Our missionaries Bev and Jesse Rich were here two weeks ago, on furlough from Uganda. They spoke briefly during the service, and after the service they showed a video of their ministry and answered our questions. It was all fascinating, God is doing some amazing things there, but one of the things that really struck me was a question that the leader of our visiting VIM group asked. Actually it wasn't so much the question as the answer. Sarah asked what the most difficult part of their adjustment to Uganda had been. And Jesse answered, "they don't think telling the truth is a virtue."
That astonishes us here in the west, doesn't it. It's not that westerners don't lie, far from it. Just take a look at the statistics for cheating in school and on income taxes. It's just that most of us feel guilty when we do, or know it's wrong at some level. But in Uganda, the better you are at deception, the more you can pull the wool over someone's eyes to take advantage of them, to get the better in a deal, the more respected you are. It's a plus to be a good liar. And even their pastors have a hard time learning this.
I think that's one of the reasons our diplomats and politicians seem so surprised when a country like North Korea violates a treaty. They are really proud of themselves for having hoodwinked the most powerful country in the world, and many other cultures around the globe will also admire them for it. And we expect them to be embarrassed or ashamed at being caught? Far from it! We are, I think, a little naive at times.
And yet our politicians are among the best in the world at saying one thing and meaning another. But they have to do some pretty fancy footwork since most of us still do think that telling the truth is, by and large, a good thing. That's one of the reasons The Emperor's New Clothes is so popular: we like to see self-deception exposed, especially when the culprit is a blowhard at the top. But I often wonder what happened to the kid who blew the whistle on the naked emperor. Did they turn and trample him underfoot? That's what people do, you know, when they have a lot invested in their public mask. I think that's why people got so upset when President Bush publicly disavowed the Kyoto accords. Everybody knew that we weren't going to follow them, Clinton hadn't even submitted it to congress for ratification. But something in us wanted to believe that saying the right words made us as virtuous as doing the right thing. But people can't be deceived for long unless they want to be. As Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time." Honesty can be dangerous, though. How much do we really want people to know about what's going on under our Sunday go-to-meeting exteriors?
And yet that is what James is calling for in his letter.
Mind you, James is not calling for us to abandon all restraint and let our worst selves loose into the world. That's the response to hypocrisy that attracted so many during the 60's - I know, I was there! People gave up courtesies and compliments in favor of "letting it all hang out." What James is calling for is to have our innards changed so that what flows from our hearts does in fact reflect well upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Remember last week we started looking at the book of James, one filled with the potential for total meltdown given the political and social pressures in the city and in the church. As Tom Lehrer, one of my favorite satirists, put it:
Oh the poor folk hate the rich folk,
And the rich folk hate the poor folk,
All of my folk hate all of your folk - and so on.
Last week we heard James trying to get his congregation to get a different perspective on life. He wants the rich not to take pride in their possessions and status, thinking that prosperity is a sign of God's favor. At the same time he wants the poor not to envy the rich, but to see their difficult lot in life as an opportunity to let God turn them into better people.
This week James is getting specific.
First, he wants the rich to start really caring about the poor among them, to actually do something concrete about the misery and injustice that characterized daily life in Roman-occupied Palestine. At the same time, James calls the poor to give up the temptation to righteous anger that - at least in some cases - was drawing the Jewish underclass into outright rebellion. One radical sect of the popular movement called the Zealots were known as the Sicarii, for the swords they carried and used not only against the Roman occupiers but against the rich whom they saw as collaborators. Both groups had to change - and the only way to do it was through seeking - and acting on - the Word that God had given to them.
The 19th-century Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard identified two kinds of religion - Religion A and Religion B. The first kind is in name only. It's the practice of going through the motions of religious practice without letting it spill over into the rest of your life. The prophets knew all about this sort of religion. This is what Isaiah had to say:
"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation-- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." [Is 1:11-17]
Centuries of experience had shown the Jewish people that they couldn't do
what God wanted, couldn't become what God was calling them to become,
without some kind of radical internal change. Finally, after Jerusalem had
been destroyed, and the people taken away to Babylon, the prophet Ezekiel
tells the miserable exiles what God has in store for them: "I will give them one
heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from
their flesh and give them a heart of flesh so that they may follow my statutes
and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I
will be their God." [Ezek 11:19-20]
This is what is needed in order to experience what Kierkegaard called Religion B, and what James calls "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God." And Christians have that. Through the Holy Spirit, we have been given a new heart, a new spirit, a new internal compass. Jesus called it being "born of the spirit," (John 3:3-8) and Paul uses the words "new creation": "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" [2 Cor 5:17] But it's the same thing, really. It's about turning over the control room of your life to a new pilot, the Holy Spirit, whose navigation charts are the living and written word.
