Real justification

A sermon on James 2:1-5, 8-10, 14-18

Jesus asked his companions “Who do people say I am?” It’s a good question ask about many of the people in the Bible. Take the author of the letter of James, for instance. How do people say he is? Unlike Jesus, James didn’t engage in any sort of “I am” statements so we are left with tradition to help us answer the question. Church tradition proposes that this letter was written by James of Jerusalem who was the brother of Jesus. However, there is nothing in the letter to identify the author as that James or any other. We really don’t know anything about the author, except that he wrote in fairly sophisticated Greek, something that might be unlikely if it were written by a simple Palestinian laborer. Some early church writers cast doubt on the identity of the author. Every book in the Bible has some measure of mystery about it. The uncertainty surrounding the book of James became an important issue for Martin Luther.

It is a Lutheran urban legend that Luther wanted to throw James out of the Bible. He did clearly express his doubts as to its origin. Here’s what he had to say; “Though this epistle of St. James was rejected by the ancients, I praise it and consider it a good book, because it sets up no doctrines of men but vigorously promulgates the law of God. However, to state my own opinion about it, though without prejudice to anyone, I do not regard it as the writing of an apostle…”
The center of Luther’s historic disagreement with this book is found in today’s reading. “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” About which Luther had this to say “In the first place it is flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works. Luther had his Road to Damascus moment – his big epiphany – during his contemplation of the Letter to the Galatians in which Paul wrote that we are “justified by faith in Jesus Christ.”

This has set up centuries of conflict about the role of faith and the role of works in our hope for salvation. But as always, context is everything. Luther’s issues with “works” came from his fight nearly to the death with the church hierarchy in Rome. He was particularly offended by the practice of indulgences. An indulgence was an action – usually a charitable one – undertaken after confession, absolution and penance in hopes of lessening one’s punishment prior to admission into heaven. I must confess that I can’t follow the logic of it. During Luther’s time, there had developed quite a lot of abuse around the selling of indulgences. It looked to Luther and others, as though the church was acting as a broker for sinners to buy their way into heaven, to buy God’s forgiveness. The church banned such practices in the 16th century but apparently under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, indulgences have made a comeback – but that’s beside the point of this sermon, I was just shocked when I saw it the other day.

Luther fueled the Protestant Reformation with his outrage at these abuses and planted his flag firmly in “justification by faith through God’s grace.” Faith in Jesus was the only way to be saved – the only way to be justified. The idea that anyone could play a role in their own salvation was an anathema as Reformation theology developed.

Well, Luther had his epiphany in the book of Galatians; I have had mine in Marcus Borg’s new book on Paul(The First Paul). What Borg and his partner Dominic Crossan have done – what they have uncovered and reclaimed is nothing short of “knock me off my horse and strike me blind” kind of stuff.

I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night thinking about this and mostly I have been wondering whether or not anyone will really care. You see, what would you think if I told you that the entire premise on which Christianity has been packaged and passed down to us is wrong? We have been told that in some distant time, long after we have left this mortal coil, the golden moment will come when we will all be raised and dwell with saints and angels in heaven. Our goal is get there, to not mess up so badly that we find ourselves on the outside looking in at the good times in God’s Kingdom. Some time after Paul wrote to his churches, Christianity became about the next life. Marcus Borg, God bless him! has been gently leading us with his book on Jesus and now his book on Paul, to the possibly uncomfortable awareness that we’ve had it all wrong.

Jesus and Paul did not talk about the promise of a better life in the next life. They both preached and lived the kingdom realized here and now. Borg points out that the question of “justification” may be stem from a misunderstanding of the word itself. It is defined in my Handbook of Theological Terms as “that act by which God brings man back into proper relationship with him.” It involves the forgiveness of sins, supernatural grace and all sorts of things. There are all kinds of disagreement about it – mostly around faith and works. Are you justified by simply believing in Jesus or does how you live your life have anything to do with it?

Borg and Crossan smack us between the eyes with their simple observation that Paul’s use of the words “justify” and “justification” are to be understood in a much more direct way. When we believe in Jesus, which means that we commit ourselves to what he was doing, then we can no longer act the way the world acts and we become just. We create justice and we do this here and now in our families and in our communities. Go figure that “justification” means “to become just!” With this definition, we can then actually understand that we are only right with God when we are right with each other. The letter of James makes more sense when we hear it in this light. You cannot be “in Christ” and live in the old way. Unless it shows in how you live with others, it isn’t of Christ – it is dead faith. Paul built churches with the intent that they would be a new kind of community and be like the mustard seed and spread like mustard. Previously unequal, hierarchical relationships, both personal and political would be transformed into just relationships of complete equality and then we would all see the kingdom.

But it didn’t happen that way. The world was too in love with power and the violence that maintains it to let go of it. The church was not able to resist being assumed into that world. Paul’s crazy experiment was just too dangerous for the ways of the world. So it was co-opted. The church became the most hierarchical institution ever imagined and lost it voice against the powers and principalities of the world. “Justification” was taken out of this world and redefined into the afterlife. The people who were granted full participation in Paul’s communities, women and slaves, were told to get over it and behave. The message was changed and we were all told to wait for justice until that time in the unknowable future.

I have found this profoundly disturbing and liberating at the same time. It fires my imagination and gives me strength. But my question remains – are we any more ready for the real Christianity now than we were 1900 years ago? Does knowing this change anything about how you understand why you belong to a church or why you might believe? Does this help you answer Jesus question “Who do people say that I am?” We can offer several answers, “He is the one who will get us into heaven?” or “He is the one who showed us and helped us to create heaven on earth?”