"yielding All Things: Doing What It Says On The Package"

“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.