Faith, Works, and an Advent Swallowed by Christmas

Supposedly the great church reformer, Martin Luther, lobbied for removing several books from the New Testament. He thought they ran counter to his understanding of the gospel's focus on grace and faith. One of these was the Epistle of James, and a line from today's reading in that book surely bothered Luther.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

In the years and centuries since Luther, Christians, especially those of Protestant extraction, have created an often false dichotomy of "faith versus works." This has typically reduced faith to belief, creating a popular theology of "believing in Jesus" in order to get a ticket to heaven. Huge swaths of Jesus' teachings are dismissed, and we are left with what Brian McLaren aptly labels "a gospel of evacuation." Faith has little to do with earthly life. It is simply a cosmic insurance policy with premiums requiring mental assent to a certain doctrines.

I find myself thinking about faith and works and evacuations as the season of Advent draws close, as I begin looking at familiar prophetic passages about spears beaten into pruning hooks, good news offered to the oppressed, and release to the captives. These passages will likely make appearances in many congregations' worship during Advent, but our culture, and often the Church, has little use for Advent, other than as a warmup for Christmas.

Over the years, Christmas, originally a rather minor date on the Christian calendar, has largely swallowed Advent. The secular observance and commercialization of the holiday have certainly contributed to this. But so has a faith disconnected from living in ways that prepare for God's kingdom, lives that work for peace, for freeing the oppressed, and releasing the captives. When faith becomes about nothing more than believing a few things, what's to get ready for?

I'm glad James didn't get taken out of Protestant Bibles. It's a good reminder that faith is more than believing in God or Jesus. Luther knew that. After all, he was happy to leave in the Gospel of Matthew which ends with Jesus commanding those first disciples and the Church to go out and makes disciples of all peoples through baptism and by "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." If you've not read it, Matthew has lots and lots of works commanded by Jesus.

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