Religion B comes from the inside, is reflected on the outside, and lights up the world around us.
One of the ways in which the Holy Spirit changes us is in our speech. He spends more time on this aspect of a changed life in the next chapter, but there's a good start here. "Be quick to listen, says James, be "slow to speak."
There are so many proverbs and sayings which echo this thought that I could spend the next 10 minutes just reciting them. The book of Proverbs alone is full of them: for instance, "To watch over mouth and tongue is to keep out of trouble." [Pr 21:23] The Roman poet Horace said, "Let a fool hold his tongue, and he
will pass for a sage."
Now, this may seem like a contradiction, since we already know that James isn't impressed by people who just say the right thing. What he's after here isn't being able to recite verses or pious platitudes, or give eloquent prayers and sermons. What James is looking for is someone whose passions don't run away with him, someone whose tongue doesn't inadvertently - or intentionally - cause harm to others. You can tell this because the very next thing he says is "be slow to anger" Now, as something of a motormouth myself, this passage was not an easy one for me to preach on. It's probably something I'll struggle with all my life. But the interesting thing is, that if your heart is clean, what comes out of your mouth is usually pretty harmless. Sometimes it's even helpful. Jesus said, "The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks." [Lk 6:45] If I have to choose between the two, I'd rather be a clean-hearted person who talks too much than a silent person whose heart isn't right before God. And at least even if I'm quick to speak, I'm very slow to anger. So I've gotten part of it right.
One of the reasons that it's so important to practice listening is that if we don't listen to God, we won't get the wisdom that he promises in the first part of this chapter. Even more important, though, is that if our hearts are full of anger or resentment or envy or any of the other things that can take over our minds - even if we don't actually say anything out loud - our thoughts just drive the Holy Spirit - who is ready and willing to give us as much wisdom and kindness and self-control that we can possibly ever want - right into hiding. That is why James tells us to get rid of "all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls." Whether spoken or not, whether visible to the person sitting next to you in the pew or not, these feelings and attitudes wall you off from the grace of God.
Once our tongues are harnessed, though, James wants us to take the second step. And that is to follow through on what we have heard. One of the most crucial ways to identify true religion, real faith, the kind that comes from the inside and results in action, is whether or not you care for the needy.
In those days, even with 90% of the people living well below what we would consider poverty, there were some people who were uniquely vulnerable, that is, "orphans and widows." Prostitution and slavery were often the only options for a woman whose husband had died or disappeared.
Now, you could make caring for the poor a law. A government can create programs and levy taxes; a church could make tithing a requirement for membership. Some do. But what God wants, James tells us, is people who cannot stand by when they see people struggling to make ends meet, people devastated by earthquakes and floods and war and disease; God wants people who can't not dig into their own pockets to help. Dipping into your neighbor's pocket doesn't cut it, and feeling virtuous because you've met the requirements of the law says nothing about the state of your heart.
The requirement of the law is love, and love cannot let your neighbor - or her children - starve. "Be doers of the word," says James, "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." When you read God's word, let it penetrate your heart. Don't just glance at it to make sure your hair is combed and your collar straight. Let it show you who you really are, let it show you what God wants you to be, and have the Holy Spirit get to work on those changes, not merely the cosmetic ones that keep you fooling the world.
Finally, true religion protects us from being "stained by the world." The religious Jews of Jesus' day believed that the only way they could keep pure was by staying away from the world. That's why the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan both passed by the wounded man who fell among bandits on the road from Jericho. God's holiness was a fragile thing to them, and his people needed to protect it, and themselves, from the evil in the world. They did this by following strict rules and keeping separate from Gentiles and sinners. Some Christian denominations like the Amish seek a similar separation from the world's corrupting influence. That's why the Pharisees were so shocked that Jesus ate with tax collectors and prostitutes and other unsavory types.
But Jesus taught that God's love, compassion, and mercy were more powerful than anything else- even than the cruelty and greed that crowd around us. God's love can make the unclean clean. God's love can heal the sick and even raise the dead. But more astonishing than anything is that God's power can actually change peoples' hearts. "Which is easier to say, " asked Jesus,'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Stand up and walk'? (Mt 9:5]
True religion changes our hearts, changes our actions, and protects us from evil. We can go into the world, rubbing shoulders with sinners of all kinds, and God's love will surround us, empower us, and protect us. What kind of religion do you have?
