James 1:17-27

13 Pentecost / Proper 17 / Year B

3 September 2006

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Wareham, Massachusetts

Preached by The Rev. David Fredrickson

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. (James 1:22-24)

The letter of James is one of the anomalies of the New Testament. If you read this short book all the way through, you will notice that there is a certain theological shallowness to James that you just don’t find with either Paul or John, for example. In the fourth century, St. Eusebius of Caesarea indicated in some of his writings, that there were influential people in the early church that did not believe that this epistle belonged in the New Testament at all. Martin Luther in the early sixteenth century referred to James as “that wretched book.” In his preface to the New Testament written in 1522, he referred to James as the “epistle of straw.” He later mellowed on this point and retracted his comment in the 1545 edition.

So why all the fuss throughout the centuries about the epistle of James? It comes down to the issue of salvation. Are Christian people saved by faith in the grace of God alone, or are we saved by our ethical behavior, by what we do and how we act? Luther was a staunch defender of Paul’s idea that we are justified, that is, saved, by the grace of God and not by the works of the law. “James, on the other hand, does not oppose justification by works to justification by faith. He does not accept Paul’s posing of the alternatives. Rather, he regards the performance of works of the law, along with faith, as indispensable for justification [or salvation].”ⁱ So James writes, “…Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror, for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” (James 1:22-24) James is a moral essay, a manual for Christian behavior; it is not a theological treatise. In fact, it’s not even really an epistle, but rather a gathering of ideas about how Christian people are to act.

I think the church of our day, the whole church, needs to put away these old prejudices and begin again and pay close attention to James. I think we at Good Shepherd especially need to pay attention to this misunderstood epistle. James was writing to the Christian that were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. These Christian people were undergoing some pretty heinous persecution and apostasy was occurring throughout the church. That is, Christians were relenting to the persecution and publicly forsaking their belief in Jesus in order to keep from being martyred. So James get to it, right at the beginning of his epistle. In verse two of chapter one James says, “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4) Persecution and apostasy are not the issues that you and I face on a daily basis. We here in 20^th century America, have a different sort of problem. We wealthy Western Christians have perhaps a more deadly issue that is keeping us from experiencing the fullness of God’s presence and grace. It is not physical harm that we need to worry about, but rather apathy, indifference, and guilt. These team up to keep us away from the church, to keep us away from being both hearers and doers of the word. We are all gripped by the materialism that our society says is so important, so gripped in fact that we kill ourselves to have those things that we believe we are entitled to. It has gotten so difficult that many of us have to kill ourselves just to make ends meet. By the time Sunday comes around, if we don’t have to work, we are so bloody tired that it becomes very difficult to fully engage in the faith community.

Now I am not trying to induce guilt here; that is not helpful for anyone because we are all in this together. The issue here is our identity. I love the way James uses the metaphor of the mirror. ‘For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror, for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. When you look into the mirror, what do you see? Who are you really? Given all the competing voices telling us who we should be and what we should be about, when we look in the mirror it is difficult to get a clear picture. So difficult in fact that at the end of the day it is not easy to remember who we are. We are a lot of different people wrapped into one. But at the end of the day, you and I have to ask ourselves, what is at the core of who I are and what do I need to add and subtract from my life so that I can live into the fullness of my true identity? For James, the law functions like a mirror to show us who we truly are. If we measure our lives by how much time we invest in our relationship with God, by how much time we spend actually doing what God is calling us to do as opposed to the what the world is calling us to do, it becomes clear that most of us don’t even measure our lives by that standard; myself included.

Folks, this won’t take care of itself. All of us are going to come face to face with God some day and we are going to have to give an accounting for our lives. This is the mirror that James wants us to look into, because that is the mirror that tells us the truth about who we really are. We are all called to be doers of the word. We are all called to be actively involved in each others lives to be the beacon of light in an otherwise dark world.

In Jesus name; Amen