Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.

This week’s texts: James 1:17-27 and Mark 7:1-8

“Damn!”  That was the first word of the first line I had to say as Horace Vandergelder, the character I played in the musical, Hello, Dolly, during my sophomore year in high school.  It was a tough line for me, having grown up in church, the child of the pastor, the grandchild of pastors.  There was no swearing in the household I grew up in. None.  It took me awhile to pull off the first line convincingly, and I kind of needed my parent’s blessing to feel okay about it.

     A couple of years later, my brother and dad and I were hitching up our boat in order to go water skiing the next day.  I don’t remember exactly what happened, but somehow I got my finger pinched or something – nothing serious – and I blurted out “Damn it!” right in front of my brother and dad.  Everything went kind of quiet.  Nobody said anything.  Nobody knew what to do.  Apparently, I had gotten pretty comfortable with this particular word, but nobody else in my family was comfortable with it (even though I am sure my brother was, too, just not around family).  My parents are not swearers, and I am glad for that.  It’s just not who they are.  And swearing is still foreign in their home.  Years later, while visiting them in northern Michigan, we visited a town that had a dam near a harbor that led out to Lake Michigan.  The harbor was a tourist trap and featured a candy store – the Dam Candy Store.  My son and daughter were excited to get candy and take them home to grandma in bags that stated, “I bought these treats from the Dam Candy Store!”

     Living in the freedom of college where I could talk any way I wanted, I remember coming out of the Student Union, calling out to a friend who was ten yards ahead of me, using a fine selection of colorful language. Unfortunately, my choir director happened to be present right when I let those beauties fly.  I was so embarrassed and ashamed.  Shortly after, I sought her out to apologize for my unchristian behavior.  But my guilt was born from a legalism more than anything else, a “shouldn’t” echoing from my childhood.

     Is this what the Christian life is about?  Are we just supposed to follow a bunch of do’s and don’ts to keep ourselves in the good graces of God? Jesus seemed to challenge that idea that the Pharisees of his day apparently adopted. He flat out said they were missing the point.

     Jesus’ brother, James, encountered a problem on the other end of the spectrum.  His audience was so confident in the love and acceptance and grace of God that personal conduct and ethics apparently were not of much concern.  Given his instruction, these folks were terrible listeners, offered commentary too soon, let their unfiltered anger rule the day, and had no control over their speech. I think I spent a season of my life in this zone and was able to justify a lot of other behaviors because of my confidence in the love and acceptance and grace of God. I believed that my attitudes and behavior did not ultimately affect God’s love for me – or my afterlife address thanks to my acceptance of Jesus – so it really didn’t matter what I did, so long as it didn’t hurt anybody.  James challenged that logic and called his audience to think more deeply about what faith they practiced and why.

     Where are you on this subject?  How do you enter this discussion?  It gets at the character and nature of God – does God really care about what we do?  And it touches on the what and why of faith itself – is the point of faith for us to simply enjoy inner peace while at the same time giving into hedonistic impulses knowing God’s grace abounds? Why are you a person of faith?  What motivates you?

     Jesus told his disciples that the way of life and faith he was teaching and modeling led to an abundance of life.  Not an abundance of things, but life.  Even if circumstances were awful, life could still be abundant.  Paul discovered this to be true and wrote about how he learned to be content no matter what he was going through – poverty or wealth, freedom or imprisonment.  He discovered that the abundance thing was true.  I have witnessed this in the slum of Huruma outside of Nairobi, Kenya.  The United States does not have this type of extreme poverty to this degree, where hundreds of thousands are packed into very tight quarters, living on next to nothing in awful conditions.  I know people of faith there who are experiencing abundant life on $2/day.  I have seen many others there who are miserable.  Their faith is the difference.

     Thomas Kelly, who helped reintroduce spiritual contemplative practices to the Western world described in his book, A Testament of Devotion, the life of faith when we are deeply rooted in God: Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power.  It is simple.  It is serene.  It is amazing. It is triumphant.  It is radiant. It takes no time but occupies all our time. And it makes our life programs new and overcoming. We need not get frantic. God is at the helm. And when our little day is done, we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well. That sounds pretty good to me!  How about you?  So, what’s involved?

