March 15, 2010

James 2

I'm very good at the talk. I can and have spun on this blog words and phrases that wrap themselves lovingly around the verses, their exhortation not to show favoritism, to stop reinforcing the elite and the class system, to stop privileging the rich. And I would love to spin my words around the argument against excusing yourself for committing one kind of sin because you do not commit a "worse" kind. Every sin takes you from God, and the fact that you've never killed anyone does not make that puppy you kicked feel any better.

But faith, which I've always been blessed to have in such spades, the anchor of my soul, is nothing without works. This chapter says it plainly, as if speaking to children or debaters who have wasted his time long enough. "Show me your faith apart from you works, and I by my works will show you my faith." And just before that he makes it look so ridiculous (I love a man who uses sarcasm so unabashedly) "If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?"

It's brief and brusque because he knows if he lets us hedge around it we will. After all, I'm a nice person. I am good to my friends, take care of them when I can, run out to get my roommate medicine when she's sick. I didn't go to see Invisible Children tonight, I had rehearsal, and since the last time I've seen it, what have I done for them? I finally called CASA, but not to volunteer myself. Just to do a fundraiser for them. It's not nothing, but it hardly feels like clothing the naked and feeding the hungry.

It's something that lives in the back of my mind - why am I studying Shakespeare? I know why I want to - I love it, I'm good at it, it fills my soul with lightness and beauty. But is it that feeling, that empowerment, that I am sharing in a classroom? Perhaps this summer I will find out if that's how it feels, if I'm giving students not just an understanding of Shakespeare in these workshops and rehearsals for the high school Shakespeare camp but a lease on who they are and what they can do that will benefit them throughout their lives.

I believe it can do that, but that means that we are all laboring in a profession so that we might touch the hearts of those who are tangential to it. So it must be about each other - but then could we not be fulfilled in a way that benefited others as well?

I wonder what concrete works I will show God my faith by someday. They will not be enough to counterbalance my sins, and though I shall be forgiven that through Jesus Christ, I wonder how I will be able to stand before my God. Faith without works is dead. My faith does not feel dead, but it is not as strong as it has been.

Is it enough to give to your friends? To comfort them in times of stress and trouble? Surely not, there are Bible verses about even sinners doing such things. Being cordial to the boy here I hate, that's closer. But what about more generally? Where am I going to find all of this time to do anything anyway?

Faith without works is dead, do I not have time to breathe new life into it?

I've always been very good at the talk, even the scolding of myself. I feel intermittent at best about the walk.

[And, my two readers, don't go all "you're great, you do a lot" on me. I don't. I need to work this out.]