Living Our Faith

 

Text: James 1:17-27

Focus: Faith

Function: To help people see the power of the Royal law of liberty

¹⁷Every 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. ¹⁸In 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.

¹⁹You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, ²⁰for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. ²¹Therefore 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.

²²But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵But 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.

²⁶If any think they are religious and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion 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.

Good morning!

In years past, I would have broken this passage down into several components and preached each component separately for a mini series on what I call practical guidelines for living our faith.

Now, if you break the passage down, and look at the works required of us in the passage, based on the context of the way to have a pure and undefiled religion, you will see that the passage is showing us ways to love one another.

In one sense, it is sort of what the Old Testament does. The whole law is summed up in the one statement, part of the greatest commandment, to love God by loving each other. That is how we live our Christian faith.

I almost want that to be our motto, it is certainly mine, To Love God by Loving Others.

The first paragraph of our passage tells us of the power that we have to do good. He speaks highly symbolically stating that our acts of love, or charity, or generosity are from God. Our good deeds come from God through us. That is why prayer, study, forgiveness and contemplation -spiritual disciplines- are so important to us. They help to keep us centered on the Spirit in our lives along with the way we may feel the Spirit moving when we are doing acts of Charity, or love. And he emphasizes that it is God who has transformed us, not our own will, but it is the Spirit of God moving inside of us that causes us to do the good that Jesus saved us to do.

And then in the next few paragraphs, he emphasizes areas of Christian discipline and virtue that are important to our spiritual health.

First he talks about anger. He gives us a whole sermon here with a formula: first being quick to hear and then, slow to speak and then slow to become angry. Control your anger.

Anger is not evil. It is an emotion that God gave us that we can use to change situations that are not healthy.

But he tells us that the mere wrath, or anger, or passionate feelings that we have are not the life giving source which solves the problem.

At Kairos, we teach the men not to react in anger, but to respond in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Sure, it is healthy to get angry, but it is our faith in God and our prayers that make a difference, not our revenge or judgment.

In the next paragraph he talks about walking in God’s grace by doing the will of God instead of just hearing it and assenting to its goodness.

Be doers of the Word. And again, Jesus said, A new commandment I give you, Love one another. And again, Jesus said, If you love me, you will obey me.

If you love God, you will actively love others in your life.

And his final paragraph is starts out with an important discipline for us: watch your tongue.

Now, this paragraph is in the context of what being religious is. The root word for religion here is Piety. It has to do with our personal purity.

And he says, if you want to be pure, then first, watch your tongue. James goes into it in depth later on in the book about the potential for good or evil, blessings or curses, delivered by the tongue.

Don’t gossip is an obvious part. Kathy and I remember a true saint at the women’s sewing circle. While one lady, sort of the Church matriarch, was a constant gossip, the other lady would always respond with something nice to say about the person being degraded.

I don’t want to be judgmental, but of those two ladies, the one who words were gracious was obviously living a grace filled life. She was full of joy and had a peace about her that was comforting.

I love the command from Colossians 4:8, Let your speech be gracious.

It seems to me that the people who always have to “tell it like it is” without considering the consequences of how others feel really don’t understand this concept.

We have been given the power to bless others and when we do, God listens.

We have the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us giving us the ability to see beyond the bondage or misfortunes that someone has to see the potential that God has for them.

Being gracious is a result of experiencing grace and passing it along. It is another hallmark of our faith.

And then he segues in the middle of the paragraph to emphasize the point about pure religion by describing what it is.

He states it in a principle form: Pure religion and undefiled before God is to keep oneself unstained by the world and to care for widows and orphans in their distress.

Pure religion is active in its actions toward doing justice on behalf of the powerless.

Religious people are going to speak out, in a positive way for the marginalized, they are going to give their time and energy and money to those who are in need of help and they are going to treat them as well as they treat their own.

It isn’t easy, and it may not be popular. For example, the people at our border, according to Matthew 25, are our neighbors and God will either bless us or curse us based on how well we treat them. And yet, in this political climate, for me to say that gets me accused of being unpatriotic. It has nothing to do with patriotism, I am patriotic, I love the freedom we have here, but before my national identity lies the fact that I and we are first and foremost members of God’s kingdom and the body of Christ here on earth.

Jesus words comforted the displaced and the strangers and the aliens, and it got him killed.

It isn’t easy to be a faithful witness to Jesus’ love for others in such a highly competitive society but it is what Jesus meant when he told us to take up our crosses and follow him.

Wow. That seems to be asking a lot. And God will lead us. I am not at the point of bringing a homeless person to my house because I am not able to deal with the social/mental issues that got them there in the first place. We, frankly, feel like we are just surviving anymore.

But God is still calling us to sacrificial love for others and we do it by faith.

And then he talks about purity. My brothers call this holiness. My childhood tradition was a holiness tradition.

But we need to understand that in many ways Jesus broke down the purity code of the OT by hanging out with the impure, the lepers, the poor, the prostitutes, the collaborators and anyone who was cast out of society by the powers that used the religious system to maintain power and control.

I believe that to keep ourselves unstained by the world, to keep ourselves pure we need to change our thinking about greed, revenge, unforgiveness, and prejudice. Those are worldly values. We are living now in the Kingdom of God and we are living in love and unity and communion with God, each other and with nature.

I want to end with some symbolic language he uses in that segue. He calls the law we are under, the perfect law, or the law of liberty.

I eschew the idea of acting religious. Instead, I want to act out of love for others. Jesus broke a lot of the conventions of the Jewish religion in order to bring justice to the oppressed and to change the narrative of humanity. He did it so that we can learn to love each other and then, live out our faith.

We are under one law, the Law of Liberty and it is this: Love One Another.