Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to comm.church for more information.

My name is Bobby. Hello. I'm one of the pastors here. And lately, for some reason only just lately, I am realizing that it's been a strange couple of years to be a pastor. We start and we stop and we start church.

That's never been a thing before. And some of us haven't maybe seen each other in over a year now. We've all gone through this collective trauma, even the pastors. And pastoring is always kinda strange. The work of writing sermons, spending hours doing that in a week that, you know what, you'll likely forget.

And shaping liturgy around mystery and marrying people and witnessing some of the most beautiful and tragic parts of the human experience right up close. I mean, I love it. I love it so much, but it's strange, which brings us to Halloween. Should we do it again? Oh.

Happy Halloween, everyone. I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to preach on Halloween before, so I am just really gonna go for it today. And I don't care how strange that might feel to you because we've already established that pastoring is a little strange. Now I have always liked Halloween. I never had great costumes or anything as a kid, but I loved going to town from our farm.

I loved trick or treating with my cousins and feeling like I was a part of something fun that the whole village did together. I loved seeing inside of people's houses. I know that's a bit creepy. I loved being greeted by name. Oh, hello, little Bobby j.

How you've grown? And I loved the thrill of night falling on our small town while we were out without parents. But as I matured and my practice as a pastor deepened, I've come to love Halloween for other reasons. And the biggest reason is this, I think it does us good to turn our faces toward what we fear at least once a year. Halloween makes that easy for us.

The fall ritual of putting symbols of what we fear the most, death, in fact, out on our lawns and balconies just so that we can have a scare and have a laugh is the embodiment of John Donne's holy sonnet which begins, death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful for thou art not so. So when you have the urge to turn away from ghosts and trees and skeletons on porches and fake graveyards covered in this year's snow, turn towards it instead. See your impermanence and thank God for your one wild and precious life, as Mary Oliver said. Okay. We're into the second week of James in our faith at work series.

And in this series, we are not talking about being people of faith in our workplaces or how to align our vocational life with our values. All of that is a great conversation. So important that Scott teaches an entire course on the theology of work. But in this series, we're talking about the actual work it takes to be people of faith. And the author of James maintains that there is an inseparability of what you believe and how you live.

Last week, Jeremy made the case that James could very well be written by Jesus's brother, aka James the just, leader of the church in Jerusalem. And right off the bat, what you should catch what should catch your attention when you read James for yourself is how James locks into the socioeconomic situations of his time and how those situations play out in community. In James' world, few are rich, many are poor, And the distance between those groups is growing with significant friction. Sounds familiar. One of the most recognizable verses in James is one verse 27.

Religion, that God our maker accepts as pure and faultless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. For James, your faith is a burden, not a blessing if you neglect the needs of the most vulnerable in your midst. I honestly love how black and white he is about that. Today, we're in the last section of James chapter one and all of chapter two. And if you dig an outline, this is what it is.

Number one, doers of the word. Number two, playing favorites. Number three, faith alive. That's right. Exclamation point.

And number four, all saints and all souls. But before we dive in, let us pray. Loving God, to whom all hearts are open and all desires known, we take a moment to center our hearts on gratitude, calling to mind a moment from our week where we felt happy and joyful, calm. We thank you for those moments that stabilize us and remind us that we are your beloveds. We also take a moment to extend our hearts to those who are suffering, For those in places of confusion and isolation, for those in pain in their bodies and minds.

We trust Jesus that you are near to the pain that we notice and feel. Open our hearts and minds, spirit of the living God, and remind us of your love. Amen. Alright. We pick up in James chapter one verses 22 to 25.

Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they have heard but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do. Hashtag blessed.

Okay. The mirror metaphor really works for me, especially this week. For the first time in my life, I tried to do a winged eyeliner because my very cool 18 year old niece visited from California, and she convinced me to give it a try. And I have had the same face for forty three years. And I only figured out this week that I have a hooded eyelid.

Tricky. I think I have a hooded eyelid anyways. And I went back and forth from my laptop to the mirror, back and forth, back and forth because I could not remember what my face looked like during my tutorials. All that to say, the author of James knows what he's doing here, whether he tried a wing above his beautiful brown eye or not. In Greek, verse 22 begins with the imperative.

It's a command saying be or become. And the second word in the phrase is the noun poietes, and it's translated mostly as doer, but also means maker or creator or poet. And our English word poet even comes from that Greek word poietes, so that's fun. But hold on to this phrase become doers or become creators for a moment because James is talking to people who suffer. Social division, social or economic hardship, cruel oppression, spiritual confusion, they're in the middle of all of it.