     James throws a curveball in his instruction to his audience.  Everything he was saying was focused on behavior that seemed to be mostly about interpersonal interactions – be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.  And watch your mouth!  But then he says that true religion is evidenced by our taking care of widows and orphans.  Wait, what?  How did we get from not swearing and getting too angry to that?  What is James getting at?

     James pulls us out of our navel-gazing-oriented spirituality to a larger picture.  Faith is not just about our inner peace.  Faith in God’s love for us and all people means that when we see others in need – especially those who are more vulnerable than others – our love compels us to act.  Not out of legalism, but out of love.  I remember a time when my son Noah was young.  I watched as an unlikely bully punched him in the stomach for no reason – just to do it, to exert his authority, for sport? My son didn’t know what to do.  I did.  I knew the kid well and stepped in with a lot of strength to advise him that his behavior was unacceptable, that he needed to apologize, and that if he dared to repeat his error, he would be dealing directly with me, not Noah.  There are times when parents need to let their kids stand up for themselves.  This was not one of those moments.  My kid needed a defender in the wake of being victimized.  I did not step in from a sense of carefully wrought moral obligation or sense of spiritual duty to please God. I stepped in because I love my son.

     When we fully embrace the love of God for ourselves and everyone else, when we see brothers and sisters in our shared human experience suffering injustice, we act. Mature spirituality would have us move from love of God and love of our fellow human beings.  If we don’t really care about the vulnerable among us – human beings and creatures and the environment – it calls into question the why behind the what of our faith, and at least suggests that we have some maturing to do.

   This stings a bit if we have mostly pursued faith for hedonistic purposes.  We want the real deal, and fast.  Yet we don’t get there without some tough work.  The poet Rumi once wrote, What sort of person says he wants to be polished and pure, then complains about being handled roughly? Love is a lawsuit where harsh evidence must be brought in.  Diamonds don’t come out of the ground ready to mount on a ring. They go through a really rough process to bring out the beauty within.

     Are you primarily a navel gazer?  Maybe it’s time for a new view.  Sometimes the new insight comes when we get ourselves into closer proximity with those who suffer injustice. Richard Rohr noted that we cannot think ourselves into a new way of living; rather, we must live ourselves into a new way of thinking.  That means getting outside of our comfort-zone bubbles, which makes us uncomfortable.  Sometimes the only way you can get close is to read from their experience, or watch, or listen.  Who are the ones around us crying out?  Will people of faith lend them an ear?

 

Homework.

1.     Why do you choose to be a person of faith?  What are your motivations?

2.     How do you determine whether or not you are following the faith fully?

3.     When you think of helping others in their need, what feelings bubble up?  What are your underlying motivations? Obligation?  Guilt? Love? Compassion?

4.     Who are the “widows and orphans”, the vulnerable people that most tug at your heartstrings currently?  How can you learn more about their experience so that you can listen, understand, and respond in helpful ways?

 

James 1:17-27 (NLT)

     Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens.  He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession. Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.

     But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

     If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.

 

Mark 7:1-8 (NLT)

     One day some Pharisees and teachers of religious law arrived from Jerusalem to see Jesus. They noticed that some of his disciples failed to follow the Jewish ritual of hand washing before eating. (The Jews, especially the Pharisees, do not eat until they have poured water over their cupped hands, as required by their ancient traditions. Similarly, they don’t eat anything from the market until they immerse their hands in water. This is but one of many traditions they have clung to—such as their ceremonial washing of cups, pitchers, and kettles.) So the Pharisees and teachers of religious law asked him, “Why don’t your disciples follow our age-old tradition? They eat without first performing the hand-washing ceremony.”

     Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,

‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship is a farce,
    for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’

For you ignore God’s law and substitute your own tradition.”

 

Psalm 15 (NLT) A psalm of David.

1 Who may worship in your sanctuary, Lord?
    Who may enter your presence on your holy hill?
2 Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right,
    speaking the truth from sincere hearts.
3 Those who refuse to gossip
    or harm their neighbors
    or speak evil of their friends.
4 Those who despise flagrant sinners,
    and honor the faithful followers of the Lord,
    and keep their promises even when it hurts.
5 Those who lend money without charging interest,
    and who cannot be bribed to lie about the innocent.
Such people will stand firm forever.