JUST DO I

October 13, 1991

8:30. and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
-John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
James 1:22-26, 2:14-17

"...be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive
themselves," -James 1:22 (NRSV)

It's a loaded question: "What good is it if you say you
have faith but do not have works? If a brother or sister is

naked and hungry and your response is 'Go in peace,' what good is
that?"

Charles Schultz, whose Peanuts cartoon is a consistent
commentary on the New Testament, had fun with that question in
what has become one of his most famous Sequences. ~ ~

Frame one: Charlie Brown and Linus are trudging through the
snow. The wind is blowing. It is very cold. They are bundled
into snow suits, complete with fur hats.

Frame two: Snoopy is shivering, alone, in the snow, appro-
priately naked.

Frame three: Charlie Brown and Linus approach. Charlie
Brown says: "Be of Good Cheer, Snoopy." "Yes, Snoopy," Linus
echoes. "Be of Good Cheer."

Frame four: They walk away, leaving Snoopy with a question
mark in his mind, still shivering in the snow.

"Faith without works is dead." ft seems fairly simple
actually. But behind it is another question, and it is not so
Simple. If faith without works is dead, what is faith?... What
is this enterprise we call religious faith? And now we are in
deeper than we intended.

Immanuel Kant, who was the greatest philosopher since the
ancient Greeks, said there are three big questions about life:

What can we know?
What must we do?
What can we hope for?

One of the definitions of religion is the way we answer
those three questions.

We ask them all our lives, beginning, but not ending, with
our spiritual and intellectual awakening.

And they are asked eloquently by the men and women who live
in the stories of the Bible.

"What must I do to inherit eternal life?" a wealthy young
man asked Jesus. And his question, I conclude, is a way of
asking: "What can I know? What must I do? What is my life
about? What does it mean to be faithful?"

He's like us, this earnest, forthright young man searching
for truth and meaning. He's an admirable fellow. It took cour-
age to do what he did, coming to Jesus like that. He's got
social grace, too. Notice how he kneels before Jesus ~ an ex-
traordinary act for a wealthy man. I like him. He is the New
Testament equivalent of the contemporary young urban adult,
upscale, sincere, wondering about the meaning of his life and
what he ought to do next...

"What must I do to inherit eternal life?" he asked... sin-
cerely.

Jesus told him the traditional formulas. Keep the command-
ments: don't murder, steal, commit adultery, defraud. "T've
done all that" the young man said. or rather, "I've avoided all
that. I'm clean. But I don't feel right."

And then Jesus tells him what to do: five crisp prescrip-
tions: go - sell - give - come - follow: Just Do It.

And the young man is shocked and goes away grieving because
he hadn't expected that.

Please notice in this famous incident that Jesus did not
give him a reading list or a theological seminar to attend. He
did not hand him the Apostles' Creed and say, "Here, recite this.
You'll feel better."

Nor did he say, "get in touch with your feelings. Lighten
up. Don't be so hard on yourself. You're okay, man."

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Nor did he advise the young man to be more Vigilant and.
- Vigorous in-his ethical behavior. -In fact, after bringing in the
traditional prohibitions of the Ten Commandments, Jesus seems to
brush them aside and Says, "Do something."

Now, there is a lot more we could do with this littie inter-
change, particularly the fact that his attachment to his wealth
is what prevents the young man from doing what Jesus suggests,

_This being Stewardship Season, we could do a lot with this para-
ble which follows about how hard it is for wealthy people to get
into the Kingdom: as hard as it is for a camel to squeeze
through the eye of a needle.

We could try to say that the "eye of the needle" was a small
opening in the city wall. We could even say that what heavily
loaded camels need to do is unload a lot of the goods they are

carrying - as in a generous pledge to the church. But we won't
do that today.

Instead, I'd like to take a leap of 2,000 years and simply
Suggest that the young man's question is as relevant as our being
here this morning, and our quest to find meaning for our lives.

What does it mean to have faith? Sometimes we talk about
faith as if we believe we have it like we have a temper, or brown
hair. Sometimes we talk about faith as if it is something w
know. The late Carlisle Marney wrote that "faith is always a
verb. When we make faith into a noun," Marney wrote, we "freeze
it into a creed." [Priests to Fach Other, p. 36]

That is where many of us are. Having Christian faith isa
matter of feeling Something inside or it's intellectual, a matter
of understanding ideas about God and Jesus; understanding doc-
trine, accepting it as truth. It's a bit of a dilemma for Pres-
byterians. We are committed to a reasonable, rational approach
to religion. We believe that when the Bible orders us to love

into the religious enterprise, Historically we have invested a
lot of our religious energy in the commitment to an educated
ministry, to colleges and universities and seminaries: to an
educated laity; to pedagogically sound Church School curriculun,
and adult education experiences that stretch the mind as well
as spirit.

Well, if faith is not something we have, or something we.-
know, maybe it is. something we don't do.

