MUMC Sermon-09/10/06

10 September 2006

The Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost

James 2.1-17

The Reverend Jennifer K. Morrow

Five years ago tomorrow. September 11, 2001. Can you believe it’s been that long? Can you believe it’s only been that long? Five years since that moment you will never forget: the moment you heard what happened. Five years since you finally got that call you had been waiting for all day. And for so many, five years since that call never came.

But today is an anniversary too you know. It’s the anniversary of September 10, 2001. Five years since we could all walk around without having to hold the reality of 9/11 in our memory. Five years since the evening New York skyline has looked complete. Five years since countless families sat down for dinner with everyone there. And for some, five years since the last day they believed in God.

I’ll be honest with you, it is a struggle for me to talk about 9/11. Since moving to New York four years ago I have realized that my experience of that day was entirely different than for you, living here, in the shadow of the towers. I lived in Tennessee in September of 2001, where I was finishing seminary, and preparing to have a child. My daughter Claire is now, of course, almost five years old. Given that my experience of that day was so different from so many of yours, I have hesitated to speak of it much, fearful that I will unknowingly bring some insensitivity or ignorance to the conversation.

But not speaking of things can be as inarticulate as using the wrong words. Today I risk the latter instead of the former, and for two reasons. First, I can’t ever remember preaching this close to the anniversary and the pulpit should last of all be a hiding place from such realities. And second, within the past two weeks I have read two articles in two separate and very different magazines about the same man: Sam Harris.

This Tuesday, September 12, will be an anniversary for Mr. Harris, for it will be five years ago on that date that he began writing his book, The End of Faith. “If, he reasoned, young men were slaughtering people in the name of religion—something that had been going on since long before 2001, of course—then perhaps the problem was with religion itself.”[1] The book, which unashamedly pins the source of the world’s atrocities in the hands of religious followers, was published in 2004. As an alternative, Harris argues for what he believes is a less-dangerous, more-truthful scientific worldview. One journalist notes that the title, “The End of Faith…to most Americans probably sounds like a lament. To Harris it is something to be encouraged.”[2] Why? Because for Harris, faith was the motivating force behind 9/11. After such an atrocity, faith has to be questioned, and to that extent, I agree with him.

But let’s leave Sam Harris alone for a few minutes, and turn back to our epistle lesson from this morning. Fascinatingly, the apostle James uses language that sounds like it could be an alternate title for Harris’ book: “Faith…is dead.” (James 2.17, selection) Faith is dead. Is that it? Is that what he says? Well, yes it is. But something is missing. Do you remember? The passage culminates with that stark diagnosis, but with a very important clause in the middle “Faith, by itself if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2.17)

Interestingly, James takes it a step further than even agnostic scientist Sam Harris was willing to. Harris believes that events like 9/11 must push us all to (at the least) question faith; James says acts of favoritism and ignoring the poor are more than enough reason to ask the same question. Harris pines for the end, the death of religious faith; James says that if religious faith purports to exist without works, it is dead already. It was never alive. Which makes one wonder if James might even have—in certain cases—agreed with Nietzsche’s famous contention, “God is dead.” A god, James might contend, invoked without care for the weak, the poor, is no more alive than a stone. And faith in such a god, is put simply, dead.

Comparing the Apostle James to an atheist. It’s hard to say whom this could offend more: devout Christians or devout atheists. I make the comparison, however, not to offend, but to highlight. Extreme agnostics and atheists have made names for themselves by claiming to behave in particularly radical ways: challenging the status quo, shaking up the comfortable, daring to topple tradition. But I say, “So what? That’s as radical as you can get?” You need to get acquainted with a real radical, like James.

James lived in a world capable of its own atrocities. He was no stranger to tragedy, oppression, or devastation. Tradition claims that he himself was martyred, stoned and beaten by religious leaders. Thus, “religion” would be the source of his own end, not to mention play a role in the crucifixion of his Teacher. But in light of all of this he does not write his letter to argue for the death of faith. Instead, he insists that the only faith that is living, worth living is the one he witnessed in Jesus: a faith that is driven by love and that manifests itself—not primarily in doctrine or orthodoxy or even martyrdom—but in work on behalf of the poor, in a refusal to show favoritism to the powerful, in a commitment to do no harm to neighbor, and in the habit of mercy.

Today, just as there was five years ago today, just as there was 2005 years ago today, there is a lot of religious faith in the world that doesn’t look anything like what Jesus lived and James described. People of all faiths have been its victims and its perpetrators. Sam Harris argues that it needs to die. But James contends, “There’s no need to argue Sam. All that you’re looking at, that’s religion that’s already dead. But there is something over here you should see.”

It’s like staring at the stark silhouette of a tree on a gray day in March. About the time of year we’ve all forgotten what trees looked like with leaves. It’s like staring at that tree and someone feverishly pulls your arm—maybe your child because they have much better eyes than you—and says, “Look! Right here! There’s a little bud. It’s alive!”

It is alive, friends. In the midst of all the abuse and manipulation it gets dealt, faith is alive. It was alive 2005 years ago when James wrote his letter, it was alive five years ago when the towers fell, and it is alive today. It is a faith that knows only love, and loves without regard or reservation. And this faith is alive because the God of love, the God who loves without regard or reservation is alive.

This God and this faith live on, not in some esoteric metaphysical realm somewhere, but right here. In this place. In you and your tenacious love. Just think what it has survived here: death, fear, broken relationships, cancer, depression, loss of job, loss of dreams, the loss of a child, loss of hope. Here, among you, among us this faith has survived doubt, pain, war, apathy, and even September 11, 2001.

There is no way to deny that religion has been used as a destructive force in our day and throughout history. And I have no desire to deny such a reality. To deny it would rob its victims of their—and for some of us here—our pain. And if denial is no option, then two remain. We can allow Mr. Harris to persuade us: to end the violence and the terror the only solution is to dig up the source at its roots, and the source is the tree of faith. Or, we can become the child by the tree—tugging insistently, impetuously, defiantly at Sam Harris’ sleeve and say, “Look! Right here! There’s a little bud! It’s going to bloom! It’s alive! It’s alive!”

[1] Adler, Jerry. “The New Naysayers,” in Newsweek, vol. CXLVII, No. 11. September 11, 2006, (p. 47).

[2] Ibid.