To be saved is to act as a neighbor, because you are forever bound up and embraced by the non-negotiable love of God.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 23 B
Texts: James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37; Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; and using Luke 10:25-37
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
“What do I have to do to be saved?” a lawyer once asked Jesus.
Since this was a religious lawyer, an expert in God’s law, Jesus said, “you tell me.” “Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself,” the lawyer replied. “Great,” Jesus said. “Do that and live.”
“And who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked.
Now, this isn’t our Gospel today. But James’ words kept calling me into Jesus’ Samaritan story. See, Jesus tells a story as an answer and completely reverses the lawyer’s question. He tells of a man beaten and left for dead, of a priest and a Levite who walk by on the other side of the road, and of a Samaritan, one the nearly dead man would have looked down on, regarded as lesser, even as enemy, who binds his wounds, and gets him to a safe place.
And then Jesus asks the only question he thinks matters: “Who acted as a neighbor?”
And James chimes in with a hearty, “Amen, brother.”
James sees the partiality, the prejudice, his people are living with, judging others by their looks, clothes, wealth, status, and treating those who impress them with care and consideration. Those who don’t are ignored, treated as lesser.
And James can’t understand how people who claim faith in Christ Jesus could act that way. You’re doing well, he says, if you keep Christ’s law, “love your neighbor as yourself.” But when you pick and choose who gets to be your neighbor, you’re breaking that law.
For James, it’s clear: if you say you trust in Christ Jesus, and you don’t act in a changed way, a way of divine love, there’s no point. If your faith doesn’t make you into Christ, loving as Christ, serving as Christ, he doesn’t think it’s worth anything other than a quick burial.
Here’s where we clutch our Lutheran pearls to our chest and sink down in a faint.
Isn’t James mixing works with grace? we ask. If being saved means loving your neighbor, acting as a neighbor, what about God’s free grace? Aren’t we just throwing that away?
It’s time we stop that nonsense once and for all. It is the clear witness of Scripture, of Christ Jesus himself, that you and all people are beloved of God now and always. The Triune God revealed that love in person in Christ Jesus, taught it, showed it, carried it to the cross and broke death with it. God’s love for you, for me, for all people is non-negotiable. Always.
But we have it on the authority of God-with-us, Jesus himself, that being saved is more than the reality of God’s love. The Triune God’s non-negotiable love is the truth of the universe, the reality behind all things, the foundation, the air, the atmosphere of a saved life, a saved world.
But a life that is saved, according to Jesus himself, is a life lived in love of God and love of neighbor. When you love your neighbor you know salvation, or healing, as the word also means in Greek. When you act as a neighbor, that is, act as the God who loves you, you know what it is to be healed and whole.
“Who acted as a neighbor?” Jesus asks. “That one knows salvation.”
And James adds, “and that one knows no distinctions.”
This is the challenge of the saved, healed life: to end all our distinctions between people and see as God sees, love as God loves. To see beyond wealth and nice clothes. To give more than words to someone who is hungry and actually feed them. To love enemies and pray for them. To see God’s face in all people. To make no distinctions between whom you will care for and whom you won’t, because God doesn’t, and the question is never “who is my neighbor?”, but always “who acted as a neighbor?”
And if you think it’s hard, you have company. Even Jesus struggled with this. Luke and John tell a different story, but in Matthew and Mark, Jesus seems to have to learn this. This woman who insists on having Jesus see her and her daughter is one of the most important persons in the history of the Church, according to Matthew and Mark. She’s the wedge who forever cracks open the Son of God to expand the mission to all God’s people, not just the Jewish people.
And here’s the true grace in all this:
We belong to the one who “does everything well,” as the people marvel about Jesus, “who even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” Jesus is the longed for coming the psalmist and Isaiah promise today: “God will come and save you, open the eyes of the blind, and the ears of the deaf, and heal the limbs that are lame.”
Now do you understand? The Triune God in Christ heals you, saves you, by making you into God’s love in the world. God opens your blinded eyes to see all of God’s children in need as your concern. God unplugs your deaf ears to hear all the cries of God’s children, even the ones you don’t like, so you can act as neighbor. God cures your paralysis, your lameness, and gets you up off your couch and empowers you to go into the world as God’s love and do something. Do something. Be a neighbor.
So, “be strong, do not fear,” Isaiah says.
This is the heart of God’s grace. The non-negotiable love God has for you and for all people is also the power that heals you to be a neighbor and bring God’s love wherever you go.
And when you act as a neighbor, as God’s love, the same love that holds you and surrounds you and feeds you and gives you breath, you will know what the Triune God means by saving you.
And then, Isaiah says, look out. That’s when water breaks forth in deserts, when people start leaping for joy, singing like they’ve never sung before. That’s when God’s dreamed-for healing of this world really starts to happen.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
