Unstained Religion (James 1:17-27)

The word ‘religion’ can mean lots of different things. For example, when people say they aren’t religious, it can mean that they don’t attend church services. An increasing number of people talk about being ‘spiritual but not religious’ which can mean that they believe in something but aren’t part of a religious organisation. People can also talk about doing something ‘religiously’, for example their morning walk or supporting a football team. That can mean that they are committed to and regularly participate in that activity.

These sorts of examples can lead us to hear the words ‘religion’ or ‘religious’ as being dedicated to and regularly participating in an outward activity, tradition or ritual. While the word still has a strong connection to church or a faith of some sort, for many Australians it can also mean doing something regularly, enthusiastically, or repeatedly.

It might surprise us that the words ‘religious’ or ‘religion’ don’t appear very often in the New Testament. Apart from the concluding verses of this reading from James 1:17-27, the word James uses only appears in Acts 26:5 and Colossians 2:18. While a few different words are translated in the New Testament as ‘religion’ or ‘religious’, depending on the translation, the word translated here as ‘religion’ means the external expression of a person’s faith.

People often think about the outward expression of an inner Christian faith as being active in a church organisation such as attending worship, congregational membership, serving on a roster, or something similar. However, James gives us two very different examples of what ‘religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless’ (v27 NIV) looks like.

The first is ‘to look after orphans and widows in their distress’. When the New Testament was written, there was no welfare system funded by the government for people who could not earn a living. If women and children did not have someone providing an income for them, they were vulnerable and ran the very real risk of becoming destitute. From Old Testament times God wanted his people to take care of widows, orphans and others who were vulnerable in their society (see Deuteronomy 24:17-22; Isaiah 1:17; Zechariah 7:8-10 etc). James would have known these verses as he wrote his letter and would have been aware that caring for the vulnerable was a vital part of living as God’s people.

As followers of Jesus, taking care of widows, orphans and others who are vulnerable becomes a vital part of the external expression of our faith as well. While we have a welfare system in Australia which takes care of many of the needs of people who are vulnerable in our society, we still have a role to play in taking care of people such as the young and the elderly, people with disabilities, First Nations peoples, recent arrivals to our nation, and others. James’ words that religion God our Father accepts includes taking care of the vulnerable can challenge us to ask how God might be calling us and what opportunities might he be giving us to do that?

The second aspect of the ‘religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless’ which James writes about is ‘to keep oneself from being polluted by the world’ (v27 NIV). We can understand what James is saying to us here in at least a couple of different ways.

Many Christians are rightly concerned about the values, morals and ethics of the society in which we live. As Australia becomes an increasingly post-Christendom culture, more and more people are living in ways which are contrary to the way of life we learn from the Bible. The first way we keep ourselves from ‘being polluted by the world’ is that we maintain our sense of what is right and wrong from the Word of God. It is important that we do this because we believe that the way of life the Bible teaches us will lead us into better and healthier lives and relationships. The way of life we learn from Jesus is also the most powerful and constructive witness we can give to the faith we have.

The second way we keep ourselves from ‘being polluted by the world’ is that we don’t resist the world in a worldly way. For the last 2 weeks in the parish’s ‘Heroes of the Bible’ studies the group has looked at the books of Esther and Daniel. They were living as exiles in a foreign and often hostile culture. However, they didn’t fight against their surrounding culture, but they didn’t adopt it either. Instead, they lived faithfully as exiles, working for the ‘peace and prosperity’ of the cities in which they lived (Jeremiah 29:1-7) while being true to their identity as God’s people, even when it was risky and dangerous. In the same way, keeping ourselves from being ‘polluted by the world’ doesn’t mean fighting against the world in which we live, or adopting its morals and values either. Instead, maybe it means being true to who we are by trusting God and living in the way of Christ-like love (Ephesians 5:1,2), even towards our ‘enemies’, and even if it is risky or dangerous for us.

This ‘religion that God our Father accepts’ flows from the grace God shows us in Jesus and who we are in him. If we understand ‘religion’ as the outward expression of our inner faith, then looking after the vulnerable grows out of our faith that God cares for the vulnerable. That includes us when we are vulnerable or in need. To keep ourselves from ‘being polluted by the world’ grows out of the faith that God’s love for us in Jesus is a pure love which makes us pure as God forgives us for our sins and makes us clean through his grace in Jesus.

James expresses this good news by writing that God our Father ‘chose to give us birth through the word of truth’ (1:18 NIV). We are new people as God’s dearly loved children. Nothing in this world can take that away from us. As people who are redeemed and restored through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God has given us a new life to live as ‘a kind of first fruits of all he created’ (NIV) or ‘his prized possession’ (NLT). As God plants the truth-filled word of his forgiveness, grace and love within us, the Holy Spirit grows this life inside us to maturity, so it shows in all the outward expressions of our faith, including taking care of the vulnerable and remaining unstained by the world in which we live.

People have many different ideas of what ‘religion’ means. Some are positive and some negative. As God’s children, it is vital that our religion, the outward expression of our faith, is consistent with who we believe God is and the way of life Jesus teaches us. For James that meant taking care of the vulnerable and not letting their culture contaminate the way they lived their lives. In our context, we need to hear these words, not so we can fight against the world, but so we continue to love each other in the way of Jesus, especially the vulnerable, and we can show the world a better way to live as we follow the way of Christ-like love.

More to think about or discuss:

• What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘religion’? Is it a positive or negative thing for you? What about for people you know? Can you explain why?
• What do you think of ‘caring for the vulnerable’ and ‘not letting the world corrupt us’ as the religion God wants for us? What do you like about them? What might be hard?
• What is one way you can care for someone who is vulnerable this week? What is one way you can remain uncorrupted by the world?