Sermon for CATM - “Vital Faith”
Recently my father had a medical procedure to correct a problem that he had with his heart. It was called an angioplasty.
The flow of blood to his heart was 80% restricted and a heart attack was just waiting to happen. So the doctor inserted a catheter that transported a small balloon to the area that was restricted.
A tiny amount of air was inserted into the balloon causing the plaque to spread out and unclogging the artery. Then a shunt was inserted to hold open the vein and prevent further clogging.
Without this procedure, my father would have died due to lack of oxygen getting to his heart. With it, my dad has been given a fresh chance at life. The vein that was 80% clogged is now 0% clogged.
And during the procedure, which carried with it a small chance of failure and immediate death, the doctors and nurses were busy monitoring my father’s vital signs. They wanted to make sure that his pulse and his blood pressure remained at a healthy level.
Good vital signs point to life. Bad vital signs point to danger or death. That’s how it is in any situation when you don’t know the well-being of someone. That’s how you check to see if someone is alive. You check for vital signs.
You check their pulse. You find out if the person is breathing. You may check for blood pressure. You might ask if the person can move their fingers or toes. You may even holler out the person’s name.
Now, the Bible often calls us to examine our faith, to see if it is healthy or if it needs some intervention. There’s a danger in taking anything for granted, let alone our relationship with God. James gives us a real gift in this passage. He challenges us to live an authentic faith, a connected faith.
James was the half-brother of Jesus. Traditionally regarded as an “unusually good man”, he was given the nickname “James the Just” by the church. James was said to have had calluses on his knees from spending so much time in prayer.
The book of James is a pastoral letter concerning the attitudes and actions affecting the spiritual
life of the church.
James’ book has been controversial in the church. I don’t want to go too far in this direction, but I want to highlight that James and the Apostle Paul sometimes seem to be at odds. Paul wrote in Romans 3:28: “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.” Paul says that a person is made right with God (just as if I’d never sinned), by faith. It is a cornerstone of Christianity that if we are to have a relationship with God, it must be based on faith or trust in Him.
And yet James says this:
Jas 2:21 Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was
made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.
They may seem to be at odds, but in reality both James and Paul are looking at the same thing from two different sides of the coin. Paul is saying “You can’t work your way to heaven, it takes faith to please God.” James is saying, “You have to have faith to please God, but the only faith that is pleasing to God is faith that does something.”
Let’s spend a little bit of time digging into what James has to say. The passage breaks down like this:
- vv. 14-19 James describes Dead Faith
- vv. 20-26 James points to Dynamic Faith
1. Dead Faith
Dead faith is the kind that is nothing more than words on your lips. It is a statement of faith
without a lifestyle of faith. Sometimes it’s called cheap grace. Sometimes its referred to as a kind
of easy-believism.
Basically it faith without teeth. It’s saying I agree to something, I believe something is true, and because of this, I’m alright thank you very much. God requires nothing more, so the myth goes, than nodding my head at a certain way of believing.
What James is warning us about here is that that kind of faith is no faith at all because it fails to
transform. Faith that sits around watching the world go by without ever engaging it. You’ve heard of couch potatoes. James is talking about ‘faith’ potatoes.
Those who believe in God, who believe the gospel but who never really mature. Those who perhaps even go to church (this doesn’t apply to us, of course) but never grow beyond themselves to a lifestyle that can be identified by loving generosity and action.
William Booth was the founder of the Salvation Army. He said, “Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again——until they can scarcely distinguish which is the one and which is the other”.
John Wesley, a great British preacher, said this: "Do all the good you can, by all the means
you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can."
Now again, James says in Vv 15-16: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?
Now, wouldn’t you think James cut the fella a little slack just for noticing?
How many people do we walk by every day who are in need and we don’t even notice them? You’d think that being that little bit more observant would earn some points, wouldn’t you?
Actually James seems to imply that to notice and then to respond inadequately is perhaps worse than being blind to the need in the first place. That is perhaps a whole different problem.
And then James makes it clear he has no patience for platitudes, for cliches that mimic good intentions. To say to a person in real need, “"Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," is to miss the point, and to miss an opportunity.
What opportunity?
