Friday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
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February 18, 2022“Go and Do the Same”
Martin Luther famously called the Letter of James, “The epistle of straw.” That was actually more nuanced than it sounds but was based largely on, first, Luther’s questioning of the authorship of the letter, and then that it never speaks of Christ’s death and resurrection, thus making it a “secondary” scripture, meaning it held less authority (for Luther). But primarily what annoyed Luther was James’ saying that “faith without works is dead.” That seemed to directly refute the Apostle Paul’s teaching (primarily in Rom 4:1-5 as well as Gal 3:1-7) that we are saved (“justified” in Paul’s term) by faith in Jesus, not by works (also a core principle of Luther’s). But Paul was not speaking of “good works” that James is speaking of but rather the “works” of the Jewish Mosaic law. Paul claimed that the Jews could not be saved by only keeping the Mosaic law, but only through faith in Jesus, which all Christians affirm. (As for authorship, the author of the letter almost certainly was not the Apostle James, the brother of John, who was killed early on according to Acts 12. It could be James, the “brother of Jesus” (Mt 13:55) or James the son of Alphaeus (James “the Less”) listed in all the synoptic accounts as an Apostle. But no one really knows. And that it never mentions Jesus’ death and resurrection is because it was intended for a Christian audience and therefore that was assumed.)
The Letter of James is most absolutely correct, however, in asserting that if we believe in Jesus as the Messiah who died for our sins, as the Son of God and the Word made flesh, but never do anything in response to that belief, then of what value is our faith? For Jesus’ final commandment at the Last Supper was that we must love one another as he loved us. Like everything else, our freedom to love others as Jesus loved us is solely from grace that is obtained only through faith in Christ. But that faith is not simply put in a private box of ours, as it were, to sit alone and unused. It is meant to radically change us to live not for ourselves but for others. We are meant to then go and serve all the rest. Paul told the Corinthians in 2Cor 5:17, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold, all is made new.” And Col 3:12-14 tells us, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” And Paul himself also said to the Corinthians, “If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I have nothing.”
Our faith is not like a box of jewels we take out every now and then to admire. It is the gateway to action. “Whoever does the will of God, is brother and sister and mother to me!” Jesus said in Mk 3:35 and in Matthew 7:21 he says further, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but the one that does the will of my Father in heaven.”
In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, he famously asks the retreatant to ask three questions of themselves continually during the thirty days, “What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I do for Christ?” We should all ask ourselves those questions. They are usually not easily answered and perhaps not comfortable for us to contemplate. It is in what we do for Christ that truly makes us his disciples. It’s like the famous saying, “If you were tried for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” It reminds us of the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. In reply to the answer to Jesus’ question, “Who do you think was a neighbor to the man?” Jesus says, “Go and do the same.” We must simply do it, and do it from love. Just make sure that it is God’s will and not your own that you are doing. In the words of Psalm 127, “Unless the Lord builds the house, in vain do the builders labor.” It might seem holy and wonderful to, say, go and give all your money to the poor, but if God did not ask you to do that, then who did and why are you doing it?
