The letter of James, the book our second reading for today came from, has not always gotten good press. The line that usually gets James into trouble is not from our reading for today but in the next chapter: “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (2:17) Because of this line, Martin Luther called it “the epistle of straw”, for he felt that it advocated a “theology of works,” that is to say, that salvation is possible through doing “good works.” In other words, you can earn your way into heaven. People like Luther said that there is no way to earn your way into heaven, you can only gain salvation through the grace of God, a free gift given to all. And I believe that James wouldn’t necessarily disagree with Luther but would say that Luther has misunderstood his message.
James, in this letter, is writing to members of a Christian church who go to church because they are convinced enough of the claims of the gospel to call themselves Christians and to meet regularly with others. But they don’t see their faith as something that should affect their fundamental understanding of their lives and the world. They seem to think that they can call themselves Christians and still go on living exactly the same way that they lived before becoming Christians. They seem to see faith as sort of an insurance policy. In case of illness or a sudden accident, it sure is nice to know that God is on your side. And of course, part of the point of an insurance policy is that it allows you to carry on with your normal life without any worries about the consequences of your actions. So, the members of James’s congregation like rich people better than poor people, clean people better than dirty, healthy people better than sick ones, strong better than weak. They seem to have missed the fact that God doesn’t see the world in this way. God doesn’t have favorites. In God’s eyes there are no insiders and outsiders, all are insiders, all are children of God.
God is shockingly blind to the normal measures of society. He doesn’t seem to notice accents, or what kind of clothes people wear, or how clean a person is. God has absolutely no need to keep in with the rich and famous, or to find favor with the influential. And James tells his audience just that.
This can all be a little unsettling, however. Maybe God doesn’t realize where He belongs in our carefully planned life. He might not realize that He is our insurance; to be invoked when we are up against something we can’t cope with on our own. And maybe God doesn’t realize that He is supposed to take sides, make my team win when I pray to him, make bad things happen to someone when they hurt me. Maybe God doesn’t realize that I am on the inside and all those other bad people are on the outside. God might, indeed, believe that He is the way, the truth and the life, and that our attempts to make him fit our way, our truth and our life are, at best, misplaced and, at worst, completely absurd.
True faith changes the way you live, the way you see the world, the way you do everything, James says. He tells his readers that “doing good works” is a natural extension of hearing the Good News and understanding its implications. In other words, those who really hear the Gospel and understand its message will be moved to take up the work of Jesus Christ and continue that work in their own communities. Those who hear the Gospel and understand will begin to see the world from God’s perspective, in which all are loved and there are no favorites, rather than from the world’s perspective in which some are better than others. This has enormous benefits for us personally, since God is understanding and forgiving beyond what we could ever expect or deserve. The downside is that God is equally concerned about others, even that person who you cannot stand. We are not God’s favorites. We cannot expect God to use one standard of judgment on us, and a different standard on others. And maybe we cannot even know for certain what God’s standards are.
Look at our Gospel reading for today from Mark. In Mark’s telling, those who are presumed to be among the most religious practice their customs and traditions with little regard for those who are hungry. Notice, Jesus does not condemn the Jewish washing practice, one of many rituals common to their faith identity. Jewish food practices helped build community and reminded Jewish people of their commitment to live according to God’s values. The issue is not with traditions—it is the privileging of human traditions over the commands of God, particularly the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.
The missing section of the lectionary reading is Jesus’ commentary on selective following of the oral traditions and circumventing them when it is convenient. In other words, Jesus critiques the leaders for inconsistency in their religious practices, while they hold others to the letter of the law. Just as in the letter of James, Jesus is reminding this group of Pharisees and all who are listening to him that customs and traditions are meaningless if what we practice doesn’t change how we behave. Religious customs and traditions are meant to move us to care for those in need. They don’t exist for their own sake or to make those who practice them insiders and more superior and those who don’t outsiders and inferior.
Faith communities are grounded in doctrines and creeds and interpretations and traditions. We certainly know this as Episcopalians. Just look at what I am wearing today. There are traditions for when to stand and when to sit in our worship. There are traditions for what to wear. When traditions become theological dictates rather than theology shaping and reshaping us, the ones who practice the traditions, we are at risk of making the same mistakes that James’ readers and the religious leaders challenging Jesus made.
James tells us that true religion is to care for orphans and widows in their distress. God comes to us, and we must go into the world. Proclaim your faith in Christ by what you do and what you say. Do not put up boundaries between you and those whom you meet. Do not mark some as insiders with you while you leave those who make you uncomfortable or those you don’t like on the outside. Become a sacrament—allowing God to use you as an instrument for bringing his grace into the world. True religion is not about boundaries or rituals. To have true faith is to care for those in need, to break down the barriers that keep some on the outside, to love God with all our heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Have we subjected others to traditions or customs without regard for their needs? Have we neglected the moral good of helping those in need, while honoring religious practices that make us feel holy even if our actions are not? Religious tradition is not a bad thing. It connects us to those who went before us and those who will come after us. It developed from millennia of practice and can help us commit to God’s values. For many Jewish people living today, practicing hand washing before eating has many meanings, including serving as a reminder that eating is a holy act. We have food because God provides for us so that we might live and therefore we should provide for others that they might live. When practiced in this way the tradition of handwashing is a holy and living tradition that serves to form those who practice it into holy people who are faithfully following God. May these passages from James and Mark inspire us to reflect on our religious practices and long-held religious traditions that our practices and traditions might serve to form us also into a holy people who are faithfully following God. Amen.
