Readings (click here for full text of the readings):
   Isaiah 50:4-9; Psalm 116; James 2:1-5, 8-10, 14-18; Mark 8:27-38

Today is the second of four Sundays when we read from the book of James, which is a rare opportunity. In our lectionary, the only other times we hear from James are on Thanksgiving and one lonely Sunday in Advent in Year A. Perhaps that’s intentional, because James is a difficult book.  Last week he told us that if we “think [we]’re religious, and don’t bridle [our] tongues but deceive [our] hearts, [our] religion is worthless.”  And this week he attacks our natural human tendency to play favorites, and to be attracted to beauty. He tells us that it’s not enough to say that we love our neighbor or have nice feelings in our hearts – we have to practice what we preach. We have to treat the dirty, smelly, rather scary-looking guy with the same honor and respect that we show to the dapper, suave man in the Italian suit. “But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.   For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” (2:9-10)

James’s expectations are high, and sometimes they even seem to fly in the face of other, more famous books of the Bible. James very clearly states that “faith, if it hath not works, is dead.” (2:17) And yet on the other hand we have St. Paul, saying pretty much the exact opposite in Romans: “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” (4:5)
 

While some of us might try to follow both Paul and James – keeping them in dramatic tension – others have clearly chosen one over the other. Martin Luther, for instance, in his Preface to the New Testament from back in 1522, said this:

St. John’s Gospel and his first Epistle, St. Paul’s Epistles, especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and St. Peter’s first Epistle are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and good for you to know … St. James’s Epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to them; for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it.

But we’re talking about much more than having a personal favorite among the books of the Bible. We’re talking about chucking a fair bit of the Bible out the window because it seems to conflict with stuff we like better.  And this trend certainly didn’t start with Luther; quite the contrary, perhaps the most famous – and infamous – biblical editor was a guy named Marcion who lived a century after Jesus. Marcion was so taken up with the freedom of salvation that he discarded huge chunks of the Bible. The Old Testament he threw out completely, but it was so focused on the law. Of the gospels, only Luke’s was sufficiently free of legalism to be acceptable, and Marcion even went through that gospel and deleted all the references to the Old Testament. He also tossed out all the books in the New Testament that didn’t claim to be written by Paul. Out went Hebrews, 1^st and 2^nd Peter, 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd John, Revelation, and, of course, the book of James. [1]

Marcion, obviously, was deluded. He had an idea of who God was and he wasn’t going to let the Bible dissuade him from it.  He snipped a bit here, and cast a blind eye there, and ended up with a prominent place in the Heretics’ Hall of Shame.

But what of Luther, who’s quite a hero to the Church?  After all, if he hadn’t nailed his 95 Theses to that door in Wittenburg, Germany, in 1517, the Church of England might not have had the chutzpah to declare its independence thirty years later.  And now we Episcopalians are  back in full communion with the Lutherans, and it only took us 350 years to get there.  How do we deal with the fact that Luther didn’t mince any words when he wrote: “Many sweat to reconcile St. Paul and St. James, but in vain. ‘Faith justifies’ and ‘faith does not justify’ contradict each other flatly. If any one can harmonize them I will give him my doctor’s hood and let him call me a fool.”

Part of it, surely had to do with the times in which he lived. Luther was a devout Roman Catholic monk who was horrified by what was going on in the pre-Reformation church: people were trying to buy their way into heaven without even pretending to have a shred of faith, and the church was offering a divine stamp of approval, for the right price.  When Luther discovered the works of Paul, he was transformed.  Self-righteous acts aren’t going to get you anywhere, Paul said, turning conventional wisdom on its ear; only faith will save you. St. Paul was Luther’s weapon against the sin of legalism.

James was working in different circumstances.  In his time many of the people tended to take Paul too far.  Glad to be free of the constraints of the law, they went wild.  If all you needed was faith, then you didn’t have to do anything.  As long as you believed, you were fine. Giving food to the hungry was all well and good, but if you didn’t get around to it, you still had faith, which was all that mattered, right?  James wrote his own epistle to combat the sin of antinomianism, literally the denial of the law, the opposite of legalism.