And James says, I know that it's hard, but you can still maintain some power to do what matters. But what exactly are they supposed to be doing? What are they creating? Let's look a little closer at this concept of the word. Now James uses the concept of the word in a stretchy way.

Theologian Martha Morquesch points out that the word in the letter of James refers to creation and law and Jesus. So she says contemporary interpreters, that's you and me, would do well to hold onto these interpretations together. And even glancing at these verses shows us the flexibility. In verses twenty two and twenty three, James says to become doers of the word logos. But by verse 25, James is still riffing in this idea of becoming a doer of the word, but he uses a new noun, nomos, which means law.

James uses the mirror metaphor to illustrate what he means. It's this Jewish idea that the faithful are doers of Torah. They perform Torah. So don't just glance at the law of scripture and forget what it looks like and feels like, like Bobby might forget her own face. Gaze deeply into the word of truth so that it's a part of you.

Then you won't just know the truth up here, but you'll live the truth like a wordsmith or a poet, a maker, a creator. Now all of this feels pretty abstract until you think about the way a wordsmith writes. Writers write every day. The good ones do. They write garbage before they get to the good stuff.

They practice their craft. Stephen King says, if you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others, read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around those two things that I'm aware of. No shortcut. And James is saying something similar.

Don't just call yourself the church. Don't just say, oh, I'm a Christian. Don't just affirm that you love people. Let the word of God in creation and the word of God in Christ Jesus and the word of God in the scriptures be the highest truth you encounter and live out. Do your faith.

Do all of it. Practice doing it even if it feels like you're not that good at it most days. Don't wait to be blessed. Being doers makes you blessed. Be blessing.

And if you're still not sure what James means, listen to the next part. Chapter two verse one reads, my brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Then James uses this hypothetical example. He says, suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, here's a good seat for you, but say to the poor man, you stand there or sit on the floor by my feet.

Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? And this is what he means by the story. He says, listen, my dear brothers and sisters, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom God promised those who love God? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you?

Now it should never stop surprising us that this reference to Jesus in chapter two verse one is the last time James mentions Jesus by name. There are only two references to Jesus in the letter, one verse one and two verse one. That's it. What's more, James never talks about Jesus' death. Atonement never comes up, and that's strange.

But honestly, I delight in that strange detail because it goes right back to what James is doing. This letter says that you can't just speak the name of Jesus to be a person or a community of faith. You have to live like Jesus, and you have to love like Jesus. And then woven throughout the letter are all of these references to Jesus' teachings, but you have to know Jesus' teachings to catch them. Now I wanna make a little bit of a side note here about what could be your changing relationship with the name of Jesus.

If you've called yourself a Christian for a long time, you've likely asked the question, do I really believe in Jesus? Do I even know who he is? And without needing to incorporate a lot of Jesus talk in your faith, you can do what James does. You can live it out. Whether you say Jesus' name a lot or a little, this letter reminds us that those of us who struggle with belief still belong in the actual action of building the just world Jesus spoke about.

Okay. Now let's check-in with this idea of playing favorites. Luke Timothy Johnson argues that the Greek phrase and I'm gonna actually try to say this out loud, so here it goes. En pros oh, let's let's ramp up that again. En prosopolemsis.

Not bad. So this Greek phrase is the key to the entire argument of chapter two, and it's actually a term that was newly coined by Christians using a Hebrew phrase that means to lift up the appearance or the face. It's what you turn your attention towards. James, is Jewish, writes to people entangled in the grow Greco Roman patronage system, where the poor honor the rich in hopes of shifting their status. And a deep conviction in Jewish consciousness is that God shows no partiality to the rich.

And James knows that Jesus even seems to prefer the poor. Plus, James adds, your attempts to change your status, they're not even working. The rich are exploiting you. And we have a real problem with n prosopolemsias. I just have to be chill about it.

We have a real problem with that, what we turn our attention towards. We all do this. We turn our attention to all the bad news, and we forget the good. And we turn our attention to people who already have so much power and sway rather than seeking out the voices of those who could teach us how to be our beautifully flawed and fabulous selves. And we turn our attention to the devices that numb us, to the pain and the disappointment and the fear that is in us and in the bodies around us.

The spirit of what James is saying here is you can be a real idiot, you know, but I love you. I love you enough to tell you the truth. So welcome to the club. The club of mastering faith and messing it up. Sometimes you'll confuse favoritism for blessing and status.

That's not great for you, and it's not great for anyone near you. However, you can turn from that, and you can try again. You can have a genuinely alive faith. Sure. It will take work.

But honestly, it's not even that hard. So here's James chapter two verses 14 to 17. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds, can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, go in peace, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?

