Faith and Works
a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
June 1, 2008

Text: Matthew 7:21-29, Roman 3:22b-28

A couple of weeks ago coming back from a wedding at Mt. Vernon, I was driving through Alexandria.  I was behind a very expensive car with personalized license plates that had the word HARVARD in capital letters.  As I followed him, I thought, this is why the country hates people inside the Beltway. We can be so filled up with ourselves!  This guy was flagrantly flaunting the fact that he had a Harvard education and a lot of money.

Now, of course, it is always possible that I am just jealous, filled with lust for that fellow’s car and education.  But let’s just bracket that possibility for today and discuss it another time.  Because, this fellow got me to thinking about the way we self-identify.  Specifically, how do we decide whether or not we are of value, upon what criteria do we base our self-esteem or lack thereof?

Too many of us, like perhaps the fellow in the high end car with Harvard license plates, value ourselves based on how well we are positioned in terms of education, vocation, and finances.  We judge how we are doing in comparison with our friends and family members.  Are we making more money, living in a better house, working in a more prestigious job?  Are our kids smarter than our sister’s or neighbor’s kids? 

Such types of analysis lead us not only to make dubious decisions about our own worth.  We also make unfair decisions about the worth of others. 

Regarding ourselves, I have seen wonderful parents think they are losers because they cannot afford to send their kids to an Ivy League school.  I have seen faithful spouses think they are losers because they aren’t bringing home what they consider to be enough money. 

Regarding others, we decide those who aren’t successful, as we define success, are lazy, incompetent or worse.  In the process, we create a stratified society using incredibly unbiblical criteria such as family background, wealth and education.  By so doing, we value ourselves and others apart from the values found in Scripture. 

If we want to find the value of a car, we go to the Blue Book.  If we want to find the value of a company, we can look up price to earnings or long term debt to equity ratios.  If we want to find the value of an education, we can look up what a university’s graduates do with their education.  How many of them do something that builds a more peaceful and just society? 

But if we want to find the ultimate value of our lives, we are best off avoiding most of the benchmarks created by human beings.  Instead, as Christians, we need to go to Scripture and look up the valuations created by God.  From the front to back of the Bible, one standard for valuation stands out about all the rest: we are loved because we are, not because of what we do.  In fact, the Word of God is quite clear that we cannot create our own value, no matter how hard we try.  Our primary value is intrinsic, instilled in us as original operating equipment by our God.  We are good because God made us good.  God loves us because God loves us, not because we are always loveable.

There are lots of things to argue about in Scripture.  But there is no arguing the foundational basis of our value.  It is rooted in our relationship with God, not our performance as humans.  Just as we love our children simply because they are our children, so God love us because we are God’s children.  Just as our children can disappoint, enrage, and annoy us, so we can disappoint, enrage, and annoy God.  However, nothing we can do, believe or say devalues who we are in God’s eyes.  And if God thinks we are priceless, who are we to question such a divine judgement?

In Christian theology, the grounding of our value is at the heart of the 2000 year old debate over faith and works.  In this argument, one side has argued that we are saved/valued by our faith in God, the other side asserts that we are saved/valued by our works/deeds.  Toward the end of the 20th century, churches of almost every brand began to admit that it is a bogus argument, pitting two sides of a coin against each other. 

In our Scripture lessons this morning, we find the Scriptural roots of the debate.  In the Gospel lesson, Jesus makes the point that if we truly hear his words, we will also act upon them. Faith and works cannot be separated.  In the Epistle lesson, we heard Paul articulating an apparent antithesis: we are justified by grace, not works.

Taking simplistically, it appears the two passages are at odds.  Jesus is demanding the works of faith.  Paul says we are justified by faith, not works.

However, when studied more carefully, it is clear that Jesus and Paul were on the same page.  Jesus was not content with a faith that did not express itself in a faithful lifestyle.  Paul, by his own experience, knew that works in and of themselves could not satisfy the soul.  They both demanded faith and works.

