Ever wondered what everyone who claims to be religious should actually be doing with their time? Well, let me tell you!
Mark 7:1-23; James 1:17-27; Psalm 15; Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-9
You’re currently hearing about the third and a half sermon I’ve written this week. First I was going to talk about how wonderful it is that we don’t have to worry about all the laws in the Old Testament because we are free in Christ. Then I changed my mind, and was going to focus on how God’s law actually brings life and freedom. Then I wrote half a sermon about the how following the rules is easy and dangerous, but love is complicated but better. All this happened, then I read James 1:27 again and far too much stood out: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
This is a surprisingly simple concept, one I can simplify pretty well: “love your neighbor as yourself, and love God.” Wait a minute, something sounds familiar about that. But that’s really what James’ statement is. In that culture, the two groups of people who would have the most need are widows and orphans. Women and children had few rights, and unattached women and children had even fewer, as there was no one to look out for them. In fact, one could easily say that those two groups are the ones with the smallest amount of hope for the future. In a way, the first half of James’ statement is: “bring hope to the hopeless.”
The second half is a bit more complicated, but begins to clear up when you take into account what Jesus says in the gospel. James says “to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”, Jesus says, “What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. Al these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.” It’s actually not unlike the pronouncement of Genesis 6:5, “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time,” a sentiment repeated in Genesis 8:21.
So what is it that pollutes us? Well, quite simply it is sin — not sinful actions, but sin itself: the state of not following God. When it comes down to it, that’s what sin really is; it isn’t the things that we do that are “bad”, its living our lives for our own ends and not for God. So, the second half of James’ statement is, in essence, “Follow God.”
So that’s the short version. True religion is to bring hope to the hopeless and to follow God. Unfortunately this view has become a bit “polluted by the world”, to use James’ words. Religion has become, and always seems to become, less about bringing hope the to the hopeless but about bringing hope to those who already have hope. Religion becomes less about following God and more about following human interpretations.
That’s the issue Jesus was having with the Pharisees and religious lawyers. They showed up and called the disciples out for not following their religious practices, and Jesus, in turn, called them out for doing it wrong. Jesus is quick to point out that the things that make a person “unclean” or “sinful” is the what comes out of them, not what goes into them; in other words, you can tell by a tree’s fruit if it’s a good tree or a bad tree (to quote something else Jesus’ said).
Now, back to James, note what James doesn’t say religion is about — it’s not about calling someone else out for being “polluted by the world”, it’s only about keeping oneself from being polluted. Yet that’s something else that religion tends to do a very good job of, making sure everyone follows the same “rules” that they feel they have to follow. And by the by, I appreciate that in some ways I’m doing the same thing, so I’m going to stop myself there.
The key of it all is that James is really saying nothing different from what Jesus said, though in a different way of course. However you want to phrase it — “love God with everything that you are, and love your neighbor as yourself;” “look after orphans and widows in their distress and keep oneself from being polluted by the world;” “bring hope to the hopeless and follow God” — it’s all saying the same thing.
Yet James leaves us with a warning, a little bit earlier in his letter: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at is face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it — he will be blessed in what he does.”
As we follow God, we will bring hope to the hopeless. If we’re not bringing hope to the hopeless, and instead bring them something else, it’s time to sit down with God and have a chat, to find out if we are really following Him at all.