To Be or To Do, That Is the Question

I Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; James 2:14-26

          A young monk presented an older monk with this scenario:

 There are two monks: one stays quietly in his cell fasting for six days at a time and laying many austerities upon himself, and the other ministers to the sick.  Which of them is more acceptable to God?

  The older monk answered:

 If the brother who fasts six days even hung himself up by his nostrils, he could never be the equal of him who ministers to the sick. (R. Bondi, To Pray and to Love, p. 39)

What is more important to God: our faith or our works? Which is more important, orthodoxy, having right beliefs, or orthopraxy, having right actions?  What is it that makes us acceptable to God—faith or works?

 The question for Hamlet was, “To be or not to be?”  The question for the Apostle Paul and the disciple named James was, “To be or to do?”  It is a big question.  Paul emphasized having faith or right beliefs.  He wrote this to the Ephesians: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works.” Paul at one time boasted of his many accomplishments. He was circumcised on the appropriate day.  He belonged to the right tribe, the tribe of Benjamin.  He was a Pharisee and was so zealous about his work that he persecuted the early church.  Paul at that time considered himself blameless. But after his Damascus road conversion he had a change of heart. “Whatever gains (i.e., accomplishments or works) I had,” he wrote, “these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.  More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” After his conversion, Paul no longer boasted of his good works.  He put it plainly to the Galatians: “We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”  Paul seems to be saying here that good works alone are not enough.  We must have faith.

 Paul belonged squarely in the orthodoxy camp, having right belief, and that’s the theology I grew up on.  I was taught to believe, i.e., have faith, that Jesus died on the cross to save us so that we could go to heaven when we die.  Christian faith was all a matter of believing that central truth.  I was taught that our best efforts, our best good works, are nothing more than filthy rags.  It wasn’t wrong to do good works.  But compared to having right belief, good works were like the dirty rags that gather in the corner of a garage.  The goal of life, then, is to have right beliefs, and by faith alone secure one’s place in the eternal hereafter.

 Then I met James and discovered that he comes from a different perspective.  Tradition claims that he was the brother of Jesus, though solid scholarship cannot conclusively confirm that.  This much is clear: his theology is right out of the teachings of Jesus.  The Sermon on the Mount, the parables of Jesus, and many of Jesus’ other teachings emphasize doing good works: feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, offering clothes to those without, and visiting the sick and those in prison.  Many of the teachings of Jesus could end with this question asked by James, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?”  Then James asked: “Can faith save you?” The assumed answer is, “No.”

 I’ve said before that I think Weatherly is a doing church.  Maybe it’s because we have so many engineers.  It’s not that being is not important; it is.  But we lean more toward doing.  We’ve built over thirty houses in Kentucky in a poor, rural area.  We’ve rehabbed houses in Lincoln Village.  We’ve helped refugees settle into our community.  We’ve taught thousands of immigrants English as a second language.  We’ve provided respite to families with a child with a disability.  We’ve provided backpacks full of food to children in one of our Title 1 schools for fall and spring break.

 I remember our youth went on a retreat one year.  It was a doing retreat, and they showed us pictures of posters that decorated the walls of the camp.  The messages on the posters sound like an angry James wrote them:

I was hungry and you formed a humanities club and discussed my hunger. 

I was naked and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.

 I was imprisoned and you crept quietly to your church and prayed for my release. 

 I was sick and you knelt and thanked God for your health!

 I was homeless and you preached to me of the Spiritual Shelter of the Love of God!

 I was lonely and you left me alone to pray for me!

 You seem sooo Holy … Sooo close to God! But I am still Hungry, Lonely and Cold!

When people are hungry, lonely, and cold, they don’t need our orthodoxy; they need our orthopraxy. So James dropped the theological rook card, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

I now look at this matter of faith and works differently.  I no longer believe that the goal of life is to have right belief and thereby secure our place in the eternal hereafter.  I now believe that the goal of life is to believe as best you can and practice every day a lifestyle of love and mercy.  It will be love and mercy, God’s love and mercy, that secure our place in the eternal hereafter.  That frees us to engage the world around us in the same way God engages us—with love and mercy.   

 I’ll never forget this haunting experience Anthony Campolo describes in one of his books.  He had been doing mission work in Haiti.  He was waiting for an airplane in a field near the border to the Dominican Republic.  As he stood in the field waiting, a woman approached him with a baby in her arms.  The baby’s stomach was swollen many times its normal size.  Its arms and legs were spindly.  The child was black, but his hair was a rust color, an indication of a lack of protein.  The child’s mouth was hanging open, and his eyes were rolled back.  He was dirty.  The woman held up the child to Dr. Campolo and began pleading, “Please, mister, please take my baby; take my baby with you.  Take my baby to your country.  Feed my baby.  Take care of my baby.  Don’t let my baby die.”

 Of course, he couldn’t take her child.  Besides there were hundreds of babies like that in Haiti.  So he brushed her aside and said, “I can’t help you.  I can’t take your baby.  Do you understand?  There’s nothing I can do!”

 She continued to plead.  “Take my baby.  Don’t let my baby die.  Please, mister, have mercy on my baby!”

 The small plane finally arrived.  As Campolo made his way to the plane, the woman followed continuing to plead for him to take her child, to save her baby.  She became hysterical when he boarded the plane and began beating on the fuselage of the airplane.  As the plane began to roll away, the woman ran alongside the plane as long as she could still pleading for the sake of her child.

 You can imagine the impact that had on Dr. Campolo.  I want to read to you his words:

 We flew away and I tried to put that woman and her baby out of my mind.  But I couldn’t.  Halfway back to the capital it hit me.  It dawned on me who that baby was.  I realized who it was that I had left behind on that landing strip.  The name of that child was Jesus.  Regardless of the name his parents had given him at birth, I knew that his name was Jesus.  It was Jesus who was incarnated in the feeble, sickly frame.  It was Jesus who had been held out to me for love and care. (It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Comin’, pp. 98-100)

 James was right.  Faith alone is not enough.  And Paul was right.  Works alone are not enough.  Both are important. To be and to do, that is the question.  We are challenged to have an informed faith that engages the world.  Acts of love and mercy must walk hand in hand with faith. So let us believe as best we can and practice every day a lifestyle of love and mercy.

Closing Prayer

  God, whose name is Love and Mercy, continue to form us so that we are people of love and mercy.  Amen.