Now, lest you begin to have visions of me in brightly colored wigs doing face painting at the local fair, I will let you know that I was only a clown on paper. The club needed a currently enrolled student to be the president of the club in order for the club to meet on campus. The person who was supposed to be president had to leave school for a semester, and so I was asked if I would be named president for a semester so that they wouldn’t have to apply for campus status again the following semester. I actually considered going to clown school and actually belonging to the club, but couldn’t swing it. I did agree to be named president for a semester. I was a clown for about three and a half months in name and on paper, but never in reality, no matter what you may have heard about me. I think I still have my red nose somewhere.
There is so much in our readings today that it is hard to focus. It is hard to ignore our lesson from the letter of James. It has much to say about who we say we are and whether that actually checks out when our actions are studied.
I assume if we came here this morning that we consider ourselves to be Christians, those who are disciples of Jesus. How do we define discipleship?
Being a disciple of Jesus means that we are followers of him and that we live our lives according to the New Covenant given by him. A covenant is an agreement; and in this case, it is an agreement between God and humanity that is present in the life of Jesus. If you take out your prayerbooks and turn to page 850, we can look at this together:
Q.
What is the New Covenant?
A.
The New Covenant is the new relationship with God given by Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to the apostles; and, through them, to all who believe in him.
Q.
What did the Messiah promise in the New Covenant?
A.
Christ promised to bring us into the kingdom of God and give life in all its fullness.
Q.
What response did Christ require?
A.
Christ commanded us to believe in him and to keep his commandments.
Q.
What are the commandments taught by Christ?
A.
Christ taught us the Summary of the Law and gave us the New Commandment.
Q.
What is the Summary of the Law?
A.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Q.
What is the New Commandment?
A.
The New Commandment is that we love one another as Christ loved us.
Q.
Where may we find what Christians believe about
Christ?
A.
What Christians believe about Christ is found in the Scriptures and summed up in the creeds.
So we see here and certainly in our letter from James that being a disciple isn’t about saying nice things; it’s not simply about stating an empty identity. This covenant, this identity of ours requires us to act in God’s world. There is no kingdom of God without Kingdom actions, and like any agreement between two entities, there are things that each party agrees to. In the life of Jesus God has given us eternal life; God has made it possible for you and I to not have death as the end; in this covenant, fullness of life means that we will be with God forever. It means we are Easter people who live in the confidence and hope of Jesus’ resurrection as something that happens for us too.
Now, the confusing thing is, this is a gift. It cannot be earned; however, it is a gift with very heavy responsibility attached. We can’t just go around claiming the name of Christian; it may look good on paper, but it’s an identity that has meaning, and it’s the kind of identity that should be obvious by what we do; and what we do should reflect who Jesus is. And THAT seems to be a problem in much of society. Lots of people are claiming to be Christians, but what are they doing? Faith is not just what we SAY we believe; it is also how we behave because of those beliefs. Loving God and loving our neighbor sound easy enough but for many of us we start defining who our neighbor is and we begin to leave people out; or we define what it means to love and suddenly there are people going hungry because they aren’t our neighbor and we have decided to only love the people we worship with; and we don’t even love all of them. Jesus was pretty clear that all people were our neighbors; and even though his first answer to the Syrophenician woman was pretty harsh, she went beyond what was expected of her as an outsider and showed herself to be a true believer – even more of a believer than those who “looked good on paper” those who had inherited the promises directly. And we need to remember that when Jesus began to care for the outsiders, he was caring for most of our ancestors. We are gentiles who were brought into the kingdom because Jesus calls us his neighbors and he loves us because the Father created us and loves us.
So many of us wear symbols of our identity as Christians; would anyone know that we were disciples of Jesus if we didn’t wear our crosses or have bumper stickers on our cars? Are any of us so concerned with outward symbols that we forget about what that really means? Do we only look good on paper?
I hope and pray that I am a better disciple than I was a clown. I hope the same is true of all of us. Being a clown is much more than wearing a red nose, and being a disciple is so much more than wearing a cross. Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. May our faith be a living faith that proclaims a living Lord. May our faith push us out into God’s world to bring good news to all of God’s people; good news that is evident by what we say and what we do. Let’s get to work.