Works or faith?
Strange News but Good News
Strange News but Good News
September 13, 2009, Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 50:5-9 James 2:14-18 Mark 8:27-35
To the churched and unchurched[1]
gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]
Second reading from James
My dear brothers and sisters, what good is it to claim to have faith, if you don’t have good works? Can that kind of faith save anyone? If a brother has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and you say to him, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat heartily,” and then don’t give him clothes and food, what good is that? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.
The word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
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Introduction
September
The nation’s yearly liturgy began with Memorial Day honoring our war dead. It peaked with the fiery displays of the Fourth of July celebrating our independence. It began to taper off with the Labor Day Weekend as we tried to get in one last lick at summer before settling down in earnest to school and to work. The national liturgy ends finally with Thanksgiving Day (that mother of all the nation’s feasts) when “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go” to give thanks. After that, the Church’s liturgy takes over with Advent in preparation for Christmas 2009.
In northern climes September is a definite turning point; the first signs of fall begin to appear. Driving along a country road these days you suddenly come upon spotty swaths of gold and red on a herd of maple trees grazing on a hillside. Through windows ajar at night now you breathe in cool wafts of autumn air, as you lie cozily under an added blanket and listen to crickets singing of summer spent.
In northern climes September is a definite turning point; the first signs of fall begin to appear. Driving along a country road these days you suddenly come upon spotty swaths of gold and red on a herd of maple trees grazing on a hillside. Through windows ajar at night now you breathe in cool wafts of autumn air, as you lie cozily under an added blanket and listen to crickets singing of summer spent.
Luther’s problem: terror
The second reading from James brings to mind that great historical controversy of the sixteenth century concerning Justification. That controversy was about how are we justified – how are we put right with God? It was about what we must do to make God feel good about us. It was that issue, even more than the abuses of the sixteenth century church, which fired up the Reformation led by Martin Luther. (1483-1546)
Luther was a devout Augustinian monk immersed in the Roman Catholic piety of his day. Working hard at trying to put himself right with God, he scrupulously performed all the monastic observances, subjecting himself to an arduous regimen of praying, fasting and scourging his body. Despite all his efforts, at the end of the day he felt that his good works hadn’t worked. He felt they hadn’t succeeded in making God feel good about him, and that terrified Luther.
Luther was a devout Augustinian monk immersed in the Roman Catholic piety of his day. Working hard at trying to put himself right with God, he scrupulously performed all the monastic observances, subjecting himself to an arduous regimen of praying, fasting and scourging his body. Despite all his efforts, at the end of the day he felt that his good works hadn’t worked. He felt they hadn’t succeeded in making God feel good about him, and that terrified Luther.
Luther’s solution: amazing grace
How did he manage to lift himself out of his terror and despair? One day as he was studying St. Paul’s Epistle to Romans in his heated study in the tower of the Black Cloister in Wittenberg, he came upon the words, “For the Gospel (the Good News) reveals how God puts us right with Himself: this is accomplished from start to finish through faith. As scripture says, `The righteous shall live by faith.[3]’” (Rom 1:17) Luther also found the same consoling Good News in Paul’s epistle to Galatians that we are justified not by works but by grace alone. (Gal 3: 13; l5: 1) At that moment in the tower, he tells us, he rediscovered the Gospel, and all heaven opened to comfort his tormented soul.
In what seemed to be a privileged moment of revelation Luther, who had exhausted himself trying to buy God off with his good works, discovered the incredibly Good News that salvation is free: the price that Luther couldn’t pay Christ had already paid for him by His death on the cross. That Good News freed the terrified Luther from the impossible task of trying to buy God off with good works, and it opened heaven for him.
Luther’s amazing discovery couldn’t contain itself; it burst forth into that battle hymn of the Reformation: Amazing Grace. That hymn is filled with heartfelt gratitude that what sinful wretches could not do for themselves Christ did for them upon the cross.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,That saved a wretch like me -I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now, I see.
Even Catholics love that great Protestant hymn, although we perhaps don’t sing it with the full overtones of the Reformation.
A straw epistle
No wonder then that Luther had no use for the epistle of St. James. It seemed to deflate the wonderful and relieving Good News he had come upon in the tower that good works don’t work before God but faith alone does. Accordingly, he questioned the canonicity of James’ letter. He called it “an epistle of straw and destitute of evangelical character.”
Some Roman Catholics, however, call it “The Achilles heel of the Reformation.” Who’s right in that historical controversy over Justification? Who’s right in that centuries-old battle between faith and good works (a controversy which, by the way, has lost much of its urgency today, when people are not very conflicted either by faith or by good works)? Who’s right? The Lutherans or the Catholics?
The Lutherans are right.
Lutherans who protest that good works don’t work for God are right. Protestant theologian Paul Tillich writes that all our virtue is flawed: there is pride in our humility, selfishness in our generosity, self-centeredness in our God-centered lives. It's divine mercy and grace, he says, that puts human endeavor beyond tragedy. Without mercy and grace not only our bad works but also our good works would terrorize our conscience.
The Lutherans are right: good works don’t work for God. That message, so strange to our capitalistic society, is woven throughout the New Testament. It’s in the parable about laborers in a vineyard who worked all day long in the heat, only to receive at sunset the very same pay as those who came much later. (Mt 20: 1-16) It’s found also in the parable about the two men who went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee who got up to pray and told God about his good works -- how he fasted twice a week and paid tithes on all his income. The other was a tax collector who had no good works to show for himself. He simply bowed down to the ground and asked for mercy. When the sun set that day, the tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home justified – set right -- in the sight of God. (Lk 18:9-14)
And Catholics are right.
But Catholics also are right: good works do work. They might not work for God, but they do, indeed, work for us. Jesus said they work: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me to drink. I was naked and you clothed me. Come, therefore, you blessed of my Father and take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of creation.” (Mt 25:33-40)
Catholics are right: good works do work. They might not work for God, but they do, indeed, work for us. That message is woven into Jesus’ parables. It’s in the parable of the master who puts one of his servants in charge of his fellow servants before taking off for a wedding party. The servant in charge is a good man. He doesn’t eat and drink with the drunkards in the house. He doesn’t beat up on the other servants in his charge. He’s kind and gives them food at feeding time. He doesn’t sleep on the job. He’s vigilant and wakeful. No matter when the master comes home, whether at midnight or even later, the servant is ready to open the door as soon as the master knocks. When the master returns from the wedding party, he’s very pleased and rewards the good works of his servant. He dons an apron, prepares a fine dinner, seats his servant at table and serves him. (Lk 12:35-44)
Again, Catholics are right: good works do work. They might not work for God, but they do, indeed, work for us. That’s the message also of the Good Samaritan parable. On the road to Jericho one day a man was waylaid by robbers and left half-dead. Along came a Samaritan who stopped and poured the oil of compassion upon the poor man’s wounds and carried him to the nearest inn where he paid for his care and cure. (Lk 10:30-37) The Samaritan’s good work might not have worked for God, but it did, indeed, work for the poor man who desperately needed help. More importantly, it worked for the Samaritan himself. He needed his own good work even more urgently than the victim himself; it turned him into that immortal Good Samaritan of all ages.
Conclusion
Strange news but Good News
Good works don’t work before God. That’s strange news for us who from mother’s milk were told by elders and even at times by preachers to “Be good, and God will love you!” Good works don’t work before God. That’s strange news, because it introduces us to a brand new kind of God: a God who does not hate us because we are bad, and a God who does not love us because we are good; rather, a God who loves us because He is good! And that strange news is Good News, indeed!
[1] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church institution has left!
