Biblical Text: James 1v19-27

Not too long ago, it wasn’t uncommon to hear the phrase, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” If you asked someone what they thought about church, that was often the answer you got. There were plenty of reasons for this answer. Sometimes people would say it because they had lost faith in organised religion. (Many of us have been there at some point.) They wanted you to know they were still open to spiritual matters, but they didn’t find a place in the church. There was too much hypocrisy which, as a sidenote, will probably always exist in a church made up of flawed human beings.

Sometimes people would say it because they wanted to be spiritual, but they hadn’t yet found the right expression of religion for them. Religion is a complex thing, and you get very different experiences depending on which church or place of worship you walk into.

But sometimes, lingering under the surface, people would say it because they wanted to avoid the demands religion places on them. If you say you’re spiritual but not religious, then you can, if you wish, make it up as you go along. You can pick and choose what you believe, what you ascribe to. Perhaps you want to believe this physical world is not all there is…and yet belief in an omnipresent, omniscient God, is too much. Perhaps belief in a god is ok, but you don’t really want to clarify what that god might be like…or that that God might ask you to do, or not do, certain things.

In many senses, that way of thinking is quite understandable. The Protestant Reformation, where the church proclaimed “salvation by grace through faith,” has seeped deep into our culture in many ways. On some level there is an understanding that God’s grace is not something we earn, but something freely given. Why would being part of an organised religion matter? God’s grace is extended to us, we do not need to earn his love…and surely that is enough? What we have now perhaps, strangely enough, is a by-product of the Reformation, without any of the necessary theological background that makes it intelligible.

Our passage today is James 1v19-27. James is a book that Martin Luther, one of the key figures in the Protestant Reformation, was not a fan of. Luther spent much of his time preaching the importance of “salvation by grace through faith,” and some of the words of James seem to hit hard in the opposite direction. In Chapter 2, James says, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead….Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.”

Our passage today is similar abrupt. James encourages his readers to not simply be hearers of the word of God, but doers. Faith requires action, he says. If you think you are religious, says James, but you don’t bridle your tongue, your religion is worthless. Perhaps James has in mind just the sort of church hypocrisy that is often pointed to today? Spending some time on Twitter/X might make you question the faith of quite a few Christians. We might say we believe and proclaim our faith, but what we really believe is eventually shown by how we act.

What does James say of true religion, pure and undefiled before God? It is to care for orphans and widows, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. To not favour the rich. To honour the poor. To clothe the naked and feed the hungry. We hear here echoes of Jesus’s words in Matthew 25 as he separates the sheep from the goats.

Martin Luther was not against working out our faith in what we do, that’s for sure. Theologian Gustav Wingren, when writing about Luther and his theology, said this: “Good works and vocation (love) exist for the earth and one’s neighbour, not for eternity and God. God does not need our good works, but our neighbour does.” We do not do what we do as a church in order to earn God’s love or our salvation. That work has been done for us in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. It is, as Jesus proclaimed on the cross, finished. But now we’ve been redeemed, we are free to live out that love and honour God in all we do. Loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength means, if it means anything, living out that love in loving our neighbour. That is what true religion is, and we should not let go of it.