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According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation. ~ 1 Corinthians 3.10

 

What does it mean to truly believe in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? The apostle Paul considered faith to be the source of righteousness or justice. (Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. Romans 4. 3) St. James, building a slightly different argument, proposed that faith should be demonstrated in action. (Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by what I do.) These perspectives are sometimes pitted against one another, but in reality they are not so far apart. Paul and James both held the biblical patriarch Abraham to be the father or ideal type of faith, and in his story found an example of the kinnd of trust in God which demonstrates and produces justice.

John Stuart, an Anglican priest and missionary to the Mohawk Nation in the 1700s raises similar considerations of faith in his only surviving sermon. "For with what face can any man continue in the practice of any known sin, who believes in the holy doctrine of the gospel..." If we truly believed the gospel, he argued, we would keep the laws of Christianity with at least the same diligence as we do the laws of the land. We would, among other things, be persuaded that fraud and oppression, lying and perjury, and covetousness were things not to be practiced.

Instead, following Paul in his letter to the Philippians, he encouraged his flock to adhere to things that are true, honest, lovely, and of good report. (Philippians 4.8) 

Stuart began his life in Pennsylvania, but came to Canada in 1781 to escape persecution at the hand of American rebels. Prior to this he had been assigned to a mission for the Propogation of the Gospel in northern New York where, together with the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, he had translated the Gospel of Mark into the Mohawk language.

You can read more about John Stuart in the publication For All the Saints, which can be accessed online here: https://www.anglican.ca/wp-content/uploads/ForAlltheSaints.pdf 

Reading through Stuart's sermon I was challenged by the thought: "What does it look like to really believe the Gospel today? How do embody this belief, not only individually, but in our organizations and our life together? This coming Sunday we will be reading the account of the woman who is healed by Jesus on the Sabbath, after spending 18 years bent over by spiritual burdens. Burdens which the community and its leaders are either unable or unwilling to lift.

Then Jesus comes along and sets her free to live the Sabbath rest. Doing good, for Jesus, is not a burdensome thing at all. It is beautiful, joyful, and exciting. When we, in the church, treat religion like drudgery, we might be preventing someone from meeting Jesus and experiencing the liberating power of the Gospel.

May we instead be filled with the grace to lead people to Christ, and to build with skill and beauty on the one foundation which is Jesus Christ our Lord.