(beware it’s a loooong one! Written for Hednesford Pentecostal church)
Being, doing, speaking
James 1:19-27; 2:14-26; 3:1-12
Intro
I want to preach to you this morning from the letter of James. James is sometimes a neglected letter – he doesn’t have a lot of doctrine in his letter, in fact he doesn’t seem especially interested in theology. James is what we’d call a practical theologian – he’s more interested in how we live our lives than in abstract issues. But James certainly knows his theology. As we’ll see, a lot of what he says seems to come out of deep reflection on Jesus’ parables.
It’s a letter that isn’t written to anyone in particular. In fact, it may not have been written as a letter at all, but simply been a record of James’ own sermons, and then circulated around the churches, these being the days before you could hear your favourite preacher by clicking on their website and downloading a podcast.
In any case, James is writing to the church, to committed Christians who already know a fair bit about their faith. To people like us. And what he’s really interested in talking about is this: What does it mean to be a Christian? What should a Christian look like, sound like? How should a Christian live?
Now the letter is too long for me to talk about the whole thing, so I’m going to pick out three of my favourite passages and see what we can learn from them. So we’ll be looking at what James says about Being a Christian in Chapter 1: 19-27, then at what he says about Doing things Christianly in Chapter 2:14-26, then at what he says about Speaking Christianly in Chapter 3:1-12. Being, Doing, Speaking. In every area, James is trying to correct some mistaken ideas we might have about how we are, do, and speak as Christians.
1. Being a Christian
James 1:19-27
It’s tempting to understand being a Christian as really being about a decision we made to believe or trust in God. I’m sure that all of us have heard stories of how people ‘came to faith’. Perhaps we’ve had to tell our own story. Sometimes there are amazing events that prompt people to make a commitment to God. Sometimes people are won over by seeing the example of their friends or family and want to be like them. Sometimes people think through what seems to make sense to them and make a decision. There are thousands of different stories. But most of us, when we’re asked to talk about how we come to be a Christian, will talk about some moment when we came to make a decision. It might be one decision amongst many, but we tend to think that there was a moment when we weren’t a Christian and a moment when we were, and that sometime between the two we made a decision to change. That sort of story can be inspiring to others and it can be helpful for us, to help us remember how we came to be here, but there is a danger: the danger that we think being a Christian is all about making that decision, the danger that we think that was the hard part, the danger that we think we can put our feet up and think ‘that’s it, now I’m saved’.
James is very aware of that danger. Perhaps he’d come across people who had misunderstood what Paul preached about being saved by faith, and thought that one they were saved it didn’t matter how they lived. We don’t know, but he’s certainly setting out to shake us up a bit if we’ve got at all complacent. For James, however important a moment of making a decision or commitment might be to us, it’s only a first step, and one that might end up leading nowhere. In fact, he’s not that interested in how we come to start being Christians at all. What he’s interested in is being a Christian as an activity – not just something you passively are, but something you choose to do.
If you turn to James 1:19-21 you can see James talking about how we come to be Christians. He says (I’m paraphrasing here) – stop getting angry and stop loving the sound of your own voice and start listening. That’s how you start to produce some fruit of God’s righteousness in your life. So, clear away any wickedness that’s entangling you and stopping you from growing, and welcome the implanted word that can save you. James is so uninterested in the moment we actually become Christians that he leaves it almost to an afterthought, so let’s turn things round to see what James is saying: the word is implanted in you, you need to welcome it meekly, clear away any wickedness entangling you, and produce fruit by living in a way that is holy.
Am I the only one to catch echoes of Jesus’ parable of the sower here? James is really saying ‘be good soil’. Let the seed put down deep roots in you, clear away the weeds, and produce a good crop. For James, the moment of decision hardly features – the soil doesn’t choose to have seed planted in it – or perhaps its better to say that for James there is no single moment of decision. Every moment is a moment of decision, to accept the seed, to pull out the weeds, to produce fruit.
He then talks about the ways we can do that: by choosing to not just hear the word but also do it, and by controlling our tongues. We’ll look at these in some detail shortly, but let’s just see what he says about them here, in verses 22-27.
Be doers, not just hearers of the word, he says. If you just hear the word you’re like someone looking into a mirror and doing nothing about the mess that you can see. Hearing the word, hearing God’s will for us, is supposed to make a difference to how we live. When we look into that mirror, we’re supposed to not just see that we need to brush our hair, we’re supposed to actually do it!
Perhaps if James was alive today he’d have used the phrase ‘you talk the talk, but do you walk the walk?’, except that for James, talking is the thing that’s at the top of his list of things we need to do right. If we don’t think about what we’re saying, he says, we’re deceiving ourselves and our Christianity is nothing but a waste of time. If it isn’t to be a waste of time, if it’s going to be a way forward, it has to involve caring for the most vulnerable in society.
2. Doing Christianly
James 2:14-26
We live in an age where we are encouraged to think that what is inside us is the most important thing. Our thoughts, our feelings, our sense of identity. Adverts don’t sell us products, any more, they sell us ideas, feelings, ways of seeing ourselves. If we are acting in accordance with our highest ideals we will talk in these terms: ‘It felt right’, ‘I knew it was the right thing’, ‘I felt that was where I belonged’.
Some of the roots of this lie in Christian teaching, of course. Jesus criticized the outwardly-righteous Pharisees for their hypocrisy – the way they play-acted holiness by doing the right thing when their hearts were far from God. If our hearts and minds are not right with God then whatever apparently holy things we do will make no difference.