For the church’s first fifteen centuries, most church leaders overemphasized works at the expense of faith.  In effect, they re-instituted the Law, the limitations of which both Jesus and Paul pointed out.  The elevation of the law, rules, and definitive norms to a place of dominant authority is a tendency of all forms of institutional religion.

However, in the 16th century, the Reformers reasserted the notion of justification by faith.  In so doing, they attempted to save the church from itself.  The liberating nature of their message shook the foundations of European Christianity.

However, it was a short-lived revolution.  It is one of history’s great ironies that within a century, significant parts of the Reformed tradition were advocating what came to be called the Protestant work ethic.  On Sunday, Reformed Christians listened to a sermon on justification by faith.  Monday through Saturday they worked their brains out trying to prove they were good Christians.

The Reformed tradition’s slip into works righteousness should help us understand just how difficult it is for us to believe, simply to believe, that we are loved and valued by God, regardless of what we do.  There is a deep need within us that wants to prove our worth—to God, to ourselves, to others.  We want some concrete, specific evidence validating our worth.  As a result, even Reformed Christians quickly dropped the emphasis on grace for the more tangible evidence of works. 

The most challenging pastoral counseling conversations I have are with folks who have low self-esteem.  These individuals fall into a circular, self-justifying mind set in which everything confirms they are not worthy.  Tell them they are loved by God and they say, “Not me.” Direct them to the quality of their works and they say, “Lots of people can do what I do.  It isn’t anything special.”

The only way I know to break out of the circular reinforcement low self-esteem becomes is through a bold act of faith.  We simply have to believe that we are worthy because God says we are worthy.  No proof.  No evidence.  Just an act of faith.  People who make this leap of faith are the most indomitable, irrepressible spirits in history.

Sojourner Truth believed that she was worthy in God’s eyes.  As a result, she totally rejected what her slave master and society told her about herself.  Archbishop Tutu rejected the hatred directed at him by the ideology of apartheid, choosing instead to believe the Good News that he is a loved child of God.  Women of faith, thwarted in their efforts to achieve social and economic equality, have never stopped believing they are equal in God’s eyes.  Faith-filled LGBT folks have the courage to speak up because they view themselves as priceless children of God, not sinners as some would have them believe.

But none of these people can demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt, that they are valuable.  Our absolute worth is an unprovable assertion.  Because each and every one of us is flawed enough to raise plenty of internal and external questions about our worth.  Each of us does things that provide evidence we are less than good.

We only embrace our worth, our intrinsic, God-given goodness as an act of faith.  It is the most audacious thing we do as people of faith.  Even though we fail time and time again in our works, through faith, we continue to assert that we are loved by God.

Again, think about the way we relate to our children.  They fail.  They fail an exam they should have passed or smash up the car or get addicted to some substance.  Do we declare them worthless?  Do we decide they have no value?  Not if we are even close to being good parents.  No, we continue to love them.  We still think they are remarkable.  We still believe they are good....because they are!  And so are we!!

Our works will always be flawed.  As Paul said in another part of Romans, we do not do the things we want to do and do the things we don’t want to do.  Looking to our actions for indications of our worth is a fool’s pursuit.

That being said, we are called to do more than just assert that we are good.  As Jesus said, we are called to be good.  We must do more than say that we are saved by grace.  We must strive to be instruments of God’s grace. 

As we do so, we discover perhaps the greatest and most surprising paradox of our faith:  as we let go of the desperate need to prove our worth and simply accept our worth, we begin to act as the worthy people we are, the worthy people we were unable to prove ourselves to be.  Accepting God’s valuation of us as good, the distinction between faith and works disappears and a whole and holy spiritual life emerges.

May we have the courage to believe in our own goodness and that of others as well.  If we do so, the works of faith will flow naturally in a way we were never able to force them to do.

Let us pray: Gracious God, we struggle with self-esteem.  We know all too well our shortcomings and problematic behavior.  So help us to put our faith in your faith in us.  You believe in us.  May we do likewise.  All this we pray in the name of Jesus who believed in us in ways that were nothing less than amazing.  Amen.