First Baptist Church of Asheville Podcast
Sermon: Skilled Faith
St. James's epistle is really a letter of straw, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it. So wrote Martin Luther expressing his strong dislike of the letter of James, which we have just heard so beautifully read. He didn't believe James could have really come from any one of the apostles. He didn't believe James gave sufficient attention to Jesus' death and resurrection. He as well, James' message appears to contradict Luther's world-changing emphasis on justification by faith alone. Luther asserted constantly that we cannot earn salvation. He said, "Gift, we cannot earn our way into heaven through good works. We need only to trust in the promises of God and then we really have them." So Luther said, "For good measure, we should throw the epistle of James out of this school for a dozen amount to much." So I've decided to preach a three sermon series on the letter of James. James says on the other hand, "What good is it, my friends, if you say you have faith, but you don't have works, can faith save you?" Before we go down this road of pitting James versus Luther, which I know you all came to church just eager to hear this morning, or pitting James even against Paul, let's take Paul's and consider that James is not advocating salvation by works. He's commending instead a faith that follows. When Paul says for it is by grace that you have been saved through faith, not by works, he was addressing members of his congregation who were tying their salvation to food laws, circumcision, purification rituals, things Paul says are of the law. When Luther preaches solafide, justification by faith alone, he's addressing a corrupt church that has turned the domain of grace into a marketplace of works. He really shouldn't, these are different categories of works, in other words. James talks about works in a different way. He's addressing members of his congregation who have adopted a distorted view of faith that says you don't have to live a transformed life. All you really need is faith. James is countering those who say you don't have to do good works, all you need is a kind of intellectual assent, a belief system. You don't have to care for the vulnerable or feed the hungry or share with those in need or tame your tongue, go on living as you are, just have faith. James says no, that's not it, that's a counterfeit faith. He says show me your works and I'll show you your faith. He calls us to ask ourselves, if you were accused in a court of law of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? The book of James details a theological ethic for living the Christian life. He calls us to a faith that does care for the orphan in the widow, a faith that privileges the poor, a faith that dissolves prejudices, a faith that feeds the hungry and clothes the naked, a faith that takes exquisite care to tame the tongue, to speak with tenderness and gentleness. James asks a simple question, does your faith work? Because genuine faith bears fruit, genuine faith leaves evidence behind. Real faith produces results. But with James' help, I'd like to ask a question, have you, and with James' help, I should ask this, have you ever considered that there may be an element of skill to faith? I want to wager today that there is an artfulness to faith, that there is some skill inherent and genuine faith. The word James uses for works, after all, indicates something produced by hand. And when I think of things produced by hand, I think of art, painting, sculpture, architecture, woodworking music. I wonder if there isn't something about faith that can be practiced over time such that we develop an aptitude for it. If you're a beginner to the faith and you don't feel like you know all the moves and other replace the step, you don't know the choreography, good, you're just like the rest of us. You've got to learn it and practice it, memorize some things, move with the congregation until you develop over time a kind of sixth sense for what it is we do by faith. Now practicing our faith over time, we develop an aptitude for faith that we didn't have before. If there's any skill to faith and reason holds that it takes faith, that faith takes practice. And as we practice faith, we become more skilled, more competent over a lifetime. I say this though, with fear and trembling, truly. Because faith cannot be reduced to skill, and if faith were merely a skill, then it would be all about us, wouldn't it? Our hope would disappoint. Faith would be reduced to human faculty, human striving, trying a little harder, human effort. And we'd be right back in the crosshairs of Paul and Luther. And as well, what about those who lose their faith or leave the faith altogether? Does God abandon those who for whatever reason can no longer assent to keep their faith? Not at all. We learn from the book of Psalms that God does not abandon us even when we go down to the pit. And what would the book of Psalms be without Psalm 88? A Psalm composed entirely of laments and questions for, and accusations against God. There is not one single molecule of praise or thanksgiving in Psalm 