Avoiding Anger: Doers of the Word August 29, 2021
FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST, YEAR B text James 1:17-27
While anger might not be the center of this text, it is one of those distractions that often keeps us from being doers of the word. Throughout this series, we are reflecting on how well we are living in the community. We need to look at our relationships within the body: How do we value one another? Who is being neglected or left out of the decision-making process within the church? We are also examining how we relate to the wider community around us.
James 1:17-27 The Message
16-18 So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.
Act on What You Hear
19-21 Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.
22-24 Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.
25 But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.
26-27 Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight and guard against corruption from the godless world.
These verses from the Epistle of James include the point that the epistle is best known for: “[B]e doers of the word, and not merely hearers,” just as next week we will read James reminding us that “faith by itself if it has no works, is dead.” Our text begins here on the last Sunday in August. Many schools have been in session for a while; others wait for the Labor Day weekend next week. I know my group over in Florence is almost ready for a break from school, but on the brink of asking School No School in-person meeting or not, we focus on being doers of the word.
While anger might not be the center of this text, it is one of those distractions that often keeps us from being doers of the word. Throughout this series, we are reflecting on how well we are living in the community. This text is really about listening to others before you fly off the handle or make up your mind to be mad.
James as tradition has it, was the brother of Jesus. There is some considerable doubt as to whether that James ever sat down and wrote this letter, but in the book of Acts, we see James stepping up to be a leader—some say The Leader—of the fledgling church.
So, we can imagine that this letter is the result of being the brother of Jesus and of listening to all that Jesus was saying his whole life, not just during the three years of ministry the Gospels tell us about. Thus, many see James as a wisdom text or a collection of teaching and saying that James may have gleaned from Jesus.
James, we see in the letter was a doer. James was faithful. In Jesus’ story, James got to be the elder brother, but he didn’t come off very well (see Luke 15).
Now it had all changed. James looked in the mirror and didn’t like what he saw.
One of the notable features of James is the author’s use of vivid, concrete images that, parable-like, both illustrate the author’s points and leave enough ambiguity to tease our minds into active thought.
So, this is what James tells us: that we are to be quick to “hear,” because not hearing enough leads us, apparently, to speech that is angry and unproductive.
But hearing alone is not sufficient. We must also “do,” because failing to act is evidence of a fundamental failure to function as God’s first fruits in the world.
The selection for today (verses 17-27) reads like a collection of snapshots of quick proverbial lessons.
a) Many a sermon is preached on being quick to listen and slow to speak.
b) Many a sermon is preached on being slow to anger.
c) Many a sermon is preached on being doers, not just hearers, of the word.
d) Many a sermon is preached to caution of the unbridled tongue.
We are told to listen, we are told to hold our tongue, we are advised to temper our anger so that we can do what God wants us to do rather than walk in the ways of the world unthinkingly.
The world’s wicked ways are sprinkled throughout James almost like Wanted posters scattered through town in order for the community to stop criminal behavior in its tracks when it appears in their life together.
The image on James’ Wanted posters is this:
a) worldly lust for money,
b) wealth,
c) and status.
Such behaviors lead to actions that destroy the fabric of the Christian community.
In contrast, RR Real Religion hurries to help the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, RR would not have made Billions of Dollars in profit during Covid-19, would not fight living wages, and a fair vote for everyone(James 5:1-5).
We know that we aren’t supposed to lust after money and status. I know this to be true. But James holds up a mirror so that we can reflect on whether or not our actions betray what we know in our heads.
So, we must mind the gap between knowledge and wisdom. What is it that keeps us from doing God’s word and desiring what God desires? Answering this question with honesty is how we get at what’s really at stake for ourselves and our people as we seek to follow Jesus, and not merely to know about him.
Each section of today’s lectionary passage could become its own sermon.
The first portion of this lection highlights the contrast between the gifts and acts of giving that come from God and the desires that lead to sin and death. And centers on meditations on what it means to be children of God rather than children of desire.
The second portion of this lection focuses on communication, a topic of some currency in the contemporary climate. James, here, counsels the value of listening and of keeping a cool head (James 1:19),
Note, here, that James does not warn against all speech or anger, but rather against a temperament that speaks too quickly and is easily angered.
Instead of these attributes, James’ audience must turn from filthy and evil behavior to welcome God’s implanted word (1:21).
The third part of the lection picks up a theme that will be repeated in next week’s reading also: the importance of faith-informed action. Faithful action, for James, means paying specific attention to “the law of liberty,” possibly shorthand for Torah, especially the Ten Commandments (James 2:11) and Leviticus 19:18 (James 1:25).
Believers should enact the law of liberty, rather than just listen to it, so that they did not become like those who look into a mirror and then immediately forget their own reflection (1:24).
Lastly, let look at James 1:26-27 it encapsulates the spirit of the entire chapter, by pointing out the primary characteristics of “ RR real religion.”
We all need R R Real Religion!!
Here, all three themes merge.
Pure religion, according to James, guards its speech (1:26, compare with 1:19-21).
It acts out its faith by caring for society’s marginalized persons, here represented by “widows and orphans” (1:27, compare with 1:22-25).
And, it keeps itself unstained from the world.
Throughout these verses, James invites the question: “What does it mean to live as a Christian with RR Real Religion?”
RR Real Religion is neither rules-based nor ritual-based.
RR Real Religion is a relationship with God.
Two things that all religions hold are that humanity is somehow separated from God and needs to be reconciled to Him. False religion seeks to solve this problem by observing rules and rituals.
RR Real Religion solves the problem by recognizing that only God could rectify the separation and that He has done so.
RR Real Religion does have rules and rituals, but there is a crucial difference.
In RR Real Religion, the rules and rituals are observed out of gratitude for the salvation God has provided – NOT in an effort to obtain that salvation.
Real Religion, which is Biblical Christianity, has rules to obey (do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not lie, etc.) and rituals to observe (water baptism and the Lord’s Supper / Communion).
But, Observance of these rules and rituals is not what makes a person right with God.
Rather, these rules and rituals are the results of the relationship with God, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone as the Savior.
False religion is doing things (rules and rituals) in order to try to earn God’s favor.
RR Real Religion is receiving Jesus Christ as Savior and thereby having a right relationship with God – and then doing things (rules and rituals) out of love for God and desire to grow closer to God.
When we have a Real region our relationship and answer to God is like that in the song by Rev. Clay Evans "Have You Got Good Religion" part of that old song used to ask:
Have you got good religion?
Lord, Cert'nly
Have you got good religion?
Lord, Cert'nly
Have you got good religion?
Cert'nly
Cert'nly, cert'nly, cert'nly, Lord!
But then it would get gooder it would go!
My soul got happy (Cert'nly, Lord!)
I couldn't hold my peace (Cert'nly, Lord!)
I said Oh Jesus (Cert'nly, Lord!)
Have mercy on me (Cert'nly, Lord!)
Want the Lord to make a way for you? (Cert'nly, Lord!)
Let me see you waive your hands (Cert'nly, Lord!)
Have you ever tried him? (Cert'nly, Lord!)
I said, have you every tried him? (Cert'nly, Lord!)
Somebody say, I've tried him (Cert'nly, Lord!)
Cert'nly, cert'nly, cert'nly, Lord!
