• "The Challenge to Behave in a Manner Consistent with Our Profession of Faith"
• Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Easter
• May 1, 2005
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

The epistle today highlights the challenge to behave in a manner that is consistent with our profession of faith. St. James writes, "If anyone be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgeteth what manner of man he was."

We know by experience exactly what St. James is talking about. There is a contrast between how we feel in church, at prayer and among other like-minded believers and how we feel when we face the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil.

St. Peter provides the biblical model here. Jesus prophesied his impending death and, in the comfort of the apostolic company, Peter boasted that he was willing to die with him. Then came Maundy Thursday. In the courtyard populated by enemies of Jesus, Peter thrice denied that he knew him.

St. James diagnoses the problem as forgetfulness. We hear the word of God and see our true selves reflected therein-as a man looks in the mirror and sees himself. Then we go out into the world and forget who we are-just as the man forgot what he looked like when he walked away from the mirror.

Christian identity is established in baptism. Colossians says that we were "buried with Christ in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith" (2:12). We have been born again as children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Our sins have been forgiven. We have been saved from the coming judgment and called to live new lives.

This follows on the identity of Old Testament Israel. God saved the nation from slavery in Egypt by the blood of the Passover lamb; God led Israel through the Red Sea to Mt. Sinai, gave the nation the law and called her people to be holy.

Israel's unfaithfulness is consistently explained as forgetfulness. The nation forgot God and the mighty works he did in delivering the nation from slavery in Egypt. They forgot that God made them his special people. Forgetting what God had done and who they were, they fell back into pagan ways.

Christian unfaithfulness is also rooted in forgetfulness. We forget that we have been saved from sin and death by the grace of God. We forget all that Christ has done for us in forgiving our sins and in his providential ordering of our lives. Forgetting what Christ has done for us, we fall back into old patterns of behavior.

The biblical answer to forgetfulness is to remember. In the Old Testament, God regularly instructed Israel to create reminders-memorial stones, memorial feasts, and habits of memory-of the things that he had done for them.

The behavioral exhortations in the letters of St. Paul are also based on memory. St. Paul continually reminds his readers what Jesus has done for them and who they are by virtue of their baptismal union with his death and resurrection. The behavior that St. Paul exhorts his readers to practice is always a "Therefore." Faithful behavior is the consequence of remembering just as unfaithfulness comes from forgetting.

Because of our tendency to forget, Jesus said to "Do this in remembrance of me." At the altar of God we remember the sacrifice of Christ and we remember that we are united with him in his death and resurrection. Remembrance leads us to do the good works that God has prepared for us to walk in.

Disciplines of memory must be practiced daily. God commanded Israel to review his teachings, "when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" (Deuteronomy 6:7). This highlights the need for daily habits of prayer. As we pray to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit in the daily offices, we remember who we really are. As we read and meditate upon the teachings of the Holy Scriptures, we remember the behavior that is appropriate to our identity.

This is why the famous passage in 1 Thessalonians tells us to "pray without ceasing" (5:17). The continuous attitude of prayer is the continuous attitude of remembrance, or recollection. As we always remember who we are, we always act in ways that are appropriate to our identity. This is the ultimate goal of the life of prayer and we make progress towards it only by much effort.

We live out our lives in a number of different environments that present different behavioral challenges. We are part of a church community in which faith is, hopefully, nurtured. We may also spend time in work or recreational environments where faith is actually opposed in some measure; where there may be pressures to do things that are contrary to the principles of truth and love. We live in families that usually provide some combination of support and challenge.

Each of these different environments is a unique battle in the spiritual war that is the Christian life. The challenge is to assert our Christian identity in each environment rather than allowing each environment to impose a false and worldly identity upon us. We may discover, as we look at the various arenas of battle, that we pray the least in the places where prayer is most needed.

A sermon on Christian behavior is necessarily a sermon on prayer because we cannot do what we are called to do without the grace that comes from prayer. We are saved by grace, not once, but continually in the Christian life. As the Prayer Book says in its commentary on the Commandments, "Know this; that you are not able to do these things of yourself, nor to walk in the commandments of God, and to serve him, without his special grace; which you must learn at all times to call for by diligent prayer" (289).

This is how the epistle today related to the gospel. Jesus said, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it...ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." What the Father gives his children for the asking is not the million dollars we don't need, but the forgiveness we need to put to the past behind and the grace we need to live new lives as doers of the word and not hearers only.