And what of us, today? We’ve seen Marcion’s error, and surely we aren’t as extreme, or at least as obvious, as he was. We don’t tear out the parts of the Bible we don’t like.  And we all seek to find our balance between Paul and James, and being a bit more Protestant than Catholic, we probably err toward Paul. We acknowledge that good works are important, but we fall back on the famous mantra of the Reformers – accepted by Luther and the Germans as well as Cranmer and the English – salvation by faith alone.

Our more evangelical brothers and sisters are bolder than we are on this point.  They’ll read James in a pinch, but it’s Paul who sets there hearts afire. I know this first-hand because back in my more conservative days I went through a program called “Evangelism Explosion,” or E.E., for short. We were taught to ask people two questions, as a means of figuring out if they were saved or not. The first question is: “If you were to die tonight, are you sure you’ll go to heaven?” And the second is: “If God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into My Heaven?’ what would you say?”  Based on the answers to those questions, E.E. has you take the person being questioned through a series of Bible verses until they come to a point, hopefully, where they accept Jesus Christ, and come to faith.

On the surface, this seems very Pauline. Not much of James here.  No talk of works, at least not yet. That may come later, if at all.  The important thing is faith.

But I would argue that such an approach really is about works. By making faith into something that we have to have, something we have to do, we turn it into works of the spirit, if not works of the body. Luther surely would have recognized that, because we’ve compressed the great Reformation cry and, by doing so, distorted it. We talk about salvation by faith, but the Reformers nearly five hundred years ago were calling out for salvation by grace, through faith. 

Now that might seem like a minor distinction.  After all, what difference does throwing in a mention of grace really make?  It makes all the difference.  Because without it, salvation is ours because of something we do: we believe.  Granted, it’s not as concrete as being as courteous to the homeless guy who just wandered in looking for a public bathroom as we would be to the rich guy who’s looking to make a big donation. But it’s still something that we do; that we have control over. And it’s precisely because of that sense of control that we can answer the questions posed by Evangelism Explosion. 

“Yes, I know I’m going to heaven.”

“Why should God let me in? Because I have faith.”

In the end, I’m saying it’s not up to God. I did my part. I believed what I was supposed to believe. Now, God, you better do your part, and open those pearly gates and show me to my reserved seat. It’s as if I passed the test of faith, and because of that I earned a coupon for one ticket to heaven.  And so I can go up to God with my coupon in hand, and He’s obligated to redeem it for me, and let me in.

That’s not what Luther and the Reformers had in mind.  In fact, that’s exactly what they went blue in the face preaching against.  They realized that salvation isn’t up to us.  We can’t force God to do anything, either by what we do or what we believe. Salvation is up to God, and the most faithful answer to that second question – “Why should [God] let you into [His] Heaven?” – is silence. Because it’s not about us; it’s about God. And the only reason that God would let us into His Heaven is His infinite love for His children, regardless of what we do or say or believe.  God’s love isn’t dependent on anything human.

That’s precisely why we have to remember that salvation comes by grace.  The only reason that salvation is even an option to a flawed and rebellious people like ourselves is because God loves us so much.  It’s by the grace of God that salvation is offered to every single one of us, every second of every day. He puts it under our pillow and on the kitchen table and in the glove compartment. It’s everywhere, and all we need to do is reach out for it. 

That’s where faith comes in. Faith isn’t a coupon that forces God’s hand. It’s the willingness to reach out for the gift that’s been sitting there all along, but we never had eyes to see it.  Or maybe we didn’t have the courage to believe that it could be ours. Or maybe we were so busy trusting in ourselves – our works, our beliefs – that we didn’t pay much attention to it. But finally we realized that faith has precious little to do with the person who claims to have it, and a whole lot to do with God. 

We’re saved not because of our faith; but because the God that we dare to believe in is more wonderful and gracious than we could ever hope for.  By His infinite grace He’s offered us salvation and deliverance and a home for all eternity. And we grasp that ever-present gift through faith: faith in His love; and faith that He won’t ever ask us why He should let us into His heaven because He already knows the answer.  Because He’s God. Because He made heaven for us. Because it would never cross His mind to ask such a question, because the very fact that we’re standing there in front of Him, listening to Him, is enough.  Because once we get that far, we’ll be able to see the gift that’s been there all along, and we’ll finally reach out for it, touch it, and know we’re home.

[1] It should be noted that Marcion also threw out three of the four letters classically attributed to Paul which were written to individuals (i.e., 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, although he kept Philemon).

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