James 1:27

The New Testament writer James, brother of Jesus, wrote in a plain, no-nonsense style that is as applicable today as it was 2000 years ago.  His provocative emphasis on everyday practice – our actions – is a message that is sometimes unpopular, as it exposes the difference between what we think or believe, and what we do.  Chapter 1, verse 27 -- which bears on the question of helping those who suffer in extreme poverty -- is a good example; let’s take a look.

This verse reads:  “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.”  There is more to this verse than meets the eye; two calls are given, separate but related.  And in opening this verse with the term “religion,” James puts us on notice that He is talking here about “daily practice” – the actions of our everyday lives.

Compassion

The first call in James 1:27 is a call to compassionate action on behalf of the desperately poor:  “...to look after widows and orphans in their distress.”  Our God is a compassionate God; He sent His beloved Son to and for us, when we were hopelessly mired in sin.  So it should come as no surprise that the Father calls His children, made in His image, to take tangible, compassionate action themselves – for the benefit of the weak, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised.

In the context of helping those who suffer in extreme poverty, this tangible, compassionate action will, for most of us, take the form of sacrificial giving.  Sacrificial giving in the sense that we are giving something up, something that we could have bought, saved, done, or enjoyed – something that would have improved our own life – in order to improve somebody else’s.  This is the essence of sacrificial giving… it costs us something.  Compassionate, sacrificial giving is something that pleases our Lord greatly, because it shows Him that we are able, if only in small part, to lay aside the desires and idols of this world in order to follow Him.  In this sense, compassionate, sacrificial giving is very closely linked with discipleship.

God or Mammon?

The second call in James 1:27 is a call to actively guard against idolatry:  “...to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”  In a very real sense, one could call compassionate, sacrificial giving a form of “anti-idolatry” – a way of picking up our crosses to follow and serve Him who said, “whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”

Let’s talk about idols and idolatry for a moment.  It is so easy to slip into an unintended idolatry concerning money, because so much of our lives revolve around it – the comforts, conveniences, options, security, flexibility, and enjoyment that it represents, that it buys for us.  To the extent that we set our hearts on these things rather than the now-present kingdom of God, we are indeed at risk of slipping into idolatry.  Avoiding this mind-set is crucial to discipleship:  As Jesus himself put it in the Sermon on the Mount,  “No one can serve two masters..... You cannot serve both God and Money.”  Idolatry, even unintended, is a lethal threat precisely because it prevents us from serving the One True God.  Jesus understood the needs that consume so much of our daily lives, and so went on to counsel:  “For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given you as well.”

Money, or the things it represents, is truly the most pervasive of modern day idols; most of us have an intuitive sense of this.  How can we guard against this ever-present threat of idolatry in concrete, everyday practice?  Consider this challenging thought from R. Scott Rodin’s book, Stewards of the Kingdom (quoted in Richard Stearns’ The Hole in Our Gospel):  “There is no greater expression of money’s total lack of dominance over us or of its low priority in our lives than when we can with joy and peace give it away for the Lord’s work... Giving, both how we give and how much we give, is the clearest outward expression of who our God really is.”

Tying it together...

In sacrificially giving to help the desperately poor, we proclaim money’s lack of dominance over our lives at the same time we demonstrate tangible, Godly compassion towards “the least of these” --- a practice that “...God accepts as pure and faultless,” according to James.

For more on what the Bible says about helping the poor, read the sermon Answering the Call.