Praying Firefightr 9/11
Photo courtesy of Jim Harnish
Special to United Methodist Insight
September 11, 2021
James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17 New Revised Standard Version
2:1 My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?
2:2 For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in,
2:3 and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet,"
2:4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?
2:5 Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?
2:6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?
2:7 Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
2:8 You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
2:9 But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
[2:11 For the one who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.
2:12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.
2:13 For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.]
2:14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?
2:15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food,2:16 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?
2:17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
Will you join me in prayer? Sovereign and loving God, we come before you today in humility, seeking illumination. May you inspire my words, open our hearts, and renew our minds. Have mercy on us. Amen.
The Work of Repentance
“So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead,” declares the book of James. This framing of the gospel is music to the ears of a Wesleyan Arminian!
Sorry, Luther! Sorry, Calvin! Luther famously declared the book of James “an epistle of straw.” Neither strict Lutheranism nor strict Calvinism allow much room for the free will necessary for good works. If we were in a classroom, I’d show a chart of TULIP, the five points of Calvinism established by Synod of Dort in 1619, drawn up specifically to refute the teachings of Jacob Arminius. We might also get into a discussion of monergism versus synergism: Is salvation of God only or does it require our cooperation?
Wesleyan Methodists rejected most of TULIP. Through Christ’s work on the cross, the image of God, destroyed by the fall, is restored within us. We can respond to God’s grace—or choose not to respond. Good works do not earn us salvation but are rather the fruit of salvation, the outward expression of new birth in the Spirit.
The book of James can get a Wesleyan really fired up! I could go on . . . but the significance of this day, the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, beckons our attention. As we remember this history, let us consider our collective works as a nation in response to this tragedy.
We remember a terrible Tuesday of orchestrated violence: four airplanes, hijacked and commandeered by 19 people fighting against their perceived enemy in the name of God; two towers of the World Trade Center destroyed, the Pentagon damaged, nearly 3000 lives lost, millions of lives changed.
The US government lost no time retaliating. Congress authorized military force one week later. Troops entered Afghanistan to destroy Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network on October 7. Within two months, US forces had removed the Taliban from power. Yet, the US war against terror continued on Afghan soil for twenty more years.
We remember so many lost lives during these decades of US-led war. The last US troops departed Afghanistan only two weeks ago, on August 30. The Taliban are in power once again. The fruits of war included over 172,000 deaths: nearly 2500 U.S. military and 1100 NATO, 4000 U.S. contractors, hundreds of aid workers and journalists, over 47,000 Afghan civilians, 66,000 Afghan national military and police, as well as 51,000 Taliban and other opposition fighters. The war has cost the US over $2 trillion so far; continued medical and other costs will double that amount in the coming decades.
We remember the work of war. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, journalist Alissa Rubin observed that within two months of US intervention in Afghanistan, the Taliban asked for amnesty. The US had a chance to end the war in November 2001. However, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, responded: “The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders.” Twenty years ago, our leaders chose to pursue annihilation of our enemies rather than love for our enemies. Looking back on this history, Rubin posed the question, “Did the War in Afghanistan Have to Happen?”
I lament this missed opportunity for the work of peace. Faith without works may be dead, but not all works are life-giving. For work to be life-giving, it must emanate from our faith in the Prince of Peace. Our work must fulfill the royal law according to the scripture. Jesus taught, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you . . . .” What now, friends? How do we turn our remembrance and lament into the life-giving work of faith? I know of no other way to do this than through the work of repentance.
Nearly 80 years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr—a theologian of the Reformed (Calvinist!) tradition—offered an example. He poetically described the work of repentance as “The Grace of Doing Nothing.” At that time, the US was weighing a military intervention in response to orchestrated violence by a perceived enemy. Based on radical trust in God, Niebuhr counseled inaction rather than a rush to war. His words echo major themes in the book of James. He wrote:
“The inactivity of radical Christianity is . . . the inaction of those who do not judge their neighbors because they cannot fool themselves into a sense of superior righteousness. It is not the inactivity of resigned patience, but of a patience that is full of hope, and based on faith. It is not the inactivity of the noncombatant, for it knows that there are no noncombatants, that everyone is involved . . . It is not the inactivity of the merciless, for works of mercy must be performed though they are only palliatives to ease present pain while the process of healing depends on deeper, more actual and urgent forces.”
Niebuhr covered a lot of theological ground here: judgment, mercy, works, hope, faith, healing. Advising patience, Niebuhr acknowledged the interconnectedness of the world in sin and the need for works of mercy even as we acknowledge our dependence on God for the process of healing.
Many of Niebuhr’s contemporaries and many Christians today would scoff at his advice to be patient in response to military aggression. Such inaction would be a show of weakness—a strategic blunder in international realpolitik. Military power is the only path to liberty, they preach. Furthermore, to acknowledge US complicity in a web of sinful human structures would be considered unpatriotic—the only unforgivable sin in the faith of nationalism. The work of war requires action, weapons of mass destruction, and a sense of righteousness, with God on our side.
However, what if God has chosen the weak rather than the mighty? What if God has chosen the poor rather than the rich? What a lot of work we would have to do to correct our ways. The work of repentance is hard, spiritual labor, though it may look like inaction to some.
Listen, my beloved siblings, we cannot engage in the work of repentance without humility. Faithful remembrance requires historical clarity about how we have fallen short of the will of God. It requires faith in God, a God who participates in our lives, who has chosen the poor, and who cares about our bodily needs. To repent in time of tragedy may seem like weakness to the world but it is God who strengthens us. To repent in the face of tragedy may seem foolish but it reflects the wisdom of God.
For over thirty years, the United Church of Christ has prioritized the work of peace through its Just Peace Pronouncement, offering to the world the prophetic message, grounded in the hope of reconciliation in Jesus, that “Peace is possible!” This work is one extension of Niebuhr’s legacy. The late Donald Shriver, a Presbyterian minister and public theologian, also provided resources for this work of repentance. Author of An Ethic for Enemies and Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember Its Misdeeds, Shriver offered deep theological reflection on how communities and nations can reckon with their negative pasts. These resources can inform the work of peace. Just Peacemaking includes more than remembrance, but the work of repentance cannot begin without it. Memory is required, along with a willingness to view history in light of God’s love for all of creation, including our perceived enemies: for “God so loved the world that he gave his only son . . . .”
Faith enables the work of repentance, a holy, salvific labor. This is the faith that cannot save us but without which we cannot be saved. John Wesley taught that we must respond to God’s gracious action in our lives through repentance. We have the power to accept or reject the gospel. Faith without works is dead, but neither are works alive without faith.
So perhaps Arminianism and Calvinism are not so far apart when it comes to the grace of God—it could be that the Reformed tradition is willing to be a little more patient or that Wesleyans are a little quicker to engage in works of mercy. Both may seem foolish to a Machiavellian world. Niebuhr concluded his essay with a word about faith and repentance: “But if there is no God, or if God is up in heaven and not in time itself, it is a very foolish inactivity.” Faith is the only thing that can make sense of this kind of foolishness, the work of repentance.
Amen.
The Rev. Darryl W. Stephens, an ordained deacon in the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference, preached this sermon Sept. 11, 2021 at Lancaster Theological Seminary. Readers can read more about this approach in: Darryl W. Stephens, Bearing Witness in the Kin-dom: Living into the Church’s Moral Witness through Radical Discipleship. New York: United Methodist Women, 2020.