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Proper 18, Year B
September 7, 2003
Christ Church, Covington
“But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive
themselves” (Jas 1:22).
Christianity is not a “spectator sport”; it calls for active
participation. We are involved in the life of faith, not just in an assent
to particular principals or the cultivation of certain feelings. This is
because we follow Jesus Christ, who came into the world not to teach us
what to think or how to feel, but gave his life so that we might live. In
us, his own resurrection life is being lived out. Living the new life, not
thinking or feeling about it, is what it’s all about.
The thinking part of faith is often a sticking point for people. I don’t
have much insight into this, because I’ve never had much difficulty in
believing (say) the Resurrection of Jesus or his miracles; or even whether
the whale could really swallow Jonah or Moses make the sun stand still.
These are stories that are meant to invite faith, not to become stumbling
blocks, and I’ve never the stories themselves hold me back. Faith is
something more than an ability to assent to propositions.
In the same way, Christianity is more than a set of emotions or feelings.
Again, this a struggle for some folks. Some of us think we have to have a
particular emotional experience in order to be in relationship with God;
that our heart has got to be moved in a particular way. When they don’t
have the experience, they wonder what’s wrong with them. Here again, I’m
not much help, as I’ve taken my own experiences and feelings of faith to
be the ones that God has meant for me. I’ve not tried to make them the
norm for others. Maybe my heart has not been “strangely warmed” like John
Wesley’s, but I’ve not worried about it.
Don’t misunderstand me: Christianity has everything in the world to do
with the mind and heart. If your mind and heart are not in it, then you’ve
missed something absolutely essential. A person who’s trying to live
without a mind or heart is not much of a person; true in any natural
sense, and true as well in the life of faith. The knowledge and love of
God are what we are being brought to by the life of discipleship.
The point of our reading from the Letter of James is to demonstrate that
Christianity is a life, a way of being in the world. How we live that life
is a sign of our character, of it’s penetration by grace, of the Gospel
“shape” of our life. It is easy to “talk the talk”, harder to “walk the
walk”. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have
faith but do not have works?... So faith by itself, if it has no works, is
dead” (Jas. 2:14, 17): words that made Martin Luther angry, and which
called for a great deal of explaining away that any good Lutheran can tell
you about.
It’s this notion of the Christian life that holds together the heart and
mind. This is where the propositions and experiences of faith are lived
out. “Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my
faith” (Jas. 2:18). The “works” are works of love, “faith working through
love” (Gal. 5:6), as Paul calls it. In the doing of the works we may even
find our hearts and our minds molded and shaped. It is in our lives that
propositions and experiences take actual shape and are shaped, discerned
in and formed by Christian lives of love.
This brings us to Rally Day and the invitation to ministry. Christ Church,
Covington, has come a long way in the past few years; a long way quickly,
which is how God tends to move. There’s been growth in program and staff
through our annual Stewardship of time, talent, and treasure; the
expansion of our facilities through the Capital Campaign. But I am more
and more convinced that we will never really arrive where God is calling
us unless we involve you in what is happening here; that is, when our
parish as a whole become doers of the word and not hearers only. That’s
the point of what we’re doing today. You are the People of God, called to
engage in a life of discipleship. Or perhaps another way of saying this is
that we will never arrive at the destination unless Jesus Christ himself
involves you in the life he is living out here and now. That is the call.
The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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