Do

James 1:22-27

June 14, 2026 • Mount Pleasant UMC

How many times had he been to the top of this mountain? I mean, he wasn’t a young man anymore. He was on the other side of eighty years old, but every time the eternal God wanted to talk to him he had to climb the mountain. Up the mountain to talk to God, down the mountain to talk to the people. Rinse, repeat. If only Zoom had been a thing then—he wouldn’t have had to do so much climbing! But it wasn’t and so he went up when God called and down when God commanded, and he told the people everything that God had told him. “Here are the laws, the rules, this is the way God wants you to live," Moses told the gathered people of Israel. And the people with one voice responded: “Everything the Lord has said we will do” (Exodus 24:1-3).

That little two-letter word “do” has caused all sorts of problems and confusion for people of faith throughout the centuries. Today it is common to hear (and I’ve even said) that religion is all about “do” and Jesus is all about “done.” I get what we mean by that because we know from the Scriptures that Jesus did everything that needed to be done when he was on the cross. We are saved by grace, by believing in Jesus and his, as we say, finished work on the cross. Doing works, we often say, is part of the old covenant, the Old Testament, the pre-Jesus times. And that sounds all good and well, until we come to the book of James. James is a very practical book, all about how to live out our faith in Christ, and one of his central ideas is this: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (1:22). The great reformer Martin Luther wanted to remove James from the New Testament because of verses like that. James causes us problems because it seems he is focused not so much on grace as on works. But is that really the case?

This morning, we are headed into the home stretch of our spring dash through the New Testament as we arrive at the letter of James. We’ve been looking at many of the books in the New Testament through the lens of twelve “Words of Life,” and in case you’ve forgotten them, let’s do a quick review. Righteousness, Gospel, Forgiveness, Cross, Faith, Grace, Fellowship, Hope and Peace. We have two more to go after today, and just as a brief aside, someone asked on social media why “love” isn’t one of the twelve words. Make no mistake: love is very much a theme of the New Testament, and we probably could have chosen to summarize the Corinthian letters with the word “love.” But love is hard to confine to one single book. Love—agape love—underlies everything in the New Testament. Love is the motivating factor behind every one of these words, just as it was for Jesus’ ministry. Paul, you might remember, told us that “the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). So I hope behind all of these “Words of Life” that you hear the empowering and powerful love of God. And that’s especially important when we come to today’s word, which is “religion.”

Before we dive too far into that, we need some background for this letter. First of all—who was James? At the beginning of the letter he identifies himself is “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1), so it could be any of the several people named James who are mentioned in the New Testament. There is, of course, a James who is a disciple, and there are a couple of fathers of disciples who are named James. But the long tradition of the church says that none of those wrote this letter; rather it was one of Jesus’ half-brothers named James. And that’s interesting because in the Gospel accounts, we know that Jesus’ family struggled to accept him as the Messiah. John tells us, “Even his own brothers did not believe in him” (John 7:5). I mean, I get it. If my brother, who I grew up with in the same house, suddenly declared that he was the savior of the world and the Son of God, I’d be more than a little skeptical. But at some point after the crucifixion and the resurrection, at least some of them (and maybe all of them) came around. By the beginning of the book of Acts, when Jesus ascends back to the Father (40 days after the resurrection), Jesus’ brothers are there with the other believers (Acts 1:14). James then emerges as the leader of the Jerusalem church, guiding the church in making critical decisions, especially as it relates to how Jews and Gentiles were going to interact in the growing church. James became a leader full of wisdom, and so at some point he writes this letter to, as he puts it, “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (1:1). He’s writing to Jewish believers who have been (maybe forcibly) relocated away from Jerusalem, giving them pastoral guidance on how to live out their religion (cf. Osborne, “James,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 18, pgs. 3-7).

I think part of the reason we don’t like the word “religion” anymore is because of the way it’s been used and, especially, the way it’s been misused. We have people today who say they aren’t interested in “organized religion.” I always want to ask if they would prefer “disorganized religion.” Would that be better? Even more often we have people who say they are “spiritual but not religious.” Or as one person put it: “I like the idea of Jesus. I just think churches are corrupt and unnecessary.” Interesting to me is that phrase “the idea of Jesus.” I understand what they are saying, but Jesus is not just an idea. He is a person. But the world has changed rapidly. As recently as 2016, ten years ago, people who considered themselves nonreligious was about 5%. Over the next few years, that number which hadn’t changed much in decades more than doubled. The largest growing group in our nation today are the “Nones,” people who claim no religion whatsoever (cf. Burge, The Vanishing Church, pg. 149). And I believe a large part of that is because we’ve confused the issue.

