I wonder how you feel about dirt and cleanliness. If you drop food on the floor, do you think “5 second rule” and put it back on your plate, or does even the thought of that make you feel a bit sick. Do you subscribe to the old adage, “you’ve got to eat a peck of dirt before you die”? Or do you prefer, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”? It’s quite a personal thing, isn’t it, our comfort with levels of dirt, and how much effort we’re willing to put into making things spotless, and keeping them clean. And that’s before we even get on to the way in which we graciously handle visiting or living with people whose ideas about these things isn’t quite the same as ours.
Both our readings this evening touch on ideas of dirt and cleanliness, and particularly the way in which physical and moral cleanliness are seen by some to be connected, but not by God. God is much more interested in the cleanliness of hearts than in the cleanliness of our hands.
Let’s start our exploration this evening by having a dive into James. If we look back quickly at verse 1, we discover that James is writing primarily to Jewish Christians that have been scattered. There are a number of men called James in the early church, and this one is one of the brothers of Jesus, who took on a role of leadership in the years following Jesus’ return to heaven. He wasn’t one of the twelve apostles, but had evidently come to believe that his brother was who he said he was, and become a Christian. It is likely that the “scattering” is the one that is mentioned in Acts 8, when following the execution of Stephen the church in Jerusalem came under severe persecution.
James’ letter is quite different to the other letters in the New Testament. It is much more stream of consciousness, and while there are themes in there, they tend to woven in and out of each other, rather than presented as a logical argument like we find in most of Paul’s letters. This weaving together is why it looks like, in our pew Bibles that the first verse of the reading seems to be in the middle of a paragraph.
The verse before, v16, says “Do not be deceived my dear brothers and sisters.” The NRSV translation, which is the translation used for the lectionary, suggests that verse 16 is the end of the previous paragraph, and is the final thought of that sequence. This translation sees it as the beginning of this paragraph, as the introductory thought of a new sequence. To be honest, it doesn’t matter very much, but it does illustrate the nature of James’ writing.
Our reading begins with a reminder that everything that is good and perfect comes from God. This is the foundational truth that we were thinking about in our service this morning. I’m not going to focus on it much this evening, so if you want to hear a bit more about that, then do look online for my sermon this morning.
As we read on, we get to verse 19 and a clear direction from James of a practical application of our obedience to Jesus.
“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.”
Let’s just take a moment to let that sink in. To be honest, it doesn’t feel like I need to explain it much – it does what it says on the tin. It’s not difficult to understand, it’s just difficult to do!
“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.”
And why is this important? For lots of reasons, but the reason that James gives is:
“because our anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”
God wants us to be holy, to be right with him and with each other, and anger does not help bring that about.
I wonder if you’ve ever experienced anger, either in yourself or in someone else, which had just taken them over. Anger that was obscuring and possibility of seeing anything else. Anger that was controlling behaviour and preventing progress. This is the kind of anger that James is talking about. It does not bring about righteousness.
As we get to verse 21, we find a “therefore”, so we ask, what is the “therefore” there for?
It seems to me that we could paraphrase it like this:
“Because God wants you to be righteous, get rid of all moral filth (of which anger is one example) and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.”
“Get clean” says James. The first step to getting clean is recognising that we’re dirty, and this takes humility. James uses the example of anger, but there are other kinds of muck that can stick to us. The second step is to get in the bath or shower – this takes intent, a decision that we want to be clean. The third step is to get the soap and flannel. We need tools to get clean from moral filth as well. James says that it is the word, planted in us, which can save us.
What is the word that saves us? It seems to me that there are two answers here.
The first is the answer that is always the answer to questions in church. Jesus. In the introduction to his eye witness account of the good news of Jesus, John writes,
“in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Jesus is the Word.
Who is it that saves? Well, his very name, Jesus, means “God saves.” By his death and resurrection it is Jesus who rescues us from sin and death.
