Real Faith Is Evident in Real Living!

16th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/9/18
James 1:17-27


Real Faith Is Evident in Real Living!
I. With mouth and ears
II. With hands and feet


Disconnects. Do you know that term? In one sense, they’re vital. Consider your home’s utilities. If your AC or furnace needs to be serviced, one of the first things the serviceman might do is disconnect the power. He doesn’t want to risk damaging your equipment or suffering electrocution.

The same holds true for your home’s water service. If you’ve ever experienced a major water leak, you know what I mean. You want to know immediately how to shut-off the water supply before more damage occurs. A disconnect is vital.

But disconnects can also be mortal. Mortal? As in possessing the power to kill? What do I mean?

I’m talking about your life of faith. I’m talking about the way that you live your Christian life. Jesus has brought you to spiritual life. In doing so, he’s empowered you to live in a way that shows you’re a Christian. But how evident is that? Do you struggle at times?

Christians always have. It’s the reason James wrote this letter. He was deeply disturbed by the fact that some people proclaimed to be Christians but failed to show it in their daily lives. There was a spiritual disconnect. And that wasn’t simply an unfortunate situation; James declared that is was spiritually mortal, deadly. He wrote, “Faith without deeds is dead” (2:26). His positive encouragement in this letter is, “Show me your faith by what you do.” Don’t just talk the talk; walk the walk.

Is your Christian faith evident to others in your daily life? Could you use some help? Then listen to what your Lord says to you and me this morning through his servant James. James declares that real faith is evident in real living. Let’s listen how, shall we?

Part I.

Are you familiar with the seven deadly sins? You’ve probably heard that term before, but do you recall what they are? Here’s the list: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. What makes those sins so deadly? They’re easy. They happen almost without our perceiving it. What’s more, they come so naturally. They seem like the right way to feel or the right thing to do. Even more so, everybody’s committing them, so what’s the problem? The problem is that, no matter how we feel about them, God declares them sinful and they deserve his punishment.

I don’t know whether James was familiar with the seven deadly sins or not, but he certainly reveals some sins that are so easy for us to commit. In fact, unless you take to heart what James says about them, you might not even know they’re sinful. Listen again to what he says, “Take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.” Ponder those words for a minute. Maybe the way to understand what those words means is to consider the opposite: being slow to listen and quick to speak. Has that ever been an appropriate description of the way you have behaved—slow to listen and quick to speak?

Honestly? Well, sure it has. It goes like this: “I already know what this person needs to hear from me, so why listen to them first? I’ve had enough. It’s time that this person listens to someone who knows better than they do.”

Yup. Been there. Done that. In fact, this method of approaching other people can easily become a way of life. It happens so easily. “There—I’ve said my piece. I’ve told them what I think. If they won’t listen, that’s their problem.”

That might be real living, but it’s not real faith. James declares, “Be quick to listen and slow to speak.” Listen first. To what? To whom? I can think of no better words to listen to first than the words of your Lord Jesus. What does Jesus say about this situation? What words of wisdom would he share with me as I try to help others? How does he want me to approach this situation? How does he want me to feel about this and then what does he want me to say about this?

And once we’ve listen to Jesus first, then listen to others. I realize that there comes a time when listening needs to end. But it needs to happen first. We win the right to speak when we’ve first listened to others. Listening to others first also reduces the possibility that we might judge them. And please use that term the way Jesus did. Jesus did tell us to point out the sins of others in a loving way. That’s not judging. Judging someone presumes to know their thoughts and intentions, and then it assumes the worst. How do I know what the other person is thinking and feeling unless I listen to them first?

And once you’ve listened, then speak. But be careful what you say. The Bible clearly states we should speak what’s loving. Love is patient and kind (1 Cor. 13). It doesn’t fly off the handle. Love isn’t rude, but considerate. It always speaks the truth in a loving way. Love speaks what the other person needs to hear in a loving way.

And when that’s the way we speak after we have listened, my Christian friends, then we are living our Christian faith.

Real faith is evident in real living, with mouth and ears.

I don’t see anyone of you disagreeing with what you’ve just heard. We’re all agreeing that’s the way we should live our Christian faith. And that’s easy to do when we’re all sitting here listening to the word of God in the friendly confines of our church. But it’s so much harder to put into practice out there in the real world where we’re assaulted every day by situations which make us want to scream at others, not listen to them. We’re tired of being taken advantage of. We’re tired of always trying to do the right thing. After all, look what it gets us? Nothing! It seems we’re always on the giving end of things and never on the receiving end.

Before we go down this selfish road of life any further, stop and take a look at Jesus. Look again how he handled things on the day Mark describes for us in today’s Gospel. Jesus didn’t spend his days walking with holy angels; he spent them with dusty sinners. He didn’t listen to people who understood him perfectly; he listened to people who, at times, had some fairly twisted ideas of who they thought Jesus should be. I’m not sure what this deaf and mute man thought about Jesus. Jesus knew, but it didn’t matter. On this day Jesus chose to focus his attention on this one sinful man in a world full of sinners. There were some formidable obstacles for Jesus to overcome in order to have a relationship with this man, but Jesus didn’t let them deter him. He overcame them. Because that’s who Jesus is.

He overcame the barrier of sin that separates you and me from him. He suffered and died to bring us close to him forever. And now he empowers us to live our Christian faith each day with our mouth and ears as we overcome barriers to having relationships with them—relationships that will help them spiritually. That’s real living. Real faith is evident in real living with mouth and ears.

Part II.

Marginalizing a person is easy. If we decide that we don’t like them, we just push them to the outer limits of our lives. If we don’t feel like helping them with their problems, we try to justify our lack of concern. We assign their welfare to someone else and absolve ourselves of any responsibility.

And I get it. You have your own issues to deal with. You can only handle so much. Your capacity to help others is limited.

But Jesus doesn’t command us to solve the world’s problems. He doesn’t tell us to overcome poverty or disease. He has never told us that, if we apply ourselves, we can make everyone else happy.

What does he command? The first thing is this: Love him above all else. Make Jesus the center of your life. Place his word and command above every other word and command. If there’s a choice between Jesus and everything else in your life, choose Jesus.

And the second command is this: Love your neighbor. In this letter of James he says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Let me restate that in a way that fits nicely with our focus: Live your faith with your hands and feet. What help do others need? What gifts and abilities and time and energy has God given you today? How will you use them to help others? How will your real faith be evident in your real life?

That’s a good question. And God doesn’t answer that question exactly for you. He just gives you some examples—widows and orphans. He doesn’t give you all the answers so that you attempt to create a list, check the items on that list off as you think you’ve accomplished them, and then hold them up before God as evidence that you love him.

Instead, he asks you to wrestle with each situation, to be filled with love for Jesus, and then to let that love determine what you’ll do and to what extent. Go with your hands and feet. That’s real faith being evident in real living.

Go back to today’s Gospel. If you had been Jesus on this day, what would you have done for this man? Given that we don’t have the power to help him speak or hear, it seems like anything we could have done would have fallen short. So why even bother trying?

Because that’s what real faith does. Real faith knows how imperfect—sinful—we are, and what Jesus did to remove our sins from us. He helped us by dying for us. He made us his own people to share his love with others.

How will your faith show in real living this week? What difference will you make in someone else’s life? May Jesus guide and strengthen you, so that your real faith in him is evident in real living! Amen.