Skip to main content

Verbs are Action Words (Newsletter)

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. 18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith… 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. James 2:14-18, 26

            I just realized today that I haven’t posted a single thing to my blog since Easter. For some of you that doesn’t mean anything and for others, you’re screaming, “I know!” Though, in most weeks, I write sermons, litanies, commentaries, and (sometimes) book reviews, my blog remains a necessary outpost of ongoing thought and conversation. It is also the most frequent conversational intersection I have with people who are not active members of Lutheran Church of Hope. Among some of my friends, we have a phrase, “Writers write.”

            You can’t call yourself something, if you’re not doing the thing that proves the title. There are a few exceptions to that rule, but on the whole, we have to backup our words with actions. Having faith in God, trusting that we are people on the Way of Christ, and giving thanks in and for the Holy Spirit is good and important. However, mere assertion of faith through words is not enough to demonstrate what we have received through God’s own grace.

            Since we are decidedly not earning our salvation, we sometimes forget how much our actions matter and are essential to the life of faith. We are not convincing God to act or completing what Jesus has begun. Faithful actions- love for neighbors, care for creation, active pursuit of justice and peace- are part of a faithful life. Salvation is a one-time thing and not of our own doing. Sanctification, on the other hand, is an on-going work of the Holy Spirit.

            That work, sanctification, is about shaping us. The Spirit puts opportunities in our way, people in our lives, situations in our sight, and concerns on our hearts, so that we might respond and learn what it means to trust Christ’s desires for the world and God’s plans for the kin-dom. None of the efforts to which we are drawn happen magically or through our mere words among ourselves. They require prayer, sweat, tears, and effort. We must dare to get it wrong, but dare more greatly to trust in the forgiveness that exists for us- so that we might try, try again.


            Christians Christ. I do realize that “Christ” is not a verb. However, if “writers write”, Christians…? What is the verb that closes that sentence? It’s in your hands.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm In

A few weeks ago ,  I was using voice-to-text to compose some prayers. After I was finished speaking the whole list, I was proof-reading the document and   realized that everywhere I said “Amen”, the voice-to-text wrote “I’m in”. “Amen” essentially means  “may it be so”,  but what would it look like to end our prayers with “I’m in”. What would change if we rose from our knees, left our prayer closets, closed our devotionals, and moved with purpose toward the goals for which we had just prayed.  Lord, in your mercy:  Grant justice to the oppressed and disenfranchised (I’m in) Cast down the mighty from their thrones (I’m in)  Console the grieving and welcome the prodigal (I’m in)  Welcome strangers and attend to the marginalized (I’m in)  Grant the space for the silenced to speak… and listen (I’m in)  Fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty (I’m in)  Forgive others as I am forgiven (I’m in) Be merciful as God in h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Top Ten Things to Learn from the book of Job

Readings: Job 1:1-22; Job 38:1-11; Luke 8: 22-25 10. Job contradicts Proverbs.   The writer of Proverbs offers the hope and consolation that people who live wisely and faithfully, according to the will of God, will flourish and prosper. The very first chapter of Job says: it ain’t necessarily so. You may well live righteously and with great integrity and, still, terrible things may happen. A faithful life is not an automatic buffer to calamity. Due to this contradiction between the books, both of which are categorized as wisdom literature, we are reminded of all those who have gone before us who tried to make the Bible speak with one voice. It doesn’t. The Bible has many voices, some of which are quite dissonant together, but they sing one song about the presence and providence of God.  9. Job is an old story, but a young book, relatively speaking. Since Job doesn’t mention Abraham or Moses or the laws or the Temple, some interpreters have considered it the oldest story ...
Post a Comment
Read more

While to That Rock I'm Clinging (Epiphany 2025)

I recently read a book that contained this line, “God can only be drilled out of us, not into us. I can see that now, from a distance.” God can only be drilled out of us, not into us. The author was discussing the griefs and losses of her life, but also her awareness of the larger scope of the movement and power that carries us all, even in the difficult seasons. You do not survive these seasons by thinking there is no God unless the idea of a God who cares, who is slow to anger, who is abounding in steadfast love has been drilled out of you.   How does the idea of God get “drilled out of a person”? In today’s scripture passages, we have an example of people who have held on to the majesty and mystery of God, even in times of trouble. Then we also have a person whose awareness of the Divine has been drilled out by a desire to retain power and worldly influence.  The magi or wise men were probably Persian astrologers or maybe Zoroastrian priests from the same region, modern-day...
Post a Comment
Read more