Lifeline Trust--February 8, 2022

Lifeline Trust--February 8, 2022

"You see that a person is justified by works and not faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead." [James 2:24-26]

See?  Nobody earns their place with God by racking up Heaven Points or avoiding red-pen marks on their Permanent Records.  It's always been about trusting the goodness of God.  If we doubted that before, James just proved it.

This is the thing I find so refreshing about our journey through James here.  If we get past all the baggage we may have had about this book and actually listen to him on his own terms, we might just discover that he has something surprising to say.  We might discover all the things we were told about this book aren't quite right, and that maybe he's been as wholeheartedly captivated by the grace of God as Mr. "Justified-By-Grace-Through-Faith" himself, Saint Paul.  If only we have the courage to listen deeper than our preconceptions, we'll find that the Scowling Scorekeeper God we were so afraid of judging us was just a figment of our imaginations all along.  James is actually the one who convinced me of that, here in these verses.

If it's not clear why yet, let's pause and unpack this passage.  I know, at first blush it seems like James has just come out and said the opposite.  I know the verse says, "a person is justified by works and not faith alone," and I'm not denying that he says it.  But look at what James takes that to mean--because it's not a matter of doing a sufficient amount of good deeds to accumulate heavenly merits or God-points.  James explains what he means about a faith that is expressed in actions by referencing the story or Rahab.  Now, just in case that name isn't familiar to you (or you blushed when James mentioned that she was a prostitute), here's the short version. In the days when the Israelites were preparing to take the city of Jericho, two spies went into the city for some intelligence gathering.  For whatever reason (I'll let you fill in some gaps there) they end up "spending the night at the house of a prostitute named Rahab" and she protects them when the king's soldiers come looking for the spies.  She has come to believe that the God of the Israelites is more powerful than the military strength of her own people.  She trusts this God of foreigners more than the might of her own people, and she throws herself on the possibility that grace might be extended to her and her family by siding with the Israelites and helping the spies.

In other words, what Rahab has is faith--that "living, daring confidence" that Luther talked about.  And the way you know that Rahab has faith is that she acts in accordance with that faith.  She trusts the power of the God of Israel, enough to stake her life on the belief that the Israelites will win out against the defenders of Jericho.  Her belief in God isn't some abstract philosophical notion. She's not sitting back in some scholarly gathering smoking a pipe and musing about whether it is rational to believe in a Supreme Being--it is a commitment that involves her actions.  She dares to believe that the God of Israel will win the day, and she has chosen to give her allegiance accordingly.  That's faith--not earning.  She has nothing to impress anyone with in terms of piety or religiosity; she throws herself on grace, beyond any question of worthiness, merit, or points.  Her faith is rather like the man crucified next to Jesus, who doesn't point to any accomplishments, but simply realizes who is really Lord, and says, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom."

And, just to make it clear that Rahab hasn't earned her belonging on the basis of moral achievements or good behavior, notice here that James doesn't blush at all (and neither does the original storyteller in the book of Joshua, mind you) at the fact that Rahab is a practitioner of the "oldest profession."  There is no hiding or apologizing for her work as a prostitute, and there is no pretending that she is Miss Suzy Homemaker, either.  There is no talk about Rahab having a "heart of gold" or that she rescued puppies and fed orphans when her red light wasn't on.  Neither is there any hint of a promise that she will reform her ways, pray more prayers, or change her behavior.  There is only her trust that the God of the Israelites is worth putting all her chips on.  In other words, Rahab was rescued--and her whole family saved as well when the Israelites blew their trumpets and the walls "came a-tumblin' down"--entirely on the basis of trusting that God would be good to her, and absolutely not at all on the basis of whether her list of "good deeds" outweighed her "bad deeds."  There is simply no consideration of earning--only of faith that acted.

That's what James has been saying all along.  If we make him out to be saying, "You have to do a certain number of good things to make God love you and let you into heaven," we have been mishearing him.  And similarly, if we think that "faith" is just a matter of believing the proposition that there is a Supreme Being or Higher Power in the universe, we have misunderstood what it really means to believe in God.  It's always been about trusting God in ways that show up in our choices, our actions, and our commitments.  It's not just about academic abstractions--it's about allegiance.  Rahab's story doesn't prove that you can earn a spot with the saved by doing enough good deeds--it shows that when you throw yourself into the arms of grace, God has a way of catching us, even when we're desperate.

All of the other questions I'm sure we're itching to ask (like, "Isn't someone going to shame Rahab for being a hooker?" or "But didn't she have to repent of her sins, or turn from her wicked lifestyle, or promise to change?") don't even figure into the equation.  Rahab trusts--even when her own people would have called her a traitor to her country.  Rahab trusts--without any blushing or denying how she puts food on the table.  Rahab trusts--and it is enough for her simply to act as though the lifeline she is clinging to will hold her.  And that is enough.  

It has always been enough.

My goodness--after all our anxious worries that James was going to scold us all for not doing enough good deeds to earn our salvation, here James has been the one reminding us that God saves us without a whiff of moralizing and without giving the "sinners" a stern lecture first.  James hasn't been saying that we have to do enough to make God love us--not at all.  He has just been saying all along that you can spot real faith because it leads us to take actions that only make sense if we really do trust the One we say we believe in. 

We don't need to sanitize Rahab the prostitute's story, nor romanticize or sentimentalize it.  James just says we can learn what real faith looks like from her story.

Maybe today it's enough to listen... and act accordingly.

Lord God, give us fresh ears to learn from people and stories we had been overlooking or misunderstanding, so that we can have the bold and daring faith of those who have gone before us.