Religio
James 1:17-27
Click here to view the full sermon video for August 29th entitled, "Religio."
The letter to James is famously known in the circles of those who make up the Protestant tradition by the moniker given to it by the even more famously grouchy Martin Luther, who called it a “gospel of straw.” After all, Luther’s big revelation was that the racket perpetrated by the Medieval church, selling indulgences that promised people a reduced sentence in purgatory after they died was not only morally corrupt, it was theologically bankrupt. Like a FastPass at Disney World, the church was selling accelerated access to God’s own magic kingdom. The problem with that, for Luther, was that it seemed to cheapen God’s grace and the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. For Luther, the chief question was, “is God’s grace sufficient, or not.” Was the salvation won for us in Christ a done deal, or were we still beholden to the demands of the law for demonstrating that we were worth all that sacrificing? Then along comes the letter of James that implores the church not to be simply hearers of God’s Word, but doers as well. That was a huge red flag for Luther who heard it as more works righteousness, one more scheme to put people back in bondage to some impossible expectation. With all due respect to good old Martin, this objection makes me wonder just how closely he actually read this letter. Because our reading this morning opens by articulating that every act of generosity and every gift that we receive is from God.
That might not sound particularly ground-breaking as theological statements go, but its implications are fairly shattering. Not just to a religious institution acting like a retailer who offers God at a price, but to the decidedly secular culture in which we live as well. It all starts off innocent enough. Or, if not innocent, at least it is well-meaning. North American culture is built on the proposition that if one is willing to work hard enough, they will succeed. This comes with the corollary proposition that if, therefore, one is unsuccessful, they must not be working hard enough. It is well-meant to encourage others to work hard and do their best. It can foster important character traits like grit and perseverance in the face of difficulty and obstacles. I recently heard someone suggest that obstacles are invitations to grow, and that when a person has all obstacles removed for them either out of pity, or deference, it does more harm than good. This person was speaking from a place of knowing. After reaching a level of great success, people started removing obstacles for them left and right until finally a trusted family member had to pull them aside. Because the result of not having those obstacles in their life meant that they were turning into a pretty entitled jerk. But when the prevailing ethic is built on this simple equation that hard work equals success, we find ourselves enslaved by work. Work becomes the measure of our worth because it is considered the sole means of success. This is how we end up with the mythology of the self-made man or woman, the belief that life is what one makes of it. All of that is dispelled when we consider that all of it; every good and perfect thing that we have, every generous act is not self-generated, is not the product of our own work, but rather is from above. Every good thing comes, in one form or another, from God. God, who does not vary the giving of good gifts, or change due to conditions on the ground, depending on the person who might receive those gifts. That simply isn’t how it works. That’s not how any of this works. The gifts God gives are not some reward for a job well done, the fulfillment of any obligation God has to recognize all our hard work. No, the generosity of God depends solely on the fact that it is a reflection of who God is: God is the one who wants us to have good things, God is the one who wants to see us reborn by God’s generous hand.
You can see how that might upend the equation. When we see it all as a gift from above, we can no longer look at our lives- who we are and what we have- as the product of our own hard work. A gift, by its very nature is not something that we work for, something that we earn. If it were, it would cease to be a gift and become payment instead. We owe God nothing for such gifts. All of which begs the question, then why do anything. Why believe? Why forgive? Why care for orphans and those in distress?
Blogger and entrepreneur Seth Godin wrote recently about the solution to the stress created by the endless treadmill of working for some kind of relief, working in order to be reassured of one’s own worth. The reason that it’s endless is that there is never enough of that kind of reward, never enough of the reassurance paid for by stress and hard work to make us feel better about it all. There will always be more to do, more to prove. One of the greatest Olympians of all time, the swimmer Michael Phelps, made a documentary about the cost of pursuing athletic excellence called The Weight of Gold. The film came out of the experience Phelps himself had after retiring from competitive swimming. Faced with the question, “who am I if I’m not a swimmer,” sent him into a deep depression. The thing that had defined him and his worth was suddenly gone. But you don’t have to be an Olympian to experience this. It’s why so many people struggle with retirement. After a lifetime of being defined and compensated by the work we do, how do we understand ourselves and our worth without that job, that career, that role in the organization? After a lifetime in service to the ratchet effect, what do you do when there’s nothing left to ratchet?
So, when James implores the church to not merely be hearers of the Word but doers, it isn’t to suggest that any of us are bad Christians because we aren’t working hard enough at it. Quite the opposite. The Word in question is the same word that redefines how we look at ourselves and how we look at the world. Is it what we make of it, the product of how hard we’re willing to work? Or is it a good gift from above? As Seth Godin points out, “there’s not a lot of evidence that more stress is a way to have less stress.” We can only work so hard to satisfy our hunger for success. At a certain point it just becomes more work with returns that diminish to nothing. The only way it changes. The only way anything changes, is if we learn to tell a different story. Because the story we tell about who we are and what we do can, in fact, and will change who we are and what we do. If life is what we make of it, we will always be chasing, always be striving. But if life is a good and perfect gift from above, then we already have all that we need. To embrace that story, that we already have all that we need because it has been freely given to us by God, changes everything by connecting us to the goodness of the gift, and by extension, the goodness of the giver.
At its heart, that is what religion is really all about. Connection. The word religion shares a common root with the work ligament, ligare. Ligaments are the connective tissue in the body that attach bone to bone and create the stability that holds thing together. Religion often gets a bad rap, and for good reason. There is a lot of bad religion out there. But it isn’t bad because religion itself is bad. Religion goes bad when it works harder to control people’s lives by selling them something that’s already free than it does to connect them to the source of the gifts that come from above. Because when we’re connected to that source, when we’re integrated into the life of God and what God wants to give the world so freely and so generously, we don’t have to work at anything. It comes to us. We do things like caring for orphans and widows in their distress because it is an extension of the generosity we have already known and experienced in our own lives. We listen more than we talk and root out what is bitter and destructive from our hearts and our lives because we’re no longing serving a story that fosters anger. Religion that pure and undefiled is less about pursuing some kind of moral purity and cultural separateness and more about telling a different kind of story; one that re-connects us with the source of every good and perfect gift that comes from God.