So the first answer is Jesus. That is who we humbly accept, and who, as symbolised by our baptism washes us clean, and then continues to wash us clean as we walk with him, and the Holy Spirit brings new dusty corners in our lives to light.
In his brilliant little book, “10 second sermons” the comedian Milton Jones writes:
“The Spirit of God is a real person you can invite in. But watch out – in time he will go over to the fridge, pull it from the wall and say, “What’s all this mess under here?” But at least he helps clear up.”
The second answer is the Bible. The written word of God to us. Now, I think we have to be a bit careful here. The Bible does not save us in the same way that Jesus does, but it does have a part to play. Firstly it is the written word of God that is our primary source for knowing the living Word of God, and the rescue that he offers us. Secondly, it has been given to us to help us live our lives faithfully following Jesus. As we read it, learn it, digest it, the word of God shapes our minds, our thinking, our hearts, our behaviour, and washes us clean, as we submit to what it says with humility.
As I say, there are two answers to the question, what is the word that saves us? Jesus and the Bible. I don’t think that we have to choose between them, they are both valid answers that complement each other.
As we read on, however, as James talks more about the word, and what we should do with and about it, it seems to me what James has at the forefront of his mind is the written word of God, the Bible. He advises us not just to listen to it, but to do what it says, to put it into practice.
And then he says something that might seem quite counter intuitive. He describes the perfect law as the something that gives freedom.
Law that gives freedom.
It seems to me that we often think of law as something that stops us doing things. It is seen as a constraint, a restraint, rather than a freedom.
Maybe a practical example, of a pretty mundane law, might help us see how this can work – it all depends on perspective. It is a law in this country that we drive on the left hand side of the road. This is a constraint. It dictates that we are not to drive on the right hand side, and if we do, then we will be prosecuted. On the other hand, it does free me, and everyone else following this law, to arrive safely at our destination. It is a law that brings freedom.
God’s law is so much more than this, God’s law is perfect. Following God’s law, which all flow out of the two heart commandments, “Love God and love each other.” gives us freedom. Freedom to be the people that God created us to be, freedom from sin and shame, freedom from addiction and fear, freedom from death and hell.
Earlier on, in his discussion of anger, James touched on how we should be quick to listen and slow to speak. He returns to this theme with another practical example of what it means to put what we read and hear in the word into practice. He writes,
“Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight reign on their tongues deceived themselves, and their religion is worthless.”
Doesn’t pull any punches, does he? And again, it’s not difficult to understand. It might be difficult to do, but it’s not difficult to understand.
James then moves on to some positive examples of what God is looking for in people. These examples flow out of that love for neighbour that Jesus talked about, and James weaves in the concepts of moral purity and cleanliness we’ve already talked about. So we have the very practical – “look after orphans and widows” and the holiness ethic, “keep yourself from being polluted by the world”.
This final direction is actually a progression of the theme. Earlier on James said “get rid of all moral filth” – that is, get clean. Now we are at, “keep yourself from being polluted.” That is – don’t get dirty.
It seems to me that this isn’t about separating ourselves off from the world. James wants his readers to be involved in the lives of widows and orphans, stuck into the challenges of practically helping and supporting them. It is about being in the world without being polluted by it. How do we do this? The same way that we got clean in the first place, by the work of the word. Jesus and the Bible. Each of us will have different things that we know could pollute us. For some it will be unhelpful things that we read or might watch on the TV or the internet. For others it will be people that drag us away from Jesus. Keeping an eye on this, increasing our awareness of what it is that pollutes us, that gums up our lives, is part of the work of the Holy Spirit, who raises our sensitivity to these things, and gives us what we need to avoid them.
So, that is James. What do we see that resonates, or contrasts with this in the conversation that we find in Mark’s eyewitness account of the good news of Jesus?
Here we find Jesus in a dispute with some Pharisees and teachers of the law. This is not the first time that Jesus has got on their wrong side. There have already been a couple of run ins focussed on the keeping of the Sabbath, and their view that Jesus was breaking the Sabbath law by healing on the Sabbath. This had got so bad that in Mark 3 we read that some of the Pharisees were plotting how to kill Jesus.
