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.
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You all know well of my love of ice
cream. I’m not exactly discerning when
it comes to ice cream—I’m more of an equal opportunity eater. But there is a reason Haagen Dazs is such
great ice cream, and it’s the same reason that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream
tastes much better than most other ice creams.
That reason is cream. If you look
at the nutritional label on a quart of Ben & Jerry’s, you can almost hear
your arteries pleading with you to buy something else. They use full fat cream, not the milk or even
skim milk many larger brands use, and you can tell the difference in flavor. Other ice creams are good, but they’re more
like ice milk. They are good, but they
are not the fullest expression of ice cream flavor. This reduction in experience, however, comes
with less risk to your waistline and your health. The experience is almost the same.
Or think about a football
game. If you’ve ever been to a football
game, it’s a very different experience than it is watching it on
television. To be honest, staying home and
watching it on tv is easier. You don’t
have to deal with the traffic and the crowds, and there is no waiting in line
to use the bathroom. The food is cheaper
and usually better at home. At the end
of the day, you’ve watched the same football game, right? It’s not the same experience, but it’s a
similar experience, and you’ve reduced the risk of having to deal with other
people—there’s not going to be a random drunk person screaming behind you the
entire game if you’re at home.
We could go on and on thinking of things
in life that present us choices. In
these two cases, we can choose between two very similar experiences, yet each
one has a safe option, one that has less risk and is a known commodity, yet
will not provide you the full richness of the actual experience. It’s up to us what we want to decide.
Friends, a similar choice faces us
today when we look at the world of religion.
There is a wealth of options that allow individuals to choose their own
personal religious experience, without having to deal with the risk of crowds
and other people and the brokenness and sin of the church. The general grouping of these people would be
a phrase you’ve probably heard—that people are spiritual, but not religious.
The usage of this phrase has
mushroomed in the last few years. People
are opting out of the church, and yet they are still searching for ways to
assuage that hunger for God that rests within all of us. From the beginning of human history, people
have sought out God, and it is no different today, only today millions are
choosing an individual experience, tailored to their schedule, their desires
and their tastes, and opting to leave the church untouched. Just as low fat ice cream and football on
television offer a similar experience without the risk and uncertainty of the
real thing, the spiritual but not religious life promises a similar search for
God’s grace without the messiness of embarking on this search with other broken
and sinful people. It’s not the full
experience, but it’s close.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Marcus Mumford, the head
of wildly successful band Mumford & Sons
and the son of an evangelical preacher, summed up what many think by saying
in response to the word Christian, “I don’t really like that word. It comes with so much baggage. So no, I wouldn’t call myself a
Christian. I think the word just
conjures up all these religious images that I don’t really like. I have my personal views about the person of
Jesus and who he was. Like, you ask Muslim and they’ll say, ‘Jesus was awesome’—they’re
not Christians, but they still love Jesus.
I’ve kind of separated myself from the culture of Christianity.”
And if we, as the church, are truly
honest, we have to acknowledge that we’ve given the world plenty of good reasons
to opt out of the church. Our brokenness
and our sin is on full display to the world, and scandal after scandal after
scandal has reinforced negative perceptions of the church. Now, I’d argue that the press hasn’t covered the
good the church has done with nearly the same intensity as they cover the bad,
and I’d argue that the church is actively making a massive difference in the
world, but my voice is very, very small, tossed into the whirlwind of coverage
about sex, power and financial scandals that rock the church day after day.
So what do we say in response to
this? How do we respond to a world where
the individual is elevated and idolized?
How do we respond to a world that rejects corporate religion in favor of
the personal spiritual experience? How
do we talk about what true religion is?
This is where we engage with this
passage from the first chapter of James.
In the beginning of the passage, James is calling us to act upon what we
hear in the word. It’s not enough just
to hear, James says. It’s not enough
just to read the Bible, just to show up to church, just to listen with your
ears. James tells us that we can’t just
hear. To do so is to leave the
mirror.
The mirror analogy works perfectly
for Christians when we realize what image we’re supposed to be reflecting. Our human hearts tell us that we should be
reflecting ourselves, but the Gospels tell us we should be reflecting
Christ. The Gospels tell us that when
people see us, they should see an image of Jesus Christ. So when we stand before the mirror that James
references, we are reminded of exactly who people should be seeing in our words
and in our actions.
When we only listen to the word,
however, and don’t act upon it and the wisdom it contains, we’re wandering away
from the mirror. We’re forgetting that
our lives are supposed to reflect Christ.
We’re forgetting that our words and thoughts and actions are supposed to
reflect an image of Christ. We’re back
to focusing on ourselves.
Now, being a hearer and doer of the
word is something that can be done by anyone. You don’t have to be involved in a religious
community to love selflessly.
But if we want to be truly
Christ-like, we have to be involved in community. We don’t have a choice. Look at the life of Christ—when he began his
ministry, the first thing he did was to call twelve disciples around him,
disciples that he knew were imperfect and broken and self-centered. He knew this, and yet still he called them,
because he didn’t want to live the spiritual life on his own. So to choose the individual spiritual
experience over the corporate one is to prefer your own methods to the ways of
Christ.
But, people will argue, the church
today is a messed up place. It’s much,
much safer to worship on our own, right, where we are safe from the reach of
other broken people.
Well, that assumes that each and
every one of us isn’t broken, and that you don’t need a community to correct
and love you as much as we need one. To
seek the personal spiritual experience is to shun the brokenness of others.
And Christ calls us to engage
precisely the very brokenness of humanity that many are trying to avoid. Christ modeled community and called broken
people as disciples, but rather than letting their sinfulness rot the heart of
the community, he focused them on a mission—they would be so caught up in their
mission that they wouldn’t have the time or the energy to focus on their own
sins.
James is reminding us, in the
second half of this text, that our faith exists to serve others, to engage a
broken world and not make ourselves the center of our faith. He says that true religion, religion that is
pure & undefiled before God, is to care for widows and orphans in their distress
and keep oneself unstained by the world.
It’s not enough just to avoid sin, and we focused a lot on that last
week. It’s also a necessity to engage
broken people at the point of their need.
We need to be in community, outward focused.
Frankly, a lot of the criticism the
church has received is because the church hasn’t been focused enough on serving
the needy. We’ve focused too much on
ourselves and not enough on the world around us and its desperate needs. We’ve ignored the world at our doorstep in
favor of talking about what color to paint the doorstep. We need to be more selfless, more caught up
in serving the poor and needy, and in doing so show the world what true
religion is. By living our faith with
integrity, many of those caught up in the individual spiritual experience will
be drawn into a community that they see living with integrity. They will be drawn toward true religion
rather than pushed away from it.
We stand in front of the mirror and
we should see Christ, and in doing so we see the model of selflessness. We see a Savior who poured himself out for a
world that would only do violence in response.
We didn’t even ask for a Savior, and yet we received one anyway, before
we even knew how desperately we were in need.
He died on the cross for each of us, for all of us. He died for his church, for his beloved, and
he promises to come back, prepared as a bride for the church.
When you look in the mirror and see
your religion, what do you see? Do you
model the selfless Christ to the world, or are you caught up in looking inward?
Let us pray
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