David Kowalick—Year B Proper 17

Anthony: We’re going to look at this month’s lectionary passages, and we’re going to pivot now to our first passage of the month. It’s James 1: 17-27. I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, the updated edition. It’s the Revised Common Lectionary Passage for Proper 17 in Ordinary Time, which is September the 1.

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. ¹⁸ In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave birth to us by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. ¹⁹ You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, ²⁰ for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. ²¹ Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. ²² But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³ For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴ for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵ But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. ²⁶ If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷ Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

David, I’d be grateful if you would tell us about the good news that is shoehorned into verses 17 and 18 to start this passage, and what are the theological implications of what is said there?

David: Yeah, James is one of those controversial books. It was Luther who said that it was a book of straw. I know that’s taken a little bit out of context because he still believed that it was meant to be in the scriptures, but he saw it as being not perhaps a top-shelf letter compared to some of the other letters.

And that makes perfect sense coming from his particular point of view and his background. He was so overwhelmed by the grace of God that it blinded him to everything else, I think.

And I think, sometimes I look at the church today, and I see that there are a lot of churches that are still very legalistic, and you see it as a performance. Prerequisites have to be fulfilled before God will bless you and all that kind of thing.

But then there’s been a large wave of churches that have embraced this message of grace. But then seem to have virtually lost the outworking of that grace in a life of (like the writer to James says) not only knowing these things but doing them. And I’ve fallen into that trap myself. I’ve experienced that because I had a profound experience of God’s grace that totally turned me around and it was shocking. It was amazing. It was wonderful. And then I began to preach a message of grace, but I preached it almost to the exclusion of everything else.

And I think what James is doing here is he’s taking the grace of God, right there at the beginning, he’s saying this is all coming down, it’s a gift from above, it’s all coming from the Father.

And it’s not burying, it’s just there’s no shadow of turning, as it says in the Old King James. But you can turn that light around, it doesn’t cast a shadow in any direction because it’s not a reflected light, it is the source of light. And so, God is consistent, he never changes, he’s good every day, doesn’t have mood swings. And so, you can be totally reliant on God’s goodness every day of the week and in every possible way.

But then, I think, this whole point of this entire letter is perhaps to bring correction for what he was seen happening in the broader church at that time. And I think that his letter is very relevant for the Western church right now, especially churches that have actually adopted the message of grace and have adopted it so much that they have almost seen things like good works as being very suspect that you could fall into works righteousness if you do anything that’s good or you strive too much.

And yet I look at the life of, say, the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, where he says that he was the least deserving of all the apostles because he’d been persecuting the church. But he said, I am what I am by the grace of God, and I work harder than them all, that is all the other apostles. So, he’s saying he’s received a lot of grace, but the effect of that is that he’s thrown himself into service. He’s saying that the grace of God has an effect, it has an ongoing outworking.

And I believe that’s exactly what James is trying to say. If you have received this wonderful gift from the Father of Lights, then it will have an effect upon you, or it should have an effect upon you, unless, of course, you forget what’s really going on here.

It’s like looking in the mirror. And you forget what’s really going on, and you lose sight of the extraordinary nature of God’s grace and its ability to turn you around and cause you to live a life which is a complete variance to what you had experienced before.

It’s not just the relief of salvation; it’s the capacity to serve and the capacity to respond, in kind, to what God has done. I’ve had to personally go through that corrective experience myself. And I always looked at James and thought I don’t want to preach from James. I want to preach from Galatians or whatever.

And but as I’ve gone on in ministry, I’ve discovered, yeah, we really need to hear the fullness of the gospel of grace is not just about what we’re saved from, it’s what we’re saved into. And it’s not just all sitting in the lap of God and enjoying him as Father. It’s going on to become sons of God.

And I think we’ve stopped at just the familial relationship, but the term “son of God” means someone who’s been given the divine authority to rule. And the way we’re made to rule is by living a life that serves the purposes in the kingdom of God and speaks to the world around us.

And there’s work to be done, even in the life to come. It’s not going to be just one big, long celebration and endless worship services. There’s work to be done. And that work, I really do believe, begins in this life, in the way we serve those that we’ve been given to serve around us in practical ways.

