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What good is it brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds?... Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go and keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about the physical need, what good is that?”
For centuries in the Christian church there has been a debate about good works and faith. Do you need to show your faith through actions or is faith in God good enough? The epistle of James took a very definite stance on this issue, claiming that faith without works is dead. It is not claiming that you will be saved by your works, rather it is saying that our faith in God manifests itself in actions for others. Our faith should be noticeable by the way we treat people.
John Wesley thought that James was critical for the early Methodist and even based the general rules on it. Last week we discussed what it means to “do no harm” and this week we turn to the concept of “doing all the good you can.” Wesley describe doing good as “being in every kind merciful after their power; as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all…”
The Discipline encourages Methodists to embody this rule by performing acts of mercy, instructing others in the faith, reproving when necessary, and to pick up our cross daily as we continue on our journeys of faith, amongst other forms.
When I think of doing good always, I am transported back to my junior year of college, around thanksgiving time. It came to the attention of the upperclassmen that one of the college’s staff was having a hard year and that her children would not be able to celebrate Christmas. I remember thinking how sad it was that a college with so much affluence could not take care of one of its own. Yet, that wasn’t quite true. Students who didn’t even know this family began to sacrifice some of their own Christmas money for them. Together we raised enough money to get the family new clothes and school supplies, shoes and food. We even had enough to get a tree and have some wrapped presents underneath. When we were done, I was stuck by the thought that this is how Christians should act all the time - doing good for others as a mark of our commitment to and faith in God.
When talking about doing good, it is important to know what it is not. Doing good (always) is not the same as giving people what they want. In fact, since doing good is not the status quo in our society or in our churches, seeking to do good requires a direct challenge to the way that things have always been. A question to pose ‘how is my time best used to do good?’. Am I only using it to serve those whom I like or am I reaching out to new people in different ways?
Doing good is also not free from conflict nor does it mean doing things the way we always have for doing good is not just directed at church people, but to everyone we interact with, which demands that we be interacting with people in our communities and beyond. The book of James reminds us that it is easy to do good to people who are like us, or people that we feel deserve it, but it is so much more to build up those who are in need and honor them. One example that comes to mind is a college Bible study that I lead las year at the Penn State Wesley Foundation.Most weeks the number of atheists and agnostics who attend the Bible Study outnumber the Christian students, yet the students keep coming back week after week to study the Bible because someone is willing to risk loving them. Fruit is being harvested for the Kingdom, because I was willing to radically rethink what it means to do good for a community of people. People who were not like me, but whom I could love.
We also need to be reminded of what doing good always IS. One of the key things the general rules remind us in the Discipline is that seeking to do good (as well as living out the other rules) is the ministry of all Christians. It is also both a public and private task.
There are things that we do in our lives that are ministry, which we may not even consider to be such. Sending cards to neighbors. Preparing food. Watching children. At some point we need to examine why we do the things we do, so we can give God the glory. At times we also need to be able to tell others about the ministries we are involved in, not to brag, but so others can realize that they are living a life of ministry as well.
I have struggled at times between practicing spiritual discipline of secrecy and the need to be transparent in doing good in order to show others how to live it out. There are still some forms of doing good that we do in secret, but we also have to become more comfortable with modeling some behaviors, in order for others to understand what it means to do good always and why we do it - not for ourselves or our praise, but because of our relationship with God. Some of the best opportunities we have to minister to people come when we shed our secrecy and people ask us why in the world we are doing something and we can tell them about what God has done for us!
Brothers and sisters, doing good always is not easy. It is a choice we make daily to serve God by the way we treat people, reaching out to them in the name of Jesus Christ. We don’t need to wait to be asked to do something good, or until the circumstances demand aid. Instead doing good just becomes a part of who we are - and as we constantly make this choice it becomes easier and easier. Doing good always means that we follow God’s prompting in our lives as we set aside control and embrace the situations we find ourselves in. During my time in this parish I have been blessed to hear many stories of how individuals in this congregation have reach out to others on a daily basis, showing mercy, compassion, and love because they were attended to what God was asking them to do at a given moment. God is the reason we practice these rules, and God is the one who gives us the power to keep them!
At this point we explained Pay it Forward and handed out Pay it Forward in Faith cards in order to live out our belief to do good always.
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