galatians 5:6: “What matters” is “faith working through love.”
Enrico Caruso, the first recording star in history who sold over a million records in 1902, walked into a bank one day near the Metropolitan Opera in New York to cash a check.
When the teller saw Enrico’s name on the check he didn’t believe it was him.
And the more Enrico tried to convince the teller that he was who he said he was, the more the teller became convinced that Enrico was a fraud.
Finally, Enrico, placed one hand on his chest and began to sing.
A moment or two into the song the teller started to count out the money.
Enrico’s identity was proven by his works—his great ability to sing.
And our identity is proven by our works: our ability to love like Jesus loves.
And the world knows this; the people outside the church are aware of this.
They can tell when we are doing what Jesus has called us to do.
I remember at East Ridge United Methodist Church, once we got the Food Pantry really up and going, the greatest compliment I ever heard was from a person standing in line for food.
She said, “It’s so nice to see actually Christians doing what they say they believe in.”
And there can be no doubt that Jesus has called us to take care of one another—to have a great heart for the poor.
James, in Chapter 1, says: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…”
What does that mean?
It means we are called to take care of the weak and vulnerable; the poor.
When James was written, the orphans and the widows were some of the weakest, poorest and most vulnerable people of all.
They could not work.
They had no family to take care of them.
They had no status.
And so, Jesus called His Church to love and take care of them.
Who are the weak and vulnerable people in our society, in our city, in our town?
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is to take care of these folks “in their distress.”
Because, what good is it if we claim to have faith, but that faith does not move us to loving action?
“Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food,” James says in our Scripture lesson for this morning, “If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?”
“In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action is dead.”
It’s been suggested that “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action,” isn’t just dead—it doesn’t exist at all.
And that is because Christian faith is a self-surrender of our whole selves to God, and that can’t possibly be dead.
Christian faith is a living faith.
It is something that God has created.
It is something that God offers us as a gift.
And God doesn’t offer us dead, good for nothing things.
We are told in Ephesians Chapter 2, “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is a gift of God—not from works, so that no one can boast.
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
We Christians are to do the good works or live the kind of lives God created us to live.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that Christians are perfect—we are far from it.
But it does mean that we are on a journey with Jesus.
We are in a living relationship.
We are changing, day by day…
…moment by moment.
I love a quote that is attributed to a famous British philosopher named Helen Wodehouse.
She said, “We think we must climb a certain height of goodness before we can reach God.
But He says not ‘At the end of the way you may find me’; He says rather, ‘I am the Way; I am the road under your feet, the road that begins just as low down as you happen to be.’
If we are in a hole the Way begins in the hole.
The moment we set our face in the same direction as His, we are walking with God.”
Are you walking with God?
Am I?
Jesus meets us where ever we are; offering us the gift of faith--living faith that changes us and leads us into a life of loving action.
As an example, James makes reference to two people from the Old Testament.
First, he mentions Abraham, the father of the Israelite people, and the father of all who believe.
Abraham had believed that God would do what God had promised, and Abraham was prepared to put that faith into practice.
The second person James mentions is Rahab.
And that would have been a shock to a lot of people, especially to anyone who might think that God plays favorites and that a person must be morally upright before God can love and use that person.
And that’s because Rahab was pagan prostitute.
She was living in the city of Jericho at the same time when the Israelites were on their way to the promised land.
But her faith was real because it led her to action.
And Rahab, James says, was “considered righteous.”
There can be no doubt that supposed “respectability” and faith don’t necessarily go hand in hand.
How many of us would look down upon someone like Rahab?
We are called to be like Jesus Who surrounded Himself with the outcasts of the world, those who were on the lowest rung of the social and moral pecking order as well as those who were high and mighty.
And thus, the church is to be anything but self-righteous, “better than,” judgmental, or snobby.
How many folks have been turned off by church folk who have treated them as “less than”?
That’s why a key to living the Christian life is humility, and a real and genuine understanding of the grace and mercy of God at work in our lives.
In 1st Corinthians 1:26 it says, “Remember what you were when you were called…”
Do you remember?
Do I?
In 2 Corinthians 13:5, Paul writes: “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves.
Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?”
Two questions for this examination are “Do you trust anything other than Jesus Christ for your salvation?
With all you know about yourself, do you trust in Christ alone?”
And the second question relates directly to James Chapter 2: “Do you love Jesus?”
And while, none of us love Jesus perfectly, “Do we love Jesus at all?”
And how do we know whether or not we love Jesus?
Well, Jesus answered this question in John Chapter 14: “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching…Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching.”
And what does Jesus’ teaching boil down to?
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
And this love feeds the hungry, gives drink to the thirsty, welcomes the stranger, clothes the poor, takes care of the sick and visits those in prison.
Jesus says, “Whenever you have done this for someone else, you have done this for me.”
You will notice in your bulletins for this morning, a commitment card for the year 2020.
It is what we have been praying about all month…
…What will I give to the Church next year?
What is my commitment?
How does my faith translate into action when it comes to money?
If you do not yet tithe; and tithing means giving ten percent of your income back to God, please ask God to enable you to take the leap of faith tithing requires.
If you currently do tithe, please continue to do so, perhaps increase your giving by twenty-five, fifty or one hundred dollars a month.
Ask God for the faith to do this.
The difference this will make in the life of this church is astronomical.
On Sunday, November 10, we will all be asked to turn in these sheets—what our monetary commitment to God’s Church is for the coming year.
Our Finance Team needs these commitment cards so that they can plan the budget for 2020.
God wants to do a lot of great things through the active faith of Red Bank United Methodist Church this coming year.
And we are all called to be a part of this.
As James says, true faith in Christ translates into loving action; it does what it says on the package.
I’ve read that the Sea Monkey craze has continued.
I’ve been told that Sea Monkeys are becoming popular again.
They have sprung back to life, so to speak, as a retro fad.
They are a bit more expensive, but you can get a plastic tank, water purifier, egg “crystals,” food and accessories—including a handbook that’s main purpose is to convince you to buy still more supplies to keep your new pets alive as long as possible.
Sea Monkeys come with a two-year “growth guarantee,” but owners rarely keep their interest in keeping these creatures alive for more than a month or so.
Sea Monkeys make great pet food, but unlike what is promised they do not make great pets.
In contrast, faith in Christ grows and grows and grows the more we exercise it; as a matter of fact, it grows right into eternity.
And that is guaranteed.
Praise God.
Amen.