And so, unlike what a lot of people seem to be saying, it is actually a book of grace.

I think I’ve raved on enough.

Anthony: Ha, no, amen and I’m encouraged by what you said, grace turned your life around. Thank God for it because it’s turned all of us around and yet we look to a God who doesn’t turn. There’s no shadow there and thanks be to God for it.

And as I think about this particular pericope, David, it seems to me the remainder of the text is that outworking that you spoke about, our response to God’s grace, the reality that God is hyper generous and there’s no shadow or shady thing found in the Trinity.

So, if you were preaching this particular text, what else would you draw out from the passage to bless, to encourage, to challenge the community of faith?

David: I’d be willing to reiterate just what we’ve already said that God’s goodness is unvarying and then to give that sort of practical application. But I noticed he talks about looking into the law of liberty. It’s the law. I believe sometimes we see the law as almost like an enemy.

And the law, God’s law, which I mean, I think from a Jewish point of view, it is just a list of moral requirements. It’s not just the Ten Commandments. It’s rather, it’s the whole of the Old Covenant, first five books of the Bible in particular, that story of those first five books sets up the history of the world.

And we see that we’re connected to that history, and that history actually being outworked in our time, in our lives, individually and corporately. And that what we together are — and when I say together, the entire church right across the world, all the believers, and all across time, too — are involved in the history of the outworking of the law.

And so, the law isn’t, again, it’s not just this kind of — I think evangelical churches tend to make the law into a moral code. And even if they say it’s more than that, it’s the feeling you get when you hear people talking about the law. That it’s merely a moral code when it’s so, so much more than that.

There is a moral aspect to it, but we can overemphasize that and miss the point of what the law was trying to do. Part of the law is the blessing of Abraham and the promise of the coming Messiah. And that promise is, in part, fulfilled through the church as the church demonstrates the people of God living a life which is, again, a variance to the ideologies of the world and the way the world lives.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience. These days you get to share the gospel, and when I was taught the whole “Romans Road” way of doing the gospel, which I don’t agree with anymore. But you can’t make people feel guilty anymore. People just don’t feel guilty. I talk to a lot of younger people, and they will actually say, “I’m the bad person? You’re the one with the issues. You’re bigoted. You have a narrow view of the world.”

And trying to give people that sense that they need salvation — boy, people just reject that out of hand these days. It’s the big story, it’s the meta story, it’s behind everything. I believe it actually informs us about everything that’s going on in the world.

And yet it comes down to this very practical thing of looking after those around you and loving those that are around you and bridling your tongue and caring for the widow and the orphan and so on. This is the way to people’s hearts, not by clashing ideologies. So, there’s very practical work and it’s very, I’ve got to say, it’s very challenging work too.

I’m way, way less than I ought to be. And yet there’s a trajectory that I see in a person’s life. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people say, I feel like I’m totally failing. I’m not like the people in the Bible. I just wish that I could be better. And then I say, you’re exactly like the people in the Bible.

If you had a long, hard look at the life of Peter, for instance, and seeing the way he fell flat on his face numerous times. Even Paul, he was no fun at parties, and all the Old Testament characters and David and half the Bible is written by murderers.

It’s mind banging when you see it that way and realize that you’re not expected to get your life completely sorted out by Tuesday next week. It’s an ongoing process. But when you look back over the last five years, if you became a believer or something like that, how much have you changed?

And that’s when the lights go on and they say, yeah, I’m a different person. I live a different life. And things that I used to do, I absolutely hate them now, and things that I had no care for, they’re the love of my life now.

And so sometimes just getting out and seeing what has actually happened, and that even though we may stumble from time to time, it’s a slow-motion miracle that we’re involved in.

It doesn’t happen overnight. And that’s true for everyone in the Bible. It’s true for all of the famous believers, these books we’ve read, and so on. No one is above reproach. But at the same time, there is a moral element. There’s a moral change, and a change of perception about the world and what we’re about.

And it’s that, I believe, that brings the moral change. The moral change, really in the end, is the fruit of all this other stuff. It’s not the cause of it. I guess that’s the big thing to get across and I think James does brilliantly.

Anthony: Yeah. Slow motion miracle. I like the way you phrase that. That’s what’s at work here.