88. And they still kept it in there. It is a sad and even raging poem against God. It ends in darkness and despair. And yet it's still there, it's still in the midst and near the heart of the prayer book of Israel and the church. How much more than does God care for those whose faith has been crushed and whose life experiences amount to little more than compounding traumas? Or even those for whom, for plainly intellectual reasons, faith just doesn't make sense anymore. Nevertheless, I still wager that faith has a skill component to it. Are you a practicing Christian? And we might expect to see some development of faith over time. It was said of the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane that he would practice sometimes 12 hours a day, just too much practice really. Once he invited a younger musician to come and practice with him, to play together at his house. When a young man arrived, Coltrane had them both practicing scales. And all it went, just practicing scales, hours, several hours passed, they're practicing scales, still practicing scales after lunch and finally the young man said, "Hey man, why don't we go and play some music? Why don't we go and play some jazz?" And Coltrane looked at him and said, "What is it you think we've been doing all this time?" But undergirding his artistry lay a deep foundation of daily practice. When it was time to perform, the scales were deeply imprinted on his soul. I see no reason why we can't compare this dynamic to the Christian life to several kinds of practice come to mind that undergird our faith, prayer, practice, can improve over time. I remember when my grandfather was dying of cancer, went to see him and grandma was sitting there in the living room, a knock came on the door. I heard some chatter near the door and grandma comes into the living room and says, "Bill, Harold Leatherman is here and my grandfather, who was very sick, perked up and raised his voice and said, "Harold Leatherman, such that twenty-some years later, I still remember this guy's name." And he was a retired Methodist pastor and he had just come by to see friend daddy and sat and had a visit and then he prayed. And he prayed a prayer that left me a first-year seminarian at the time, utterly slack-jawled. How do you learn to pray like that? With eloquence and conviction and poetry, well, I knew sitting there on the couch. I had a lot of practice ahead. Giving is a practice. You get better. Over time, you don't start out tithing mostly, you work up to a range of sacrificial giving. When I was a student, I remember being introduced to a woman who I was told shared every year a quarter of her income, a quarter of her income in this economy. Now she wasn't married and didn't have children, but there was some skill inherent in her self-understanding that I have more than I need, I'm going to give away what I don't need, a lifetime of practice. Communion is a practice. Over time, we learn to commune more deeply with one another by this rather wrote Christian practice that we trace back millennia. Does it change us? Does it help? Does it do what it says it's going to do? Greg Jones, former Divinity School dean, now a university president, used to be a pastor. He said one Sunday, they connected the passing of the peace to their communion, so you had to pass the peace before you could have communion. He said there was this one person in the church that was really honorary and really been all over him and they were sitting near him and he knew and the time came he was going to have to pass the peace to this person, he didn't really want to do it. He knew he was the pastor, he's supposed to be Christian, he's supposed to be above this, but however they'd really been on him, well, doesn't Paul say you have to discern the body before you break the bread or you eat and drink judgment against yourself. So Paul's echoing in his ear and it came time to do the passing of the peace and he went up to this congregation member, this honorary, complaining, grumbling piece of Christ be with you. And immediately the relationship began to thaw, takes a lot of practice. There's an art to it and therefore a skill. And now God's grace expands beyond any and all human skill, God's grace envelops those who have given up on the faith, I believe in the end God's salvation will be even more powerful than even any human rejection. But there's still joy in practicing the faith and cultivating a skill of faith over time, there's grace in the art and artfulness of faith, there's salvation in knowing that faith without works is dead. But I love walking through these hallways and running into you and this morning running into a new group of young adults and traipsing through the atrium and seeing all the works of our faith on display and I've got to say, it seems very much alive around here. Did you know Luther, he finally came around on old James, he can look up in Luther's works where he actually starts quoting some James, he even preaches on James eventually. This epistle of straw that we should throw out, remember Luther comes back and changes his mind, just takes a little practice. [BLANK_AUDIO]