The presenting issue this time is not the Sabbath, it is cleanliness and ritual washing. It is important to notice the phrase, “tradition of the elders” It appears in verses 3 and 5. Verses 3 and 4 are a little explanation from Mark as to why the Pharisees were asking about this, probably there because he wasn’t sure that the people he was writing for would be aware of the details of Jewish religious practice. Mark makes it clear that the details of the ritual washing are from the “tradition of the elders.” This is reflected in the question that the Pharisees ask Jesus,
“Why don’t your disciples live according the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands.”
Why is this important? Well, “the traditions of the elders” were a set of writings from various Jewish Rabbis, collected over the centuries, but were not part of the law of God given to Moses, or found in the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament. These traditions formed what they called “a fence for the law”. The idea was to give practical guidance to Jews as to what they needed to do in their day to day lives to avoid being in any danger of contravening God’s law.
A good example of this is the Sabbath. The law said that people should keep the Sabbath. But what exactly did that mean. What if they accidentally broke the Sabbath? To prevent this the “traditions of the elders” gave lots of practical examples of what could and couldn’t be done on the Sabbath, including how far you could walk. It all sounds quite helpful, a practical application of the law that James might have approved of. But there was a problem. It had led to a massive multiplication of petty rules that were pretty much impossible to follow and led to a whole load of finger pointing. It was no longer a law that brought freedom, but a net of human rules that tripped people up.
Jesus calls them out on this. He draws on the writings of one of God’s messengers to God’s people, Isaiah, one of whose main charges against the people of God was that their worship was in vain, and their teachings merely human rules.
Interestingly, in the opening chapter of Isaiah, we read this:
“ Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.”
Sound familiar? God was not saying anything that he hadn’t said before through James or Jesus. God’s call to practical holiness, and his hatred of hypocrisy and hollow worship are consistent through out scripture.
As the conversation continues in Mark, Jesus gives a practical example of another human tradition that has distorted the command of God, before calling out to the whole crowd in verse 14:
“Nothing outside you can defile you be going into you. Rather, it is what comes out of you that defiles you.”
The disciples are confused about this, and ask him about it later. Jesus reiterates that physical things that go into the body do not defile it, but that is the evil thoughts and behaviours that come out of us that defile us, that are the unholiness and pollution that separate us from God and each other.
How are we to understand this in relation to what James writes about avoiding being polluted by the world? It seems to me that Jesus is addressing a particular context – physical things that go into the body, and a particular misunderstanding about ritual cleanliness and washing, rather than making a blanket statement that nothing outside of us has any effect on us.
For most of us, drinking a glass of wine doesn’t pollute us or defile us. Drinking a lot of wine can lead to all kinds of behaviours that do pollute and defile us – picking up James’s two examples it can lead to the tongue being let off its reign and to anger breaking out.
So, what difference is this to make in our daily lives and discipleship? You may already be thinking of some things. To further prompt our reflections I have a few questions that we might want to consider.
Are their any “traditions of the elders” that we have built around the exercise of our faith that have become more important to us than the faith itself, or which actually get in the way of us or others getting closer to Jesus? Theologian Jaroslav Pelikan wrote “tradition is the living faith of the dead, but that traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” How do we honour the first, whilst avoiding the trap of the second?
What are we aware of in our lives and surroundings that might pollute us? Do we have the same ideas as God about what is truly polluting or defiling? How might the word that we’ve explored tonight change or reinforce our understanding of this. What might we do differently?
What is the Holy Spirit prompting us to put into practice in our faith? How are we looking after widows and orphans, and others on the edges of our society? This is not about us doing good works to earn salvation, or run up a credit balance with God, James is quite clear that it is the word that saves, it is about our response of loving obedience to the one who loves us and rescues us, and wants a life of righteousness, purity, and freedom for us.
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