Rally Sunday September 12, 2010 “Practical Religion” Reverend Michael D. Powell James 2:14-17, Matthew 22:34-40

In this morning’s Gospel lesson Jesus is confronted by an attorney, an “expert of the law.” This attorney, in typically legalistic fashion, wants to know which of the laws is the greatest. Jesus quotes the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This, he says, is the “great and first commandment.” “A second is like it,” he says, quoting Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus sums up his response to the lawyer by saying, “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

All this is well and good, but I’ve got a few questions about what it means, in really concrete, practical terms, for us to love our neighbors. We’re starting a new church year this morning, and at the potluck picnic following worship we’re going to be doing an exercise, kind of a dry run, asking one another questions about who we are and why we exist as a church, in order to practice for when we take those same questions out into the neighborhood on October 3^rd, which is World Communion Sunday. We’re calling it “The Listening Project,” and the question I want to raise this morning is, is there any chance, be honest now, that just saying “love your neighbor” is a little simplistic? Is there any chance at all that perhaps it’s a little too abstract, that it’s so generalized that it might not really mean anything?

Let’s get practical. We can “love our neighbor” in theory and not do a darn thing. In Luke’s version of this same story a man, seeking to justify himself, asked, “And who, exactly, is my neighbor?” He wanted a practical answer. So Jesus gave a very specific example. He told a story that begins: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers.” Do you recognize that? It’s the story of the Good Samaritan, about a man who was universally despised, and yet exemplified the highest ethical demands of the law and what it meant to truly love your neighbor. The thing is, when we start getting specific, there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t like the example we use. Who is our neighbor, and what does it mean to love them?

The Epistle today is from the Book of James, probably the most practical book in the Bible. James has been described as “One of the most contemporary books in the New Testament. [A book that] might have been written yesterday, [with] hardly a sentence in it which does not speak vividly and directly to today . . . preaching a religion of the most intensely practical character.” (1) After admonishing us not to show favoritism, James quotes Jesus, saying, “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

James tells a story about how we often show more attention to a rich person than to a poor person, and it’s so straightforward it hardly needs explanation. We all know what he’s talking about. The point is clear! But, let me give you a few more examples of practical religion from James: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,” [1:19] “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.” [1:22] “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceives their heart, their religion is worthless.” [1:26]

How could anyone not appreciate that practicality? Its authorship is even traditionally ascribed to the very brother of Jesus. But, it may surprise you to learn that not everyone appreciates the practicality of James. No less a spiritual giant than Martin Luther himself, the Father of the Protestant Reformation, actually despised the Book of James. He said there’s no way the brother of Jesus could have written it and that we’d be better off without it. He said it was an epistle “full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical.” He even considered it a dangerous book, because “it runs the risk of works righteousness.”

The passage that drove Luther absolutely nuts is chapter 2, verses 14-17: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” Sounds practical, doesn’t it?

Luther has two main objections: First and foremost, in his opinion, James flunked the litmus test of Christology. Even though the book of James has been called a “remarkably pure specimen of the ethical teachings of the Sermon on the Mount,” it actually mentions Jesus by name only twice, and never refers to the passion, death and resurrection of Christ as the means of salvation. That just wasn’t enough Jesus for Luther. Secondly, Luther saw in James an attack on Paul’s teaching that faith, in and of itself, was sufficient for salvation.

Well, I think Luther was a little hypersensitive on this issue. To my mind it’s all a matter of emphasis. Good people disagree, and another spiritual giant, John Calvin, wrote that he saw absolutely nothing in James to criticize, because to his mind it was unreasonable to expect every person to present the argument for Christianity and Christ in exactly the same way. I agree with that. Yes, it matters what we believe and who and what we have faith in. But faith isn’t just some abstract philosophical, disembodied theory. True faith changes the way we see the world, the way we treat our neighbors. And, God knows, we live in a global neighborhood!

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was a man of deep, even mystical personal faith, but for him faith was always lived out within the context of an ethical demand for involvement in the great issues of the day. One of his maxims was that “the world is my parish.” The United Methodist church has always been globally minded, mission oriented and socially concerned - because we have both a personal, and a practical faith. It will be very interesting to hear what our neighbors think Morningside United Methodist Church stands for, what they feel we have to offer, or should be offering to the community.

I’ll close with this. The Book of James is a clarion call to a healthy and very practical sense of accountability. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, honoring the poor, welcoming the stranger without regard to social distinction, loving one’s neighbor without showing partiality, these are more than helpful suggestions - they are integral practices of a Christian life in the global neighborhood in which we live today. In James we have a challenge. Are we able to meet that challenge? That’s the question that is before us. Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” May the fruits of our labors express God’s love, and our love, for our neighbors everywhere. Amen.