James 1:17-27
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave birth to us by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.
But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
Before I started ministry in 2006, 18 years ago this week, my sister and I took a cross
country road trip. We borrowed our parents’ Toyota Avalon. We named it the Avalanche, which gave it a more rugged vibe. From DC to the Black Hills to the Badlands, from Yellowstone to Seattle to San Diego, and some passable barbecue in Amarillo before the long flat drive home, we covered some ground. We did a lot of camping. Sometimes we stayed in places that weren’t quite Motel 6, more like Motel 5 or 4. I thought of that trip in preparation for this sermon because for days we would go without mirrors. One of us would say, “Gosh, I must look rough.” And the other would say, “Use me as your mirror.” Then we’d look at the other person and see a smiling, joyful person living life well. And, it would click, no one cares if your hair is greasy. You see that face and you don’t think, whoa, where is the concealer. You see love and friendship and adventure. A writer I love said it is best. What you look like is not important. It’s what you are looking at that matters.
It seems like James wanted Christians to know that. Don’t focus on your glossy appearance, whether that means staring in the mirror all day or adorning yourself in a nice wardrobe of words. It’s what you are looking at that matters. The widow. The orphan. The life you are living. They bear the image of God. Use them as your mirror.
And, flowing from that, James says it’s not what people say about you. How respected
you are. How admired. It’s the words that you say. It’s what you’re talking about that matters. Your tongue is the load bearing wall of your religion, and if it wags from angry rants to veiled gossip to rank hostility to bleak prognostications, it is really not worth much. What an important word.
Who is James with this urgent wisdom? James is the brother of Jesus. I will never forget when one of the 8 th grade confirmands learned about James, he said, “Must stink to be him.” But imagine growing up with Jesus, someone so full of love and peace and grace that it rubs off on you. The mannerisms, the joyfulness you must pick up. And it’s a great reminder that all these centuries later, we don’t remember James for what he looked like… whether he had flowing brown hair like Jesus or a buzz cut. We don’t remember his word style, whether he started sentences with “verily I say unto you.” We remember that he was looking at widows and orphans. He was talking about faith lived out not curated for Instagram. How we must be doers of the word. And that is harder than being tweeters of the word or pundits of the word or maker of GIFs illustrating the word.
My Dad is known for saying, “Many would serve God… usually in an advisory capacity.”
It’s a lot easier to spend our time focused on what our church or our theology look like, isn’t it? A rock band or an organ at the front. A screen or a rustic wood wall or an old communion table at the front. A woman or a man at the front. James weighs in to say, what should be front and center is the widow and the orphan and how you are caring for them. It comes down to this: it doesn’t matter if your graphics are beautiful or your liturgy elegant or your pews full if you forget to speak to each other and about each other with kindness.
It doesn’t matter if your theology is intellectually polished and your sermons acrobatic if you still rage and foam against other Christians. Who cares if you called yourself Bible-based or Bible- believing or washed in the blood or decent and orderly if you forget the woman who lives alone with her deceased husband’s stuff in all the closets with no one to drive her to the doctor. She should be front and center in your faith. Your awesome website is worthless if you forget about Mariela who fled her home county when she was 9 or Jamie the 7-year-old who finds himself the adult in his household because his parents are addicts. They should be front and center in your faith. Who cares whether you are Catholic or Methodist or Presbyterian or Baptist, or Jewish or Muslim or someone who does yoga, your religion if it is worth anything is about the well-being of other human beings, especially the chronically lonely and tragically vulnerable.
Another James, James Forbes, a pastor in New York City, said it this way: “Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of recommendation from the poor.” That means church is not an infinity pool… where we relax and forget about our struggles. It is a water station, hydrating Christians with living water to live out our faith in a sweltering world. Church is not rose-colored glasses, but Windex, to remove the residue of apathy, distraction and despair from how we see the world. Church is not new baggage for guilt trip, but rather it is the gift of seeing even the hard things in your life and in this world as an invitation to serve – as James said – there is a blessing in our doing. There are gifts there.
Sometimes I am tempted to complicate the faith, like those people who can make baking cakes into a stress-filled reality show. But James and his brother Jesus kept it simple. It’s how you treat the least of these. It’s how you love God and love neighbor. That brings me to another favorite quote of mine by GK Chesterton. “The Christian ideal is nothing something that has been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”
Here’s a story about the beauty of Christians trying to be doers of the word. There was a man who frequently attended Lunch for the Soul, the outreach ministry my former church had with Spanish speaking day laborers in Herndon. His name is Jesus. Sometimes I think God doesn’t trust me enough to be subtle. Jesus was slowly going blind due to cataracts. For 5 years the county clinic said surgery was urgent – but maybe because Jesus couldn’t afford surgery, or because the county clinic had to triage patients, his papers said – year after year – “Come back in 12 months.” It will sound like piling on to hear that Jesus lost his home in 2020 to the Hurricane that ravaged Honduras, but that was true too. Around the same time, I received a call from a Methodist pastor. “Becca, our congregation has been generous during Covid. Is there a one-time gift we could give to make a difference for someone?” I said, “Yea – Do you want to restore sight to Jesus?” He said, “I don’t think I am allowed to say no to that and still be a Christian.”
Between the two churches, one Methodist and one Presbyterian, we were able to coordinate about $2700 for an ophthalmologist and transportation so that Jesus now has clear vision and a big smile. And what’s even cooler about this story is that it doesn’t stop there. The following Wednesday, Jesus showed up, wearing his big black ophthalmologist-issued glasses and began leading a trash clean-up day near the McDonalds in Herndon where the day workers stand all day. It turns out generosity, serving others, is the most contagious thing in the world.
I suspect we have all been heartbroken by what we are seeing in Gaza. We see another
crisis in Ukraine. Many in this room know personally how it feels to be widowed or orphaned.
So let me be very clear. Our loving service is not what saves us. In fact it is usually what calls us to humility, to the limits of what we can do and deeper reliance upon what only God can do. It calls us to the cross of Christ. It is there, at the end of our rope, where we finally see each other as profoundly needy and equally covered by grace. Abuser and abused, hero and villain, the child in each of us who feels orphaned, the widowed dreams of our lives, trembling and equal and completely forgiven at the cross. There, we are turned inside out. We are all made new by the grace of God who tucks grace into everything. John Calvin said: “The Gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue but of life .… Our religion will be unprofitable, if it does not change our heart, pervade our manners, and transform us into new creatures.” Why don’t we hear more about these doers of the word? It might be because doers of the
word don’t clamor their way on stage. They are often the quiet ones, sleeves rolled up in a sink full of water, washing dishes after a community meal, the slam of a trunk after dropping off food for ECHO, the guy who startles you from the top of a ladder where he’s been fixing something for someone else, the woman who sends cards to people she does not know letting them know they are held in prayer, unseen until you realize how much light shines from them.
There’s a saying in the Talmud: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.” It doesn’t matter what you look like when you go about your days, but it matters a lot what you look at. It doesn’t matter what people say about you, but how you speak when it seems like no one is watching. That service is its own gift. The gift is the opportunity to see the face of Jesus in every face you see, including the one in the mirror in the morning. The gift is new eyes that have to blink back so much light.
Amen.