Howard Writes
"Faith without works is dead!"
This month we begin our Lenten journey. Ash Wednesday (2nd March) marks the beginning of Lent and brings us round to that time when we are urged to look again at our relationship with God, our relationship with the people we meet in our everyday lives and our relationship with the world around us. Perhaps the biggest problem which faces most people is that, looking at what they are called to do, they don’t really know where to start.
A really good place to start is to get a spiritual guide book to read during Lent and every year, the Archbishop of Canterbury commissions a book to be written for this very purpose.
This year’s Lent book for 2022 is called Embracing Justice and it is written by the Isabelle Hamley, who is Secretary for Theology and Ecumenical Relations and Theological Adviser to the House of Bishops. it is an excellent book which I can heartily recommend, and it is a book which puts our Christian faith into real perspective in regard to Justice. We shall also be looking at ideas from the book in our Lent Course on Wednesday evenings, beginning on 9th March and running for six weeks.
There is also a supplementary booklet called “Live Lent – Embracing Justice”, which is a series of daily revel on the different themes of justice.
One of the themes developed in the book is that we will only begin to see how God’s justice works, when we recognize that everyone is made in the image of God. Once we recognize that, we can really begin to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Furthermore, serving others (i.e., doing good things for them) can be catching. To illustrate this point, we need only to think of the situation when another driver lets us out into traffic A few moments later, when we next have the opportunity to do the same for someone else, we feel almost compelled to act graciously, especially if the person who gave way to us is travelling behind! The world can be made into a better place if we act in a concerted way and create good habits.
Whilst we can do much by cultivating good habits however, we must not make the mistake in thinking that we can make the world whole again by human efforts alone. We delude ourselves if we believe that politics, sociology and economics can provide permanent solutions to the world’s problems, when the real problem lies within people’s hearts.
However, that is not to say that we do not have the capacity to do good as well as evil.
"Faith without works is dead and that is why it is so important to take positive steps to bring God’s justice to bear fruit in the world.”
As we travel through Lent and approach Holy Week and Easter, we are reminded again both that we live in a fallen world and of what it cost God to redeem humanity. As Christians, we believe that only God has the power to save the world from sin and death. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16) This great love, which is beyond our human understanding, is a love which gives rather than takes. it is also a love which is unconditional. God does not say to us, “I’ll love you if you change your ways,” or “I’ll give my Son to die if you promise to love me.” The apostle Paul makes this important point in his letter to the Romans, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). He loved us when we were unlovable.Christianity is a religion which needs us to make a response however. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19), and we can only show our love for God, by loving our neighbours as ourselves. And we can only love our neighbors as ourselves if we recognize the that our neighbors are also made in God’s image. We don’t show our love for God by joining worship every Sunday and spending long hours in private prayer, but then doing nothing about the needs and the issues of our community and the world in which we live. Faith without works is dead (James 2:26b) and that is why it is so important to take positive steps to bring God’s justice to bear fruit in the world. Prayer is of course really important and strengthens us in our journey and our very reason for existing is that we should worship God. However, our worship will be false and our prayers will be empty, if we ignore the issues of injustice in our world. One hymn that we shall sing at Easter is “Now is eternal life, if risen with Christ we stand”. God wants us to be his fellow workers in building the new kingdom and he calls each of us to begin that work now.
May we receive the love of God in our hearts and respond in Christian service.
Howard
Blessings.