Abstract
Be doers of the word and not merely hearers. . . (James 1: 22)
If the great Reformer Martin Luther had had his way, the letter of James would have been torn from the Bible, a wrong turning in the winding road that led to the canon of Scripture. His dismissal of this ‘right straw-y epistle’ was because it seemed to call in question St Paul’s ringing declaration that our authenticity as Christians was not to be measured by our deeds—gestures which impressed others, but by the quality of our faith, something so private that it can’t be seen and evaluated. This was the pearl of lost theology that had found its moment to re-emerge at the Reformation to challenge the tariff of good behaviours that guaranteed your Christian credentials. Faith alone could render someone open to the channels of the grace that saved. ‘We hold [wrote Paul] that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law’ (Romans 3:28)—that is, the rules of respectability and good social standing that the ancient Law had laid down.
But if it is true that this writer clashes with Paul, does it matter? Are we right to assume all the books of the Bible should agree with each other? You see this expressed when a church commission tackles a thorny issue by beginning its report with the ‘biblical basis’. Is it possible (as John Barton suggests) 1 that Scripture is not always self-consistent. Can there be various biblical voices which are in dialogue with each other and which together reach for the truth?
What is James’s voice? Here in this passage is found the famous exhortation to be doers of the word, not just hearers. We resonate with that; we do not want to be seen as ‘holier than thou’ amongst our peers. Proudly we say: Our faith is about deeds not dogmas! Churches may have been closed for their arcane practices during the recent pandemic but the highly visible community service that congregations offered was praised both within and outside the church. This is our public justification. The pilgrimages and the penances of earlier times have never really gone away, Reformation or not. Philanthropists are among the most admired in our society, from the IT millionaire who funds anti-poverty projects to the company which directs part of its profits towards tackling the climate emergency. And there is no mistaking the self-congratulation we can feel when giving to charity. James, however, picks up his pen and pulls the carpet from under our feet.
Take the mirror, he demands, a striking image for us now but all the more so for the original hearers since it was the ‘latest thing’. Pliny the Elder tells us that it was only in the first century that the use of glass along with lead or gold leaf was replacing the centuries-old mirrors of polished metals or stone, so prone to scratch and tarnish. Anyone will recognise the writer’s vignette of the quick glance in a mirror to check that everything is in place before looking away and, reassured, promptly forgetting what you saw, and get on with your day, following the routine without thought. James urges us: You have forgotten that as well as being acceptable in appearance and reputation among our fellows, there is another, more searching, obligation upon us—namely to reach back to our ‘birth by the word of truth’ (v. 18), our baptism into Christ, which is the true wellspring of our good deeds. It is wonderful reassurance to be reminded that we do not need to build an architecture of acceptability, to strain and worry that we are not doing enough. ‘Every generous act of giving . . . is from above (v. 17). Our faith comes already parcelled up with good, generous, and gracious conduct. Yes, we are to be hearers—but not, however, ‘hearers who deceive themselves’ (v. 22). This is what Jesus was saying too in the gospel reading when the trolls of the day criticised his table manners. It’s not what goes in that defiles, what a particular society or century consider socially agreeable, but what comes out, when you speak and act in accord with your convictions, the quality of the love you bear towards others.
Perhaps there is not so much disagreement between James and Paul after all. Luther seems to have admitted this. He wrote: ‘Faith alone justifies, yet faith is never alone; where there is not love, neither is there faith, but mere hypocrisy.’ The outer must match the inner. Secular culture understands this. In the non-fiction bestseller lists, books about wellbeing jockey for top honours with manuals on etiquette, where Good vibes—good life can share the shelf with Would it kill you to stop doing that: a modern guide to manners. But how do we build the connection? how do you ensure that your deeds match the faith you have been taught and learned?
Today’s ‘cancel culture’ puts this dilemma sharply. The tottering statues, the streets renamed, the reading lists revised, the biographies rewritten, all call in question the true worth of history’s heroes. A music critic recently revealed that the great composer Handel invested in the slave trade, like many of his contemporaries. Should we now silence the Messiah at Christmas? Yet he—history also tells us—was a generous man, a benefactor of various charities, including one for abandoned children. His music shows a deep compassion for the dispossessed. Who could suggest that his music for ‘He was despised, rejected’ was merely a trick of harmonies?
The issue of slavery has several parallels today, none more pressing than the climate emergency and the threat to the planet, an issue which has given rise to a new observance in the Christian Year, Creationtide, that begins next Sunday. Will it be our indifference to this that causes our next century descendants to topple our statues into the rising sea?
In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Unsheltered Willa Knox is in a graveyard having buried the ashes of her father-in-law, and is talking with her daughter Tig, early twenties, small, shock-haired, determined, idealistic. Tig is caring for her brother’s baby, and the talk is of his future.
Tig shook her head. ‘It’s so, so scary. . . . Storms we can’t deal with, so many people homeless. Not just homeless but placeless. . . . You can’t shelter in place anymore when there isn’t a place. . . . You and Dad did your best. But all the rules have changed and it’s hard to watch people keep carrying on . . . like it’s business as usual.’ ‘All the rules. Really?’ Tig nodded almost imperceptibly, like a seed head bobbing on its stem. . . . People can change their minds about little things, but on the big ones they’d rather die first. . . . You want a nice house that’s all your own, you want your kids to have more than you did.’ ‘I’m human, Tig. We live, we consume. I think that’s just how we have to be.’ ‘Of course you have to think that. When everybody around you thinks the same way, you can’t even see what you’re believing in.’
James is calling us—and his voice has developed a note of urgency as it comes across the centuries—to check into our core faith and allow it to critique our knee-jerk actions and decisions. Church Times columnist Angela Tilby, reflecting on this newly-discovered blemish on Handel’s reputation, remarks: ‘part of our human tragedy is that, in spite of our capacity for compassion and our recognition of wrongdoing, we don’t always recognise the evils in which we are complicit. . . .We all need forgiveness when we know not what we do.’ 2
To ‘cancel’ those who have failed the test set by our zeal to root out institutional racism, or misogyny, or other injustices that have emerged through the cracks in our contemporary culture, is to sanitise our history so that we cannot learn from it. Yet the opposite—that we automatically forgive our ancestors their blind spots, deliberate or unconscious, is not the right answer either. What we should not forget, however, is that those who are given ‘birth by the word of truth’ must constantly grow to maturity in Christ (Eph. 4.9–16). Hard to believe, but the U.S. Library of Congress currently lists more than 3,000 recordings of the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’. Even after his conversion, the writer John Newton became master of a slave ship. Yet as a Church of England clergyman he was later to attract and influence many social reformers, including Hannah More and William Wilberforce, and his London church (where Bank underground station now stands) became a centre of the campaign for the abolition of slavery.
What is justification but faith furnished with love?