Sunday sermon – 13th Sunday after Pentecost - August 30, ’09
“Graced To Get It Right”
Text: James 1
Religious views! Do we have them? Religious values! Do we live them? You don’t have to be a super religious person to be right with God, but are you getting this right - that with God hearing His Word means doing His Word?
This fifth Sunday in August is the fifth time I’m going to take one more look at the question, “Is Religion Good or Bad For You?” which leads us to a fifth thing the New Testament has to say about religion when it’s good for you.
This Sunday the issue is action vs. inaction, doing vs. deliberating, getting your religion right vs. getting it wrong!
That means this Sunday you’re going to hear a message on an x-rated topic that normally is a “taboo” topic that you don’t hear much about in Lutheran Churches because it isn’t what Lutheran pastors & Lutheran congregations that want to be doctrinally correct don’t much talk about. What’s the topic? Is it sex? Is it gambling? Is it lottery? Is it politics? Is it health care? Gay marriages!? Over-eating!?
No! None of those things! The topic you don’t often hear much about in Lutheran Churches because it’s not what Lutheran pastors and Lutheran congregations that what to be doctrinally, theologically correct talk about is the topic of “works, good works!”
For all Christians but especially for Lutherans, good theology, good preaching & teaching, good living, good praying, and good, solid, biblically-correct, Christ-centered stewardship of our gifts is all “grace-based” and not “works based.”
You know well the passage that emphasizes the grace-based foundation of our Christian religion! Ephesians 2:8-9:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
This also explains why there are not a lot of sermons preached on the Book of James, because the book of James, at first glace, seems to go against the grain of everything that Jesus & St. Paul & Martin Luther and C.F.W. Walther & Dr. Walter A Maier & Ozzie Hoffmann & Dale Meyer & Ken Klaus and a host of other Lutheran preachers & teachers have rightly, powerfully pointed to, that the heart & soul & goal of true religion is to preach Christ, proclaim Christ crucified & risen from the dead as the sole source of forgiveness, life, and salvation and when you hear that & believe that - that’s the end of thinking, believing that your own good works contribute to your salvation.
Yet that does not dismiss the importance of the Book of James, even though Martin Luther himself had little use for this book because of its lack of references to Jesus & His cross & resurrection. But when it comes to the question of is your religion good or bad for you and the issue is action vs. inaction, doing vs. deliberating, getting your religion right vs. getting it wrong, in the epistle reading for this Sunday, the author of James says two things that have to do with first, being richly, abundantly graced with God’s saving grace and second, being a gracious doer of the word and not a hearer only.
If anyone thinks he\she is irreligious and does not bridle his/her tongue but deceives his/her heart, this person’s religion is worth-less, writes the author of James. Religion that is pure & undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
In other words, the Christian religion is not about doing works to save one’s soul. The Christian religion is not about trying harder, or trying to be better than your neighbor. Christianity is not about putting people on a guilt trip, weighing people down with all kinds of religious rules & regulations, rituals & requirements of the law.
But let me be honest with you & tell you - unLutheran as it may sound, Christianity is work, hard work. Christianity is the person who shakes the pastor’s hand at the end of the service and doesn’t say, “Good sermon, I loved it.” But says: “Good sermon, I’ll do it!”
Christianity is being God’s workmanship, created, redeemed, and sanctified in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before hand that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:10)
I wonder how many Christians who love to sing “Amazing Grace”, know the verse in 1 Corinthians 15, where the apostle Paul says of the Lord Jesus Christ’s appearance to him on the road to Damascus,
“For I am the least of all the apostles, unworthy to be called and apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what.
But then Paul goes on to say and God’s grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of the other disciples, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me.
(1 Corinthians 15:9,10)
The Christian religion is good for us; we get this hearing & doing right, when we are graced by God to get it right! We get our religion right when we (fully,freely, putting our entire trust in God and in the Lord Jesus Christ,) go to work in our daily lives preparing for the good, the rain, the fruit, the love, the growing, the service, the sharing, the victory of faith God in His grace promises in Christ.
Recently I have watched a couple of times a low-budget, done-by-amateurs movie (now DVD) from back in 2006 titled “Facing The Giants”. I’m trying to decide whether that movie offers a good depiction of Christianity or not; trying to decide whether the movie teaches a theology of success & glory (just try harder and God will grant you success), or whether the movie can be seen & appreciated from a Lutheran perspective of grace & a theology of the cross which doesn’t always lead to success or victory in our daily struggles with the giants in our lives.
What I have decided I like about the movie is its understated emphasis on how God in His grace, God in His saving, redeeming, life-transforming grace, how God works to bring about good works, bring about getting things right with Him & each other in our daily lives. But God is good and God is here!
There’s a scene in that movie where a friend, a gentle, soft-spoken white-haired, bible-carrying Christian named Mr. Bridges who’s always praying for the students as he walks by their high school lockers tells a stumbling, struggling, praying, doubting, coach named Grant Taylor whose wondering what to do about his struggling life as a Christian husband & head coach, Mr. Bridges tells the coach a story about two farmers.
Two farmers were praying for rain that was desperately needed.
Both farmers prayed for rain but only one went out to prepare his fields for it.
Mr. Bridges asked the coach, “Which farmer had faith, which one trusted in the Lord.” To which the coach replied, “The one who went out and prepared his fields.”
And Mr. Bridges asked the coach which one he was and said, “Coach, God will send the rain when He’s ready. You need to prepare your field to receive it.”
That’s the question James asks of you and me as Christians. There are hearers of the Word who pray, and there are hearers of the Word who by God’s grace go out & prepare their fields. Which one are you?
God will send rain when He’s ready. James 1:17 says, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (the Sender of rain) with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
But that doesn’t mean we have all that comes from God the Giver of every good and perfect gift to take for granted. James 1:18 goes on to say, Of God’s own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures.
Like a plant planted in the ground, like a tomato plant, a grape vine, an apple tree, or a whole field of maturing corn or beans that all need water, need rain to grow and bear fruit, so we need the Word of God planted in us not just to hear it & believe it but to grow in it and do it, demonstrate it, showing forth the fruit of God’s Spirit working in our lives as a kind of first-fruits of God’s creatures, a fore-taste of the Kingdom of God.
Not grace plus works, but grace that results in us as God’s people working, giving, caring, sharing, showing love in Christ.
When it comes to the real thing, real religion, true religion, being a kind of first fruits of God’s creation, what happens when grace when God’s pure, free, saving grace is at work in us? What happens is good works! What happens is not “grin & bear it” religion, not “do I have to,” religion, but “grit and determination” religion, “I get to” religion, “Don’t-give-up-or-give-out-religion!”
Something I ran across recently is that researchers are discovering that grit & determination is a better determinant of future success than intelligence. In a study conducted among 5th graders in New York City schools, after taking an IQ test one group was praised for their intelligence, another for their effort. The ones praised for working hard, for grit & determination raised their scores by an aver-age of 30% on a subsequent test, while the ones praised for intelligence dropped their scores by near 20%. (Boston Globe, Aug.)
I will leave you with this: the end result of God’s saving grace in Jesus is not “soft & sentimental” religion, easy-going, comfortable, successful, Christianity without a cross.
The end result of God’s saving grace is “grit & determination” religion. The end result of God’s saving grace is “that the truly “implanted word” received with meekness will produce disciples who are long on obedience and short on words.