In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. Now there's a history of interpretation that puts James against Paul. And Paul writes that we are justified by faith, and the reformers were especially keen on justification by faith alone, sola fide. And maybe you remember the reformation hero, Martin Luther, was not a fan of the letter of James. He thought it was worth as much as a pile of straw, but eventually allowed the letter into the appendix of his bible.

And honestly, this stuff does not phase me too much. Do not tell the seminary nerds I studied with. Don't get me wrong. There is a place for big abstract ideas about faith, An immense Paul like imagination for what happens to a person on account of Jesus's death and resurrection. So knock yourself out, Paul, and go get them reformers.

But if you want to get practical or after you've read Romans, you wonder, well, what do these abstract ideas look like in the world? Well, that's where James comes in with works theology. Over and over again, James says, whatever faith is, it has to act like the liberating deeds of Jesus. And, you know, I've been a pastor for over twenty years now, and I have had many conversations with congregants where people say, I am not sure if faith is for me anymore. And I have so much space for that conversation.

You should absolutely listen to the aches and the longings and the questions and the spiritual spidey senses that you have deep inside of you. But after all of this time pastoring and holding space, what I wanna say is this, who cares? Who cares what you believe or don't believe? That's going to change over time, or at least it should. What I care about is you being around because you're good.

And you in community, you make us good. You're good when you ask questions about what the church has or hasn't done when it comes to truth and reconciliation. You're good when you talk about the lilies that you've encountered at the Big Van Gogh exhibit and how those lilies put you in touch with something so beautiful and alive in the world. And you're good when you listen to someone's sad story and you're present to that pain, you risk even taking it in. Your faith is alive if you have ever tried to love someone who hurt you.

Your faith is alive if you make an effort to learn from someone who is not afforded the same privileges as you. Hello, white people. And your faith is alive if you made a bed up for a friend who was having a hard time feeling safe in the world. Your faith is not dead. It is alive.

I see it in how you work to love yourself and others and how you work to make a difference in the world. Honey, you are in the forest of faith. It is an old growth forest. It is ancient and ever changing. And let me assure you, you cannot outgrow the forest.

You are in the forest, and you are in faith. Now quickly, I wanna talk about Halloween once more. You hoped I was finished with that spooky stuff, but I absolutely am not. But first, let's cover the end of chapter two. James chapter two ends with references to the long deceased Abraham and Rahab, As if making a point to a invisible conversation partner, James writes, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?

Think about the righteousness or the justice of Abraham who in faith offered his son Isaac to God. And think about the righteousness of Rahab who in faith helped our spies in a foreign place and who saved their lives at significant risk to her own. James is saying, why would you think that you could live your faith any other way? The body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Now tomorrow, the day after Halloween is, as you know now, All Saints Day.

And the day after that, November 2, is All Souls Day. And maybe you're like, who cares, Bobby? I don't care. But I think you should. These two dates in the church year remind us that we do not live lives of faith alone.

The Christian mystic Evelyn Underhill wrote this about our sacred company. She said, Christian worship is never a solitary undertaking, both in its visible and invisible sides. It is a thoroughly social and organic character. The worshiper, however lonely in appearance, comes before God as a member of a great family, part of the communion of saints, living and dead. James' letter reminds believers who are mostly poor and often oppressed and likely felt confused about the presence of God in a wicked and wild world just like we do, that there is a way through all of this.

Trusting in God and doing good. It's not much more complicated than that. So this Halloween, I'll be working out my faith with a simple practice. Like I do every year, I will light a candle on All Hallow's Eve to honor and remember the lives of all saints and the lives of all souls who are no longer with us but somehow still near. I remember the saints, Abraham and Rahab, mother Mary and Martin Luther King Junior, Macrina the Younger and Francis of Assisi.

And I remember all souls. My grandma Sockled, my auntie Sandy, my cousins Ian and Robin, and many more. We know these saints and sinners not only or even primarily because of what they believed. We know them because of how they lived out their beliefs. It's okay if they weren't perfect.

In fact, it's better that way. So maybe tonight, alone or with the kids in your house, you too will light a candle and remember the work of faith in the lives of those you have loved and admired. Let us pray. Loving god, whether we practice a liturgy for all hallows eve or not, we take a moment to consider and to hold close a loved one who is no longer with us. And we thank you for the parts of them that live on in us.

And we take a moment to consider and to hold close the saints of the church who contributed wisdom and care in the shaping of a long and sometimes troubling, but so beautiful faith tradition. We thank you for the parts of them that live on in us. For those today who know fear in their bodies, worry in their minds, unrest in their hearts, we trust, Jesus, that you are near to all of our suffering. And we breathe in and we breathe out. Spirit, urge us to stay open to all of life for the light and the dark are places you dwell.

And for this strange mystery, we say, thank you. Amen.