But there is another side to this, and James feels it’s time to redress the balance. He’s writing to followers of Jesus who already know all this, to people familiar with Paul’s teaching that we are saved by faith. And so he comes to the section of his letter that we so frequently misunderstand: James 2:14-26. Martin Luther, reading this, was so convinced that James was contradicting Paul’s message of salvation through faith alone that he said the letter shouldn’t be in the Bible at all, that it was ‘a letter of straw’. If we read carefully, though, I think we’ll see that James isn’t contradicting Paul. He’s saying something different that stands alongside it.
‘What is the point of your faith if you do not have works too?’ James asks. ‘What is the point of being right on the inside if you aren’t also right on the outside where it can be seen?’ You can know that the naked and hungry should be clothed and fed, but that’s worthless unless you do it. Even Abraham, Paul’s great example of justification through faith, is really an example of justification through works, because his faith was demonstrated in his actions. James’ point here is not that we are not justified through faith, but rather that unless that faith bears fruit in our actions it was never true faith in the first place.
The image at the back of James’ mind is that of the seed again. Good seed in good soil is fruitful. But if it can’t put down roots or it’s choked by weeds then it won’t bear fruit. James’ concern is that faith without works is ‘dead’, ‘barren’, and will not be ‘bought to completion’. If the seed that has been implanted in us is welcomed in, then it will grow and bear fruit. Faith is always demonstrated in our actions, so that by our works people will see our faith. It’s certainly true that, as Jesus saw, people can have works without faith. However, says James, you cannot have faith without works. The person who thinks they are a Christian and yet does nothing is not, no matter how sincerely they believe. Faith changes us and changes others through us or it isn’t faith.
3. Speaking Christianly
James 3:1-12
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ the old rhyme goes. It’s obviously untrue, as a moment’s reflection will tell you, but it’s amazing how easy it is to dismiss the power of words. Words don’t leave any scars, so it’s easy to think they didn’t hurt, but anyone who has ever been the victim of gossip will tell you otherwise.
James doesn’t make this mistake. He’s already mentioned the importance of controlling your tongue if you are to let the seed of righteousness grow in you, but now, in chapter 3:1-12 he returns to the theme. James talks about speaking Christianly by using several vivid images. First, he highlights the importance of controlling our speech by suggesting the tongue is like the bit and bridle of a horse or the rudder of a ship. If we can control this one apparently small thing, we can control everything else we do. The uncontrolled tongue, however, is like the tiny flame that sparks a forest fire. For good or evil, this easily-underestimated part of our bodies has massive power.
It’s easy to think that James is exaggerating here when he starts to speak about the tongue being a restless evil, set on fire by hell itself. But if we look at what he is saying, I think we can understand. James is simply reflecting on the very human experience of sin. This is James’ equivalent to Paul’s discussion of fighting against his own self in Romans 7.
The tongue, says James, is like the whole person in miniature. With the same tongue we praise God, and curse others, we sing hymns and pray and lie and spread gossip. No-one can tame their own tongue, and the things we say witness against us.
The tongue shows us how messed up and sinful we are: we are like a spring that pours forth fresh and salt water from the same opening, or a fig tree that produces olives. You go expecting something sweet, and come away with a bad taste in your mouth.
Nothing in nature is like this, says James. Things are true to their own inward nature, springs produce fresh water, grapevines produce grapes. But with human beings we see something unnatural: Christians lie and gossip.
On the face of it, James seems to be making a point like Jesus’ – criticizing us for our hypocrisy. But the examples suggest something deeper: a warning, similar to Jesus’ parable of the barren fig tree. (Lk 13:6-9) Things are always in the end true to themselves, he says. That’s what we see in nature. That’s why good works must flow out of faith. But this means that the opposite is also true. If we produce no fruit, then the seed in us never grew. And if we produce bad fruit, then the plant has become diseased, good for nothing but chopping down and throwing on the fire. If you tell lots of lies, in the end it becomes obvious that you are a liar. If you spread stories about others, in the end it becomes obvious you are a gossip.
James leaves his discussion with the warning, because he has already given his solution back in 1:19. There is only one way to try and tame the tongue, to try and speak Christianly. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
All of us make many mistakes when it comes to our tongues, he says (3:2), so it’s best to speak less. Especially if you’re one who teaches others. Which perhaps suggests that I too have now said enough!
Conclusion
So, that brings us to the end of our quick trip through the letter of James. James warns us not to get complacent, and think that because we’re saved we can sit back. Being a Christian is an activity, not a state of being, he says. It’s what you do, not who you are. He warns us that just like the seeds in the parable, receiving the seed doesn’t guarantee it will bear fruit, and it is fruit, in our lives and the lives of others that shows that the faith we have is real, not the sincerity of our feelings. If we’re going to produce that fruit, we need to let the seed grow deep roots in us, and we need to clear away any weeds that might be growing. And the main weed he identifies is the sin we commit with our mouths – the things we say. If we cannot control our tongues, he suggests, then we will never bear fruit. Christians should not be liars, gossips, or people who are known for their anger. But that is what we are. In the end our true nature will show itself through our works, says James. Not through the purity of our faith kept locked inside us, but through the way we live our lives.
And so, he gives some simple instructions. They sound too simple, really. Surely, we might think, these are not the sorts of things one needs to say to a church full of devout Christians. But James does. He thinks we need to hear it. So hear it:
Be quick to listen.
Be slow to speak.
Be slow to anger.
If we can do these things, then maybe we can live in a way that shows who we really are. Amen.
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