Our Sunday Message

Faith that Works: James 1:17-27
Rev. Dr. Kenneth A. Corr
September 3, 2006
Thirteenth Sunday of Kingdomtide

  In his powerful autobiography, Antwone Fisher tells about growing up in a foster home of the Rev. and Mrs. Pickett. At one point in Antwone’s young life, the Rev. and Mrs. Pickett decided that the foster children in their charge needed to get religion. So, one night they took them to their storefront church and led them into a period of waiting to catch the Holy Ghost.
  After several hours of praying and waiting, Dwight, one of the foster children, got saved. Listen to Antwone’s description. “I heard a sudden rumbling, like a pile of chairs toppling over. Judging from Mizz Pickett’s euphoric shouts at Dwight, I understood that he had caught the Holy Ghost. . . . Meanwhile, Mizz Pickett was so excited, crying for joy, like a child was being born right in front of her. And for the Picketts, it probably was like that. Or, as they would say, being born again. They were so thrilled with Dwight’s catching the Ghost that they decided we would all pack up and go home. Kind of like they’d been out fishing and were satisfied even if they only got one fish.”1
It was all very confusing to Antwone. He adds, “Over the next weeks and months, I waited to see if getting saved made any noticeable changes in Dwight. To my eyes, he was the same, if not more agitated and fighting more of the time. This did nothing to change my confused, fearful feelings about going to church. So I began to tune out as much of it as I could.”2
  How many times has this experience been repeated in which the supposed faith and the lived life don’t match, causing some to tune Christians out as much as possible? Fortunately for Antwone, this was not his only experience with people of faith. One of the greatest influences in his life was a school teacher, Mrs. Profit. She was not like the other teachers he had known.
   · She was fair to all the children
   · She gave out encouragement, not just criticism
   · She was free with compliments
  All of this made a deep impression on Antwone. He concluded, “Something else that starts to affect me early on is my sense that Mrs. Profit is a woman of faith.”3
  The most powerful influences in our lives come from the people who “live” their faith. “Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”
  James did not just pick this proverb out of the air. Like a wise parent, there is some reason for giving this advice. We have to use our imagination to find the story.
  Maybe James was frustrated because the church was not living its faith with integrity. Their lives simply did not match their theology. That’s not hard to imagine. How many times have you had friends who have complained that the church is filled with hypocrites and can cite multiple examples?
  Maybe James was concerned that the church was growing in understanding, but not in service. That’s not hard to imagine. Lectures on the end-times prophecy are always more popular than days of community service.
  Maybe James was concerned because the church seemed to be stuck. They loved to listen and talk theology, but very few were growing in grace. That’s not hard to imagine. How many people have you known who have been in Sunday school for years, but have the same prejudices, the same unhealthy habits, and the same vices?
We don’t know the story that is behind James’ words. But ultimately, the story that matters is the story that we are living. After all, “This is God’s Word for us today.” What is my story? What is James saying to me? How does this apply to my life?
  I may not want to hear it, but James says that I only deceive myself when I hear, but don’t do. Of course, we don’t deceive God. And we certainly don’t deceive the world. The world outside this building doesn’t care about our theology. They just want to know whether faith really makes a difference.
  In the movie, “Jerry Maguire,” Rod Tidwell is a promising football player who says to his agent, Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money.” Is that what James is saying to us? Don’t tell me that God is love—show me. Don’t tell me that God is faithful—show me. Don’t tell me that God is real—show me. Show me your faith in God by the way that you experience grief, that you parent your children, that you parent your parents, that you process stress, that you face difficulty, that you care for the poor, that you deal with anxiety. Show me faith that works.4 That’s what James is demanding.
  In the quote that Ray chose for the cover of our worship guide, William Willimon, the Methodist educator and preacher says, “The world is quite right in judging the truth of the gospel on the basis of the sort of lives the gospel is able to produce.”
  And that is hard for me. It’s hard because the Bible challenges my assumptions, condemns my prejudices, corrects my ideas, exposes my shadow, and demands that I change. And sometimes, I just don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it because my assumptions, beliefs, ideas, and even my prejudices are comfortable. And when we don’t want to hear, we have an amazing ability to deceive ourselves, “like those who look at themselves in a mirror . . . and on going away, immediately forget what they were like.”
  I have told this story before, but it so well illustrates my meaning that I want to tell it again. Clarence Jordan created a racially integrated farming community in south Georgia called Koinonia Farms. His work was not well received. He certainly understood our ability to refuse to hear what we don’t want to hear.
  He wrote, “I think God had come to realize that even though he had made mankind with ears, man could no longer hear. Today men cannot hear. They are stone deaf . . . I had this to face many years ago when we went to Koinonia.
  “The little country church to which I belonged invited me one summer to hold a revival meeting. They had heard I had graduated from the Baptist Theological Cemetery—uh, Seminary. So I accepted, and I preached to those people and I preached the word of God in south Georgia, and I didn’t think that I would survive the ordeal, for when Jesus went back to his little home town to preach not a revival but just one youth sermon on Sunday morning they caught on to what he was saying before he even got to his closing point, and they took him out to the end of town to dash him over the hill. (That’s one of the big troubles about Jesus’ preaching: you can understand it). Well, I expected to be in that dilemma, but I wasn’t; much to my amazement, when I got through preaching, these dear ole deacons came by and said, ‘That’s a sweet talk.’ And I wondered where they were during that sermon! They again asked me to preach and again I tried to make it clear. I supplied for the pastor time and again, but somehow I could never make myself heard. But gradually, as Koinonia took shape and the word that had been preached to these people became flesh and they could see it, then they caught on. Not only was I not asked to preach to those people anymore, I was excommunicated, along with all the rest at Koinonia, from the membership of that church. At last the sermon had been delivered. Men can see but men find it difficult to hear.”5
  The protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, has a phrase that I like. Tillich says, “We are grasped by grace.”6 We don’t earn our salvation by works. Instead, we are grasped by God’s grace for works. We are grasped by God’s grace to become instruments of grace in the world. “Let them see your good works and glorify your father in heaven.”
In a few minutes, we will leave this place and go out into the world. What we do here makes little difference if it doesn’t change how we live out there. Now, go and be doers of the word.

1 Antwone Fisher, Finding Fish, p. 116.
2 Ibid., p. 117.
3 Ibid., p. 134.
4 Fred Craddock, Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year B, p. 396.
5 Clarence Jordan, The Substance of Faith, p. 32f.
6 Ed. F. Forrester Church, The Essential Tillich, p. 78.