James 2.1-17

James 2.1-17

Our lives are built around many calendars with many new starts to many new years. The secular calendar that begins on January 1st is only one example. There is the church calendar, the fiscal calendar, and the school calendar. All of them hold the promise of a new beginning. Very few deliver on that promise.

January 1st certainly doesn’t. It’s lost in the aftermath of Christmas and never lives up to expectations; any sense of a new beginning disappears with the first failed resolution. The new church year begins on the First Sunday of Advent, the end of November or beginning of December. And while I really like it, I am also aware that only keen observers of liturgical details pay much attention to it; most everyone has been looking ahead to Christmas since October. As for the fiscal year? Who but accountants even knows when that begins? Only the school year delivers on the promise of a new beginning. You may be long-past school days yourself, but you can still feel the rhythm of this calendar: summer has come and gone; the air is filled with expectation. And here at church, a new year of faith formation for youth and adults brings a palpable sense of a beginning that matters: growth in grace and holiness. It’s time to begin again.

Today’s reading from the letter of James offers the perfect theme to mark the beginning of this new year. James takes us to the heart of faith alive with the love of God. “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” What a great theme to kick-off a new year! This royal law, as James calls it, is the guiding precept of the kingdom of God, a central subject through the whole Bible, Old Testament and New. When a scholar of religious law once asked Jesus what the first and great commandment was, Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” Immediately he added, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Everything in the law and prophets, everything in the scripture from the Old Testament onward, begins with and is built on, love of God and love of neighbor—the royal law in the kingdom of God.

For us to learn and know this royal law is to come to know Jesus himself. “In this is love,” says the letter of 1st John, “not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent the Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Our response, where faith begins, is to follow Jesus who leads the way. “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” This responding love is not so much an emotion as an act of self-giving, of opening ourselves in service to others for their well-being. Is it easy? You’ve tried it; you know it’s not. But it is essential. GK Chesterton noted the challenge. “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies, because often they are the same people.” Yet not to love others is not an option. The question is how, especially when we regard others as wrong or dangerous or cruel. Or they us. Yet God’s love for the world is not about our purity or being right. In Romans, Paul says, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”

Then how do we love the way God loves? The first Christians needed encouragement and guidance to live the royal law of love. So do we. The New Testament letters written by Paul, Peter, John, and today’s second reading from James all include a section that coaches us in how to translate words of faith into deeds of faith, to be doers of the word and not merely hearers, good news accompanied by good actions. At the start of a new faith formation year, we are reminded that we need guidance in the ways of God from scripture, prayer, and the Spirit at work in our lives so that our faith isn’t mere words. ‘Faith by itself, if it does not lead to action, is a lifeless thing,’ James says—an empty shell. To fulfill the royal law according to scripture, to love the people that God has placed around us in the way that Christ loves us is, to use Paul’s words, to live a life of “faith active in love.”

All sorts of good actions grow from the good news of God’s love. And so much of it is practical, within our capacity to take on and live out. The book of Leviticus in the Old Testament is the first place that the theme of faith active in deeds of love is expressed. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

Leviticus then explores the implications of this command in a variety of ways, all that seek the good of others. No stealing, no deception, no slander or saying terrible things about others just because they can’t hear you. Of that last example, Leviticus has in mind not speaking ill of deaf people; we might add not saying things about others that we would never say to them. This is what love means. Don’t take advantage of foreigners living in your land but treat them as fellow citizens. What a gift that biblical principle could bring to the discussion of immigration. This is what love means. When you’re harvesting your field or garden, don’t take everything that’s there, says Leviticus, but leave some behind for the poor and hungry so they can come and gather something to eat. The community gardens here do that by giving produce to local food pantries for the hungry poor in our community. This is what love means. This is love beyond warm feelings but love that looks to the well-being of others. So much of it is practical, within our capacity to take on and live out.

Today James offers examples of his own. There is, for example, no discrimination within the congregation. “Do you, with your acts of favoritism, really believe in our Lord Jesus Christ?” God sees and loves all alike; there is no privilege for one group over another. Believers making their first steps in a life of Christian faith needed to hear this; so do we. Because isn’t it natural to assess people, size them up, establish a pecking order, put some down, keep our distance from others, flatter the ones we think might do us a favor, but slight the ones who look like they have nothing to offer. James coaches us to go against the grain of this natural human tendency. God shows no partiality. “But if you show partiality,” James says today, “you commit sin.” Not easy, but essential. It is the royal law.

And there is no sending away people in need with empty words or religious jargon—not least the cold, the hungry, and the poor. Jesus-centered faith includes Jesus-centered faithfulness. “If someone is naked and lacks daily food and you say, ‘Keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet do not supply their bodily needs, what good is that?” From the very first chapter, James identifies self-giving care for people in need as a mark of living faith. “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

An early Christian by the name of Tertullian found himself in the position of having to defend Christians—their beliefs and behaviors—because the first followers of Jesus stood out as very different from the world around them, were looked on with suspicion and skepticism. In a world motivated by hatred, by making distinctions between rich and poor, often for the rich at the expense of the poor, Tertullian wrote about how Christians were motivated by something else entirely. All the suspicions, rumors, and scorn directed at Christians come from jealousy, Tertullian said, because Christians witnessed to a way of life that their non-believing neighbors didn’t possess and couldn’t figure out. “It is mainly deeds of love so noble that lead many to put a brand on us and say, ‘See how they love one another.’” This was not meant as a compliment. But it was.

‘See how they love one another,’ was its own witness to Christ. It was evangelism, not of street corner preaching but of street people serving, of good actions to accompany the good news. Maybe this is the best sort of evangelism for us shy Episcopalians: a quiet way of life that stands out from the division and dissension that press in on us, a way through something we can’t get away from—generous, hopeful, peace-filled people with beautiful lives, good deeds pointing to the love of God in Jesus so that we stand out from the world around us. “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom,” James says today. “Mercy triumphs over judgement.” Mercy triumphs. Mercy.

As we kick off a new calendar on a new year of faith formation and life together, it’s hard to imagine a better and more promising start than to make the central theme of the scripture the central theme of our life. “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The letter of James guides us in a spirit-filled and lively faith, alive with the love of God in Jesus Christ. Love in action, love as action, comes to us from Jesus himself. Faith translated into action is the very thing our Lord did: food for the hungry, forgiveness for sinners, well-being for the sick, a refuge for all of us so weighed down and tired. His good news was accompanied by his good actions. Our love of neighbor is an echoing response to how God first loved us.

In Jesus Christ, there is always a new beginning, a beginning that does deliver on what it promises: growth in grace and holiness. It’s time to begin again.