Some of us are driven people. Some of us used to be driven, or are driven by nature but are learning to slow down and smell the roses. We live in a city that moves at a maddening pace. We have jobs that demand all our energy and focus. For some of us, it’s not about work. It’s about a pace of life, a kind of living that is full to the brim with stuff...stuff to do, stuff to watch on t.v., people to please, computer games to play, shopping to get done.
When I was growing up I was always reading about the promise of technology...that in the future
technology would do most of the work and people would have more time to just enjoy life, to enjoy their children and others.
Do you think technology has done that for us? Or has technology allowed us to escape further from each other. Some spend so much time on the computer in a ‘virtual world’ that they lose touch with the real world. That they in fact prefer the seemingly tidier world of the Internet to the reality out here in the city.
When we’re not part of the real world, or when we are living our lives at a maddening pace, we are going to miss opportunities....opportunities for caring and loving and building relationship.
I don’t know what it was back in the day of James that caused people to sometimes pass by or offer useless ‘words of comfort’ to people in need instead of real help. But apparently it was an issue back then as it is now.
James says that to offer no real help in such a way, to offer words without action is like faith with
no action. James doesn’t say such faith is lacking. He doesn’t say such faith goes part of the way or
is incomplete. He says “it’s dead!”
So the first vital sign of faith, then, or faith’s first sign of life, is to be accompanied by action.
Like William Booth says, faith and action, or faith and works, are like two legs working together,
moving forward toward a purpose.
God has a loving word to us today: Don’t be content with dead faith. There is so much more for us. Faith that has zero impact on our lifestyle is not saving faith, it is not the kind of faith that Jesus died so that we could have.
Faith that does not turn our hearts toward others is dead faith. Faith that stimulates generosity,
kindness, love...the fruit of the Spirit in other words, is the kind of faith God wants us to have.
That is dynamic faith.
Let’s talk a bit more about this. Where else in Scripture do we learn about a dynamic, living faith?
Isaiah 58: 6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with
shelter-- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Matthew 25:34 "Then the King will say to those on his right, ’Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 40 "The King will reply, ’I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
Jesus then goes on to talk about those who failed to respond in these ways. He indicates strongly that because what they say they believe and how they act consistently fail to line up, their relationship with God is compromised. Ultimately, because they have not expressed their faith in loving action, they have not known Jesus.
The vital signs of living faith are, apparently, small, seemingly insignificant actions that in the
end connect what we say we believe with how we act.
[Interactive]
Why does clothing the naked please God? What is it about visiting the sick and those in prison that honours God? Sharing food...sharing meals with the hungry? What does Jesus mean when He says that doing these things for others is doing them for Him? I notice that nowhere does Jesus talk about those who are good at theology. Jesus doesn’t honour the talkers or the thinkers. Notice in our culture we are really impressed by people that talk well or that have doctorates.
We honour actors (they are the new nobility)...people who pretend to do things, more than we honour those who really spend their lives engaged with people. Are we all twisted around or what? God honours none of that.
Why is that good news? Well, very few people get to be movie stars. Very few people get doctorates. Very few people are great speakers. But all of us are capable of loving others. All of us can share our food with the hungry.
All of us have clothes that we can give to the needy. All of us have time we can volunteer to serve others. The good news is that the things that truly honour God are do-able by each of us.
Here’s a test of a vital sign of your faith: What are you doing as a regular part of your life right now that helps at least one other person? If you can name one thing, that’s a sign of health. If you can name more than one thing, maybe even a whole bunch of things, I’d venture to guess that there are at least two great things going on in your life.
First, there’s a really good chance that you feel pretty connected to God compared to when you
weren’t doing anything for others. Not that everything is rosy, but you have a better awareness of
God’s goodness that you did before. And loving God is less just an idea than it is something you’re excited about.
Second, I bet you have more friends including more Christian friends than you use to. That’s the other, huge benefit of having a living faith that connects with others. Your world is bigger. There are more people who know about you, who care about you and who pray for you than there use to be.
James challenges us to demonstrate our faith not by word, but by what we do. I want to ask you to close your eyes for a moment. Can you think of one person you know of that has a need that you can do something for? Picture that person’s face. Think of that one need that one person you know has. Now pray about how you can start to fill that need.
Father God we lift up to you this one person and their need. We ask that you would move in us to act. We ask that you would forgive us for the times we have not acted when we knew we should. And we ask that
you would create in us a responsiveness to need, so that we would grow in our faith and that others
would be blessed by our loving action. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