We have made religion about so many other things. Some make it about the rituals and we love the ceremony and the pomp and circumstance of a worship service. People talk about making sure a service is “reverent” or “inspiring” or fill in the blank. Those things mean different things to different people, but we all want what we want because that is what religion is about. Or we love the beauty of a building; when involved in a building project several years ago, I had someone tell me that they wanted to make sure it looked like a church. I asked what that meant and I got an odd stare. Religion becomes about the rituals, the exteriors. Others make religion about rules. Thou shalt and thou shalt not. And, the list usually goes beyond the original ten. Like good Pharisees, we judge others based on whether or not they keep the rules we think are important. When I was in seminary, the college across the street was debating whether or not women could wear jeans to class or if they should continue to require them to wear dresses. I don’t remember reading that in the Bible, but for some that was a vital rule for the students to follow. The rules become the most important standard. And today a lot of people make religion about politics. The research says that, at least in our country, religion (especially Christianity) has become so tied up in politics that “to call oneself a Christian…is to make a statement about one’s political worldview, not really about one’s local church or spiritual walk” (Burge 141). Friends, anytime we put anything alongside God—any person, any country, any political system—we’re engaging in what the Bible calls idolatry. That’s false religion. Idolatry isn’t about worshipping a little statue; it’s about putting anything in the place next to God in our life. And that’s dangerous because whatever we put alongside God eventually ends up being more important than God. That’s what I fear more than anything in our country today, to be honest. To quote a Natalie Grant song, “When did I forget that you’ve always been the king of the world?” Rituals, rules, politics—none of these are what religion is actually about.

In the Bible, the word “religion” does not show up a lot, but it’s not for a lack of importance. Instead, it’s because the idea is so pervasive that it’s kind of taken for granted (Gupta, 15 New Testament Words of Life, pgs. 148-149). For the Romans, religion was understood as “peaceful coexistence with the gods.” Since the gods were so powerful, you did what you could to honor them—with your sacrifices, prayers and gifts. The ancient Roman world is littered with altars and temples and other places of worship. Each city had its main god but they also included other altars to other gods just in case. Do you remember the altar Paul was focused on when he visited Athens? It was marked, “To an Unknown God.” That’s the “just in case we missed someone” altar (cf. Acts 17:23). And the Romans weren’t alone; that’s pretty much how it worked everywhere in the first century world.

Except for the Hebrews, who strangely worshipped only one God. For them, as we talked about at the start this morning, religion was about obedience. Moses brought down the law from God, whom he met with at the top of Mount Sinai, and he laid it before the people. “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey,” the people said (Exodus 24:7). But they forgot and so their covenant, that relationship, had to be renewed every so often. Moses’ successor, Joshua, put it before the people this way: “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness…But if serving the Lord seems undesirable for you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:14-15). Religion for the Jews was about serving, about obedience. But unlike the Greek and Roman gods, obedience was not based on trying to prove something to the gods. It wasn’t about getting things from them or earning favor. It was about love. The difference for the Hebrews was that they obeyed this God whom they loved and who loved them (cf. Gupta 150).

And then along comes James. He understands his heritage and he also knows what Jesus brought into the mix. He knows that Jesus said he didn’t come to get rid of everything that had come before. He came to fulfill “the Law and the Prophets.” Jesus put it this way: “Until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not to the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18). Jesus, contrary to what some people seem to think, did not come to replace everything God had said before. Rather, he is the fulfillment of everything. Religion in the New Testament is following Jesus, loving Jesus, and out of that love comes our actions. It is absolutely true that we are saved by Jesus’ completed work on the cross; on that awful day he did everything that needed to be done for our salvation. But we show our gratitude for what he has done by practicing our religion. That’s what James is talking about. Those are the instructions he is giving. And he has three ways for his audience to specifically show their love for Jesus.

The first one might not sit well with—uh—some of us. James says we need to keep a “tight rein on [our] tongue” (1:26). In fact, he says if we don’t, we’re lying about our faith and our “religion is worthless.” A bit later in the letter, he expands on this thought by comparing us to horses and ships, big things that are controlled by small things. A horse is controlled by a bit and a ship is controlled by a rudder, just as the tongue, being such a small part of the body, can make great boasts and sets the tone for our whole being. Then he changes metaphors again, saying that the tongue is a small spark in a forest that can set the whole forest on fire (3:1-8). Are we getting the point yet? The tongue, small as it is, has a lot of power. Maybe as a kid you heard or even said the rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But (also as a kid) you learned pretty quickly that that phrase is a lie. Words actually hurt a lot more and cut a lot deeper than sticks and stones do. Broken bones can heal. Wounded souls and bruised spirits can and do receive lasting wounds, wounds that no one else can see, wounds that affect us far more than we want to admit (Wright, The Early Christian Letters for Everyone, pg. 10). So James says we should learn to be careful with our words, which includes guarding our inner life. “What comes out of the mouth comes from inside” (McKnight, James and Galatians, pg. 27). Likely we’ve all, at one time or another, been the victim of someone’s carelessly spoken words, and while that person (or even we) might say, “I take it back,” you really can never take back what has been spoken. Or what has been typed. You can delete a comment on social media but nothing online ever really goes away. And even if it can’t be seen, it is remembered. It dwells in the mind and heart of the person to whom it was directed. I both like and don’t like the way one author puts it: “Whenever our mouth gets away from us, it is leading us into sin” (Osborne 45). So, James says, one part of living religiously, for lack of a better term, is controlling our tongue.

