Week of 6 Epiphany: Friday, Year 2

Above:  U.S. Navy Personnel Assisting at a Soup Kitchen

Image Source = Chief Mass Communication Specialist Steve Johnson, U.S.N.

Deeds and Creeds

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

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Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010), of The Episcopal Church, contains an adapted two-years weekday lectionary for the Epiphany and Ordinary Time seasons from the Anglican Church of Canada.  I invite you to follow it with me.

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James 2:14-26 (Revised English Bible):

What good is it, my friends, for someone to say he has faith when his actions do nothing to show it?  Suppose a fellow-Christian, whether man or woman, is in rags with not enough food for the day, and one of you says,

Goodbye, keep warm, and have a good meal,

but does nothing to supply their bodily needs, what good is that?  So with faith; if it does not lead by action, it is by itself a lifeless thing.

But someone may say:

One chooses faith, another action.

To which I reply:

Show me this faith you speak of with no actions to prove it, while I by my actions will prove to you my faith.

You have faith and believe that there is one God.  Excellent!  Even demons have faith like that, and it makes them tremble.  Do you have to be told, you fool, that faith divorced from action is futile?  Was it not by his action, in offering his son Isaac upon the altar, that our father Abraham was justified?  Surely you can see faith was at work in his actions, and by these actions his faith was perfected?  Here was the fulfillment of the words of scripture:

Abraham put his faith in God, and that faith was counted to him as righteousness,

and he was called

God’s friend.

You can see then it was by action and not by faith alone that a man is justified.  The same is also true of the prostitute Rahab.  Was she not justified by her action in welcoming the messengers into her house and sending them away by a different route?  As the body is dead when there is no breath in it, so faith divorced from action is dead.

Psalm 112 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

1 Hallelujah!

Happy are they who fear the Lord

and have great delight in his commandments!

2 Their descendants will be mighty in the land;

the generation of the upright will be blessed.

3 Wealth and riches will be in their house,

and their righteousness will last for ever.

4 Light shines in the darkness for the upright;

the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.

5 It is good for them to be generous in lending

and to manage their affairs with justice.

6 For they will never be shaken;

the righteous will be kept in everlasting remembrance.

7 They will not be afraid of any evil rumors;

their heart is right;

they put their trust in the Lord.

8 Their heart is established and will not shrink,

until they see their desire upon their enemies.

9 They have given freely to the poor,

and their righteousness stands fast for ever;

they will hold up their head with honor.

10 The wicked will see it and be angry;

they will gnash their teeth and pine away;

the desires of the wicked will perish.

Mark 8:34-9:1 (Revised English Bible):

Then he called the people to him, as well as his disciples, and said to them,

Anyone who wants to be a follower of mine must renounce self; he must take up his cross and follow me.  Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and for the gospel’s will save it.  What does anyone gain by winning the whole world at the cost of his life?  What can he give to buy his life back?  If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this wicked and godless age, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

He said to them,

Truly I tell you:  there are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

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The Collect:

O  God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

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Some Related Posts:

Week of 6 Epiphany:  Friday, Year 1:

https://adventchristmasepiphany.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/week-of-6-epiphany-friday-year-1/

Faith in Romans vs. Faith in James:

http://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/week-of-proper-23-tuesday-year-1/

My Critique of the Near-Sacrifice of Isaac:

http://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/week-of-proper-8-thursday-year-1/

http://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/proper-8-year-a/

Behind the Lines/Regeneration (1997):

http://neatnik2009.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/behind-the-lines-a-k-a-regeneration-1997/

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Today’s devotional consists of a story, one which actually might be accurate, but which does communicate a truth.  I heard this story in a sermon over a decade ago.

Once, at a seminary attached to a historic U.S. university, a professor of homiletics, that is, preaching, assigned his students to preach about the importance of helping the less fortunate, a major theme in the Bible.  He did not tell them that their words inside the classroom were irrelevant.  Rather, each seminarian’s grade depended on his action or inaction on the day he was supposed to deliver this sermon.  The seminary professor, you see, O reader, had contacted a drama professor, who had arranged for acting students to play beggars and to intercept the seminarians.  Most of the seminarians failed.

Here ends the lesson.  All other comments I might have made here are accessible by following the links embedded in this post.

KRT

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