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There is a continuing sense that Christians can be identi-
fied by what they refrain from doing. Carlisle Marney, who was a
Southern Baptist, used to quip that "Baptists are people who
don't drink with their friends. And Methodists are people whose
colleges are built with tobacco money but whose pastors must not
smoke." [op. cit. p. 42]

Faith, according to Jesus, is not something you refrain from
doing.

The recent and continuing flap throughout the churches on
the matter of sexual behavior is a case in point. It would

God may have something more in mind, that religious faith may
require behavior which is faithful and just, rather than a Simple
prohibition of certain activities is a profoundly disturbing
notion for many people.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? What can I know?
What must I do? If you are intellectually and spiritually alive
you ask these questions every day of your life. You may even
have tried to find the answers in an academic regimen. It is not

unheard of for people to go to seminary to find the answers to
those questions.

When I did, I discovered that these questions were not
yielding to investigative research. [In fact, the more I read
what other people thought the more the answers receded, until I
realized that I might have to settle not for some not little
bundle of certainty, but instead, for a life-long commitment to
keeping the questions alive.

And then something happened. I met Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not
personally, of course. Bonhoeffer died in a Nazi prison a few
days before the end of World War Two, the defining event of my
childhood and youth. I met him because people were reading his
books - not as academic assignments, but extra reading, outside
of class reading, compelling, relevant reading.

It was an important moment when I encountered this young man
- just twenty or so years earlier, writing about the focus of the
gospel being the world, the worid God loves: writing just days
before his execution that Jesus Christ calls his people to in-
merse themselves in the world. At a time when he more logically
might have looked for solace in a God who promises Salvation in
other places, in another world, at just that moment to be writing.
about the call of Jesus Christ to men and women to love the world
passionately, to be responsible for its life, to care so deeply

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about it in the name of Jesus Christ that their lives would be
given away in acts of justice and mercy and kindness and service.

It stirred my soul. But what really got me was this.
Bonhoeffer said that understanding was. not -the point. Of course
it was important to know God with the mind by thinking critically
and creatively about theology. He was a distinguished scholar.
But finally nailing down the truth about Jesus isn't the point.
The point, said Bonhoeffer, is obeying Jesus. Taking a step.
Following.

The sentence that got me and gets me still is this -

"Only those who obey can believe." [fhe Cost of Disciple-
Ship, p. 60]

We want to understand. We want to know who he is. We want
to be told understandable truth. We want creeds we comprehend;
a religion that is intellectually viable. And when we get all
that in place we might entertain the notion of following, or

Faith begins when we take a step.

Faith begins, not when you say - I have it, I feel it in-|
side, I get it, I know it in my mind.

Faith in the New Testament begins when Peter stands up in
the boat and steps into the stormy sea to follow Jesus.

Faith begins when Matthew the tax collector, walks out from
his tax collecting booth and falls in behind Jesus.

Faith begins when James and John drop their nets and get up
and follow.

Faith begins for you when you hear the call of Jesus Christ

and find yourself doing something you hadn't thought of before,
or wouldn't have done before.

Faith begins when your decision to follow Jesus
takes shape in-the way you live your life, spend your money,
order your priorities, use your time.

It is a stewardship matter ultimately. A decision to use
all to follow him. It has to do with your Support of the church
and its ministries, this church or whatever church you call your
Own. Money in the plate is not simply the way we pay the bills.
It is that, of course. But what it really represents is the

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integrity with which you are deciding to believe by following
Jesus. Faith begins when we do it. .

What might it be for you? our Presbyterian tradition will
not allow us to prescribe answers for one another. How you

follow - how you take a first tentative faith step is between
Jesus and you.

It might be like this: 2,000 years ago someone said that if
you see a brother or sister naked, you might find a way to pro-
vide a blanket.

When you encounter hunger you might find a way to come up
with some food.

A first faith step might be taking a public stand on an

issue which will not endear you to your friends whose respect you
enjoy.

It might mean writing a check or deciding to make a truly
sacrificial financial commitment to your church.

It might mean going to a meeting, loving your husband,
forgiving your child, bathing your bed-ridden mother.

It might mean living your life as a way of following Jesus.

My guess is that you know where he is asking you to follow
and what he is telling you to do. The invitation which comes to

all of us is simple. Be doers of the word and not hearers only.
Just do it.

And then, it has been the experience of countless disciples
that in the following, in the haiting, frightened stumbling
behind Jesus, faith is given.

It is in the personal decision to be a Christian that belief
is given. No one ever said it more beautifully than Albert
Schweitzer who, at the end of a scholarly inquiring int6 the
nature of the historical Jesus, wrote this beautiful confession
of his personal faith, the truth of which I proclaim to you.

"He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as
of old, by the lakeside, He came to those who knew
Him not. He speaks to us the same word: 'Pollow
thou me!' and sets us to the tasks which he has to
fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those
who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He
will reveal Himself in the toils, the-conflicts,
the sufferings, which they shall pass through in
His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they -

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shall learn in their own experience who He is"
[Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical
Jesus. ]

Be doers of the word.

Follow him.

And the gift of faith will be given to you.
That is the promise.

Amen.

an ?#42/07