Are You Religious Or Not?

Twenty-Second Sunday in Course 2024

Those who have known me as a preacher for any length of time also know that I am not a big fan of the clerics who put our Lectionary together. They tend to omit verses and paragraphs to shorten the readings at Mass. And that itself is a kind of insult to the listeners, because it seems to imply that we all have fifteen second attention spans. Now listen to the reading from James’ epistle without the elisions:

"My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

"Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

About half of the words and a significant part of the teaching is stripped from the passage. And let’s not forget one of the greatest metaphors in Western culture—looking at your face in a mirror, which with Scripture means examining your conscience, and then forgetting it! Wow! What an image of modern humans. We hear the word, think about how we live, and then forget about both the law of God and our disobedience. But they’ve left in the part about ridding ourselves of moral filth and evil.

And then Jesus, in the Gospel, enumerates the evil we must avoid, or repent of if we haven’t avoided it. It’s like a to-do list from a modern person’s daily schedule, isn’t it?

Evil thoughts? Surely all of us have looked at the current election and wondered what life would be like if one of the candidates were eliminated. Let’s be clear—one of the parties has spent a huge amount of time and money working to put opponents in prison. Isn’t that an evil thought in a democracy?

Fornication? In a good number of communities, it is assumed that young men and women routinely “hook up” without benefit of marriage. That is what James calls porneia, which covers all kinds of illicit sexual contact. Any such outside marriage between one man and one woman—meaning real male and female, not pretend—is morally wrong.

Murder? In a number of states, the constitution has been altered by public vote to make the killing of a child before birth legal all the way until birth, and sometimes after birth. I am certain that this has not escaped God’s attention. Murdering the innocent is one of those crimes for which pagans were ejected from the Holy Land. And Christ’s list goes on and on, sounding more and more like a report of today’s human conduct in this very city. Those of us who have been around the track more than a couple of times know Jesus is right. When I want something somebody else has, whether property or honor or power or fame or a person, most of the stimulation comes from inside me, not outside. Advertising might pique my curiosity, but the curiosity is inside my own heart. That’s where sin begins, and that’s where my change from good person to evildoer begins.

Fortunately, that’s also where conversion of the heart to following Christ can also begin. Our God is not a harsh taskmaster looking for a reason to beat up on us. No. That makes us blessed. “What great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this law” which is set before us each day of our lives? And how blessed are we that when we want the grace to do good, or to avoid evil, God will always say “yes” to that request. We can indeed all do what is right and speak the truth from our hearts.