the word is the work

I've been enjoying reading through the book of James, coming up as it has in the lectionary over the past three weeks. I also had the privilege of preaching on James 1:17-27, thereby stepping into a well-established tradition on the African continent; through his research, Philip Jenkins, the respected scholar of global Christianity, has noted that the book of James has long been an orienting point for the worship and witness of African churches.

A few observations:

It is well-known that Martin Luther relegated James to a subordinate status in his translation of the Bible, dubbing it "the epistle of straw" for its insistence that "faith apart from works is dead" (2:17ff), a perceived challenge, of course, to his teaching that salvation is by "faith alone." In the ensuing years, the church came to accept uncritically Luther's original dichotomy, and came to line up on opposing sides, not only "faith" and "works" but also "word" and "deed". It is not hard to see what lined up with what: faith and word were one side, works and deeds the other.

James, of course, did make a distinction: "Be doers of the word," he told his people, "and not merely hearers" (1:22). However, that distinction, contra to how the church has arranged things, was not between word and deed, but between hearing and doing. In James, the force that unites hearing and doing is itself the word; a higher regard for the word in no other book can be found. Indeed, it is "the word of truth" which "gave us birth", the "implanted word that has the power to save your souls" (1:18, 21). In light of this, it is entirely obvious why James spilled so much ink on the subject of that from which the word emanates: the vehicle of speech, the tongue. He counsels his audience to "bridle their tongues" (1:26) because, as he later explains, "the tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity", an "untameable" source of "deadly poison" with which the human being "curses those who are made in the likeness of God" (3:6-9).

Yet, as James says, "this ought not to be so" (3:10). The corollary of the spoken word's great power for destruction is its great power for life. Indeed, we do not only "curse" with the tongue; "from the same mouth also comes blessing". James calls for a bridle, not a screw. He calls not for the cessation of words, but the channeling of right words. He calls for the words that build up the people of God, not the words that ridicule, deride, tear down the poor of the earth.

The word is the work. If we hear it, let us do it. That is "pure religion" (1:26-27).

-Joe

Philip Jenkins's comments can be found in The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), pp. 60-62.