But James isn’t done messing with us yet. He continues, out of his good Hebrew tradition: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (1:27). In a former congregation I had a woman whose husband died quite young from cancer, and she liked to remind me of this verse, telling me often that I was supposed to look after her. Now, she was saying it in fun, but James isn’t kidding around. James is serious. True religion includes looking after those on the edges of society, the marginalized. There’s a reason the Bible from beginning to end talks a lot about widows and orphans, so much so that they seem to make up a single group. In James’ world, these were the “two most impoverished groups” (Osborne 45). Women whose husbands had died literally had no way to support themselves and any children they had. They didn’t even receive any assets their husband had because the inheritance went to the male children. Orphans did not have any family to care for them and would often end up begging or worse. What we sometimes forget is that James would have known what that was like. Church history tells us Joseph died before Jesus began his ministry, which would have made Mary a widow. Their family would have been without a way to support themselves, and so James, Jesus and the rest of the family would have had to rely on the kindness of others in Nazareth. James knew firsthand the effects of “pure and faultless” religion—and probably also what happens when someone doesn’t care for the marginalized. Widows and orphans are still part of the marginalized in our society today, but we can also add others to this category: “the homeless, the incarcerated, the ethnic minorities, women, children, widowers, immigrants, abuse survivors, people with mental illness, the unemployed, the aged, and we could go on.” There are a lot of people today who are “hidden” and “ignored” and pushed to the edges of society. James (and the Bible from start to finish) says our religion compels us to find ways to “look after” them (cf. McKnight 28; Osborne 45).

Then, there’s one more thing in this morning’s passage. James says that those who practice true religion “keep [themselves] from being polluted by the world” (1:27). Don’t get polluted. That’s some pretty strong language. The word there literally means being unblemished, without a spot. I like the way N. T. Wright translates this verse: “Prevent the world leaving its dirty smudge on you” (The New Testament for Everyone, Third Edition, pg. 449). I’m constantly trying to wipe off the smudges my fingers leave behind on my phone; it’s a never-ending task it seems. But this is more than that. It’s not just getting dirt or soot on your shirt, because all we have to do then is change our shirt. No, the image is that this “pollution” or smudge gets on your skin, gets deep down in your skin where it’s hard or next-to-impossible to wash off. James isn’t saying we should withdraw from the world, like some throughout history and even today want to do. Last fall, we visited a beautiful monastery poised on top of a tall, narrow mountain. Just getting there was an adventure! The view was incredible, but those who had originally built it there did not go there for the view. They went there to get away from the world, to be isolated, to keep away from sin. The problem with that thinking is that the trouble is not “out there.” The problem is “in here.” When we lived up north, we’d have people who moved out of “the big city” to rural northern Indiana, thinking they would leave their “big city problems” behind. But do you know what? It all followed them because the problem wasn’t the city. The problem isn’t the world. The problem is in the human heart which, left unchecked, ends up focused on power, indulgence and selfishness (cf. McKnight 29). James says “to be religious is to imitate the ways of God, not the ways of the world” (Gupta 154).

And all of this happens when we do more than just listen to the word. It happens when we do what it says (1:22). Let’s say we sit here in church and we hear the Scriptures read and then we hear them explained to the best of the ability of the preacher, then we go out to our car and we forget what we have heard and read and for a moment understood, then James says we are deceived. If we don’t do what the word says, we are fooling ourselves. It’s like looking at yourself in a mirror. Mirrors in the first century were made of polished copper or bronze. If you were really well off, you might have one made of silver. Contrary to what some people say, it seems mirrors were pretty common in the average home in the first century, but the image in copper or bronze or even silver would have been imperfect. Our mirrors are much better, but what James suggests can still happen. We get up, we stumble into the bathroom and catch our image in the mirror. The word James uses means to “look carefully,” but those who don’t listen to the word are more like the person who glances at their face and then immediately goes outside, not caring how they look. They don’t wash their hair or straighten their hair. They’ve looked but not seen, and they are a mess (cf. Osborne 42-43). James says the same thing is true of someone who listens to the word but doesn’t do. They’ve failed in their faith. They’ve failed in their religion. They’ve failed in their relationship with God because for James, “the heart of religion…is worship of God first and foremost” (Gupta 153) and the way we show our love for God is when we do. James says “you have not ‘accepted’ the word until you have lived it out in daily conduct” (Osborne 41).

Let me be clear again if I haven’t been already: “doing” will not earn salvation. We cannot work our way to heaven. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. And the good news is there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. However, our “doing” is a visible demonstration of our love for God. It’s the way we live out what we have heard and accepted. And it shows others who we are focused on. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” By the way, that’s the only title that both he and we share—light of the world. He goes on, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16). We “do” what we do so that God gets the glory. Without “do,” our salvation becomes incredibly self-centered. It becomes just about “me and Jesus,” and that was never the essence or the center of our faith. Religion is meant to bring praise to God, which happens as we live out what we believe in public, visible. We do what we do out of love for Jesus. So let me ask you: are you ready to faithfully practice your religion? Keep a tight rein on your tongue, look after the vulnerable and don’t get polluted. And James says if you do these things, you will be blessed in what you do (1:25). Let’s pray.