10/17/2023

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1.27)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

I weary of the debate which happens in the contemporary Church between “religion and relationship.” In effect, it is not actually a debate but a rhetorical condemnation of “religion.” You will not find Jesus condemning religion. You will find Him speaking against false religion. If indeed the Book of James is authored by James, the brother of Jesus and the head of the Jerusalem Christian community, then we would do well to fully embrace his words to the Church locally and globally. In his book, he wrote, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1.27) Shall we receive an “ahem” or an “amen” from the Apostle Paul who would write “There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8.1) In truth, Jesus has fully embraced the “religion” of His Father in such declarations as we have reflected upon in this early walk through the “Sermon on the Mount[ainside].” What do we hear James doing but echoing the very profession of faith of his brother Jesus who said “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost [or that which is lost].” (Luke 19.10) Maybe we can hear Jesus speaking “I have not come to minister to the well but to the sick; the well have no need for a physician. I have come not to call the righteous but the sinners.” (Mark 2.17) Now don’t get me wrong, Jesus wasn’t saying that there were righteous, well-religioned people who didn’t need a savior. As Paul declared, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3.23) We all need a savior. We all have sinned, even the most “perfect” of people. And religion will not “save” us from our sin. True religion helps us to deal with the means and the process of actuating the saving grace which God has offered to us in Jesus as the Christ. Having a “right” relationship with Christ and as Christ with the world is our goal. It is not to strut our stuff as “baptized believers” whose best relationship is with themselves or between themselves and God. Such thinking has long been the criticism concerning “the Church.” When did the Church start being the parenthetical “museum of saints” and stop being “a house of prayer and praise where those who still sin come to be reminded we are all in the same place with others in relationship to Christ.”? This is where we can hear Paul go on to write to the Corinthians, “It is God who made Him who had no sin to become sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5.21)

And are we then not struck by the reality which Jesus put forth to the disciples who remained in the Upper Room with Him after Judas of Kerioth went on his appointed round, “I AM the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father save by Me.” This was Jesus response to Thomas’ question, “Lord, we don’t know where You are going; so how can we know the way?” It is so easy to get caught in our own moments of life that we lose sight of the very moment when our life becomes eternal by our choice. To accept or reject Jesus as the Christ and follow Him by taking up our own cross is that moment. If the life of humanity were a Venn Diagram it would have one circle representing the Kingdom of God in Heaven and the other representing the Kingdom without God in Hell. The overlapping of the two circles is where we find ourselves on a daily basis. It is no wonder why there is trouble, turmoil, chaos, war, murder, hatred, selfishness, deceit and selfishness in the world (as if that was the exhaustive list.) But, it is also no wonder why there is love, hope, peace, mercy, goodness, kindness, gentleness, meekness, prosperity, healing and joy in the world (as if that was an exhaustive list, either.) What we are called to do is to exist in the midst of all of that and lean into, or press into, the elements of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven. Our “religion” is merely the way, the truth and the life we live as followers of Christ pursuing righteousness becoming our whole identity. It can be so more and more each day as we expand our understanding of “walking by faith and not by sight.” This is what led James to remind the people of faith about “true,” or authentic, religion. He does so because there is also “untrue,” or inauthentic, religion represented by those who pursue the Kingdom without God on earth as it is in “Hell.”

So, as the mind-numbing rhetorical debate drones on with some, let us be of “one mind, one Lord, one faith, one birth and one spirit” and be the Church whose religion is true: looking after widows and orphans as well as keeping ourselves unpolluted by the world.

PRAYER IN LIGHT OF GOD’S WORD:

Father, You have revealed to us best in Jesus the Christ. By Him and Him alone shall we gain the eternal life and our place in eternal rest, living for You always. Show us more and by Your Holy Spirit instruct us in the way we should go, the truth we should reveal and the life we shall live with you forever. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.