You Forget Yourself

Text: James 1:17-27

A young woman, speaking on the floor of the Lutheran national Assembly last week, said that the church is losing young members. She meant not just the Lutheran church but most Christian churches. She said that the reason that was happening was because too many Christians seemed to be hypocritical. “We have very good hypocrisy detectors,” she said. She was talking about a particular and common hypocrisy. She was talking at the time about how often church preached love for neighbor and enemy, and how often at the same the church excluded whole populations and turned them away for one reason or another.

Churches do this commonly, and mostly always have. There are other hypocrisies of Christians. And others, not just young people, who therefore reject the church. Jesus holds his followers to a high and difficult standard. Jesus preached against the grain of the culture. Jesus preached a new world in which things would be different. Very different. But for many who watch the way Christians behave, the new world looks just like the old world. Or worse. Christians spend a lot of time talking about Jesus, but not so much time doing as Jesus said to do. Yes, Jesus loves us, but Jesus talked less about how he and we love each other and more about how we might love others. Jesus’ love for us is love for people and his exhortations to us are to love people as he did. That is hard, which I’m sure you know because I’m sure you have tried it. Often. The hypocrisy that people see in Christians (and Christians see themselves)—the hypocrisy people see most is a lot of yak, yak, yak and not much love, love, love. That, at least, is what James saw. James, the one who provided us with the scripture reading for today.

Martin Luther, chief reformer and a man of strong opinions, hated James. He hated James because at one point (in chapter 2, verse 24, to be exact) James wrote that “by works a person is justified, not by faith alone.” Since Luther pretty much built his career and the church on saying the opposite, he thought James was off the mark and that he should have been kicked out of the Bible. Really. He thought this epistle of James should not have been in the Bible. But, three things: first of all, fortunately, it was not Luther who got to decide what was in and what was out. Second, many other churchy thinkers, from the second century onwards, have liked James a lot. And third, a lot of what James wrote fit in exactly with what Luther said. Luther was a man whose faith powered him to radical and transforming actions, just as James said our faith should power us.

James was an exhorter. He liked to tell people what to do. That can be good. It can be good in the way James did it. What James did was to remind his readers—us, among others—of things they already knew and maybe had forgotten. And the main thing we forget is that our faith calls us to act, to do things.

People spend a lot of time looking into mirrors, James says. And when they leave, he says, they forget what they were like. You can interpret this two ways. You could think that when they looked into the mirror they saw who they really were. But they had very very short memories. As soon as they turned away, they forgot. Forgot immediately, as James says. Or, which seems more likely to me, they used to know who they really were. But something about looking in the mirror made them forget. It was an amnesiac. So, we might think about why mirror-looking might do that to us. And we then might think about who we really were before we forgot.

There are two problems with looking in a mirror. The first problem is that we are doing the looking. And the second problem is that what we are looking at is us.

When we look into a mirror, we bring all our baggage with us. It is hard to be objective. Impossible, really, since we are both the subject and the object. We are judges of what we see. On the one hand, for example, it turns out that 85% of Americans think they are more handsome and beautiful than average. We see ourselves better than perhaps we are. On the other hand, many of us see only flaws in ourselves. We think we are too much one thing or another, or too distorted, or unlovable. So when we look into a mirror, we have a hard time seeing ourselves as others see us. Which is probably some combination of big-time jerk and really nice person.

And the other thing is that when we look in a mirror, we are paying a lot of attention to us. To Me, with a capital M. The object of our gaze is Me. What an interesting person in the mirror, we think. Not everyone—hard to believe—looks as closely at us as we do ourselves. They have their own stuff to worry about. But we, looking in the mirror, don’t really see anything about them. Nothing about the sorrow or happiness or concerns they might have. “Me” is pretty distracting. So when looking in the mirror, we are partial and prejudiced judges who at the moment are oblivious to others.

It is hard to reconcile that with the teachings of Jesus.

So James reminds us. James pulls us away from our enraptured captivity in front of the mirror. Like Meg does Charles Wallace, if you have read Wrinkle in Time. James saves us. Remember! James says. Remember who you are, my brothers and sisters. You are God’s. The God who gave us birth. God who created us as God’s creatures. God who is the source of every good gift—meaning every thing—the source of all reality. And James also reminds us that life with God is covenantal. That is, we have an agreement, or covenant. We made a deal about being God’s people and doing what God says.

Lots of religious folks these days are spending a lot of time telling everyone else about themselves, about themselves the religious folk. They are ranting and raving, really, and speaking very loudly. It seems as if they are speaking about God, but they are usually speaking about how good for them God is. It is good that God is good, but the emphasis here is on whom God is good for, which is that Me person again.

And they are very angry. At pretty much everything. It evidently is OK to do that. Years ago I attended a lecture in which the instructor gave us a short bio of his life. He drew a long timeline on the blackboard, and in the middle wrote a caption: Years of anger and rage. Everyone thought that was cool, because it was cool at the time to be in a rage about things. And about people. So rage was in then, and it still is. We hope when being rage-full to enlist God on our side. Somehow people think that God likes people to be angry. But it is arrogant to think that because you are angry that God will be angry, too. Maybe God does get angry, I’m not sure. But if so or if not, it is not because you think God should be. Be slow to anger, writes James. Your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Or another way to say it: your anger does not affect God’s opinions much.

James says we should not talk so much. Be slow to speak, he says. Be quick to listen. And once we’ve done that, which is hard enough, do more than listen. Don’t just listen, do something. Be doers of the word—doers of the word, mind you, not just any doings—be doers of the word and not merely hearers. (I have to add here that he also says to rid yourselves of “all rank growth of wickedness”; but the King James Version of the Bible puts it more colorfully as “superfluity of naughtiness.”) It is not enough to take all these words of Jesus into ourselves and have nothing good come out. Later in the epistle James says, “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” What good is it? Religion that does nothing is, James says, worthless. It is empty. It is a non-starter.

Do what your faith professes. Walk the walk if you are going to talk the talk. And the talk, James reminds us, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress. Which is Bible shorthand for “take care of all people.” And also to keep oneself unstained by the world. The world stains through pride, power, fear, selfishness. But the law of God, according to James—and Jesus—is the love of one’s neighbor. Humility (what James calls meekness), servanthood, peace, and compassion.

The word of Jesus is grafted onto his followers. It is implanted in us. We are changed by it. But that change is not in theory. It does not lead to a theoretical understanding of God and us. It sits in us, a reminder of who we are and who made us and who, besides us, that creator loves, and what we should do about that.

Listen to James: Don’t forget.