May 29 , 2005 Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time Proper 4 Commentary by Paul S. Nancarrow

See also: [2008]

Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28
Psalm 31:1-5, 19-24
Romans 1:16-17, 3:22b-28, (29-31)
Matthew 7:21-29

Taken together, the lessons for this day constitute an extended reflection on the importance of active faith. Faith that makes a difference in life is both received as a gift from God, and also enacted as a characteristic of one’s own life and self.

In the first lesson, Moses admonishes the people to incorporate the teaching of God’s commandments as a regular feature of their daily behavior. The people are to write the words of Moses’ teaching on their doorposts and their gates, on their hands and their foreheads; they are to discuss the teaching in the morning and the night, when they travel and when they are at home; they are to pass on the teaching to their children. All of these externalizations of the teaching are meant to serve an internal purpose as well: the constant repetition of the words in external forms is to help the people put the words in their hearts and in their souls, so that the teachings become habitual, part of the inner resources upon which the people can draw in making decisions and engaging actions in all the areas of their lives. The words of Moses’ teaching are like verbal propositions of God’s aims for the people; as the people repeat those words in both externalized and internalized forms, the words function as lures for feeling that draw the people toward godly action. “Obeying the commandments” in this sense means more than just adhering to the precepts of a moral code: it means to embody God’s aims in human action, as the people act in accordance with the words they have internalized. Such action conforms the people’s lives to divine ideals, and in turn increases their capacity to receive even greater aims from God. This growth in capacity to realize divine aims of justice and peace is the blessing promised for obedience: more than simply a “reward” for “good behavior,” the blessing is an actual increase in right relationships for mutual well-being in the people’s actual worlds.

Psalm 31:1-5, 19-24

The psalm selection also deals with the call to active faith, though it is focused less on “words” of teaching than on experiences of redemption. The psalmist speaks of being “beset as a city under siege” and being the subject of “human plots” and “contentious tongues,” in some unspecified situation of social struggle and suffering. Yet even in this difficult situation, the psalmist experiences God as being a “rock” and a “fortress,” a “shelter” who not only protects the believer from strife, but who acts decisively to hear the believer’s supplications and take the believer out of the “net” that is hidden to entrap. It is finally only because of faith in the saving action of God that the believer can then also act: it is only because “the Lord preserves the faithful” that the faithful can “be strong, and let the heart take courage” to act in godly ways. Here again, active faith involves re-enacting in one’s own action the aims and ideals revealed in divine action.

Romans 1:16-17, 3:22b-28, (29-31)

This selection of verses from Romans introduces a new dimension of contrast into the theme of active faith. Where the Deuteronomy passage assumed that being faithful consists precisely in doing the works of the law, Paul here sets faith and law over against each other: “we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” Because “all have sinned” and therefore all “fall short of the glory of God,” now therefore it is not sufficient to internalize the words of the law in order to realize divine aims and be conformed to divine action. Conformance to God’s aims requires some greater lure for feeling, some greater motivating power. This is what Paul means by “faith.” Faith for Paul is the means by which one participates in the righteousness of God: God shows forth God’s own righteousness by justifying those who sin and fall short of God’s glory; this justice becomes effective in the life of the believer through an active and dynamic faith in “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Such faith, of course, is more than simply giving intellectual assent to certain statements about Jesus; it is a relational quality of trust in the presence of God epiphanized in Jesus and promised to Jesus’ followers. One of the debates of the Reformation swirled around whether the justification made effective by faith was “imputed” or “imparted”; that is, whether God treated believers as if they were just, or whether justice became an actual characteristic of the believer’s life. A process-relational approach helps mediate that debate: since relations are internal and bring actual transformation to the relata, then there need be no disjunction between God treating believers as righteous and their becoming actually righteous; the justice God imputes, God also thereby imparts. It is this trusting relationship with the mercy, love, and righteousness of God revealed in Jesus that Paul sees as both the content and medium of active faith.

Matthew 7:21-29

The Deuteronomist’s concern with internalizing the words of the law and Paul’s concern with internalizing the revelation of God in Jesus come together in the passage from Matthew, as Jesus speaks to “everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them.” Hearing and acting on Jesus’ words are the twin components of an active faith. Both of those components are necessary. Hearing without acting is not enough; it is like building on sand; it cannot produce anything with foundations or lasting effects in the actual world. But likewise, acting without hearing is not enough; Jesus makes an unusual reference to some who “prophesy in his name, and cast out demons in his name, and do many deeds of power in his name” and yet at the end are unknown to him. Action, even good action, even action undertaken in Jesus’ name, is not in itself enough to constitute active faith in Jesus: it is also necessary to hear Jesus, that is, to receive Jesus’ teaching and witness, to internalize his words, to dwell on the divine ideals and aims made manifest in Jesus so that they can be effective in the inner constitution of the believer’s own experience. It is that coming-together of inner constitution and outer action, internalizing the presence of God and externalizing it as godly working, that constitutes the “authority” of Jesus’ teaching, the authenticity of his witness that strikes his hearers as being so different from their scribes. As believers enter into the same sort of relationship with God that Jesus himself had, by re-enacting in their experience the eternal objects exemplified in Jesus and made available for feeling in the Christian community and sacraments, they become more able to show forth that authority and authenticity themselves. That is the meaning of active faith.

Paul S. Nancarrrow is rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in St. Louis Park, MN, and Canon Theologian for the Diocese of Minnesota. He is co-author of the upcoming book, The Call of the Spirit: Process Spirituality in the Contemporary World.

If you found this lectionary helpful, please consider contributing to Process & Faith by making a donation or becoming a member.

---

Process & Faith is a program of the Center for Process Studies, an affiliated program of the Claremont School of Theology.
This site and all content ©2006 Process & Faith, unless otherwise noted.