When I was young there were several years where I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. He needed a fishing buddy to do all the running around a climbing over things that he couldn’t do and I was just the right age at that time. I loved going fishing with him, he was funny and came from a world I didn’t fully understand. He told great stories and always bought me snacks. It was awesome.

One day though, as we were driving I must have said something to offend him, I don’t even remember what I said or did. But I will never forget what happened next. I said, “I’m sorry Grandpa” but he very dryly replied, “I got a cellar full of sorry”.

I was stunned, he didn’t shout and didn’t even seem upset he just said it. When I recovered a bit from the shock, I asked him, “what do you mean?”. He just looked at me and said they exact thing again. I asked again and he repeated it for a third time. At that, I stopped asking and wondered what he meant by that for the rest of the day and far beyond. I still remember it clearly.

Thinking back I am sure he could of easily explained that figure of speech to me but he never did. He wanted me to figure it out. Whether he was inspired in that moment or just plain tired I will never know. But those words stuck with me and eventually I did figure them out. Sorry is as sorry does. Words without action are nothing but an assortment of sounds. As a guy gets older it would be easy to fill the cellar with empty meaningless pseudo apologies and vague regrets.

The book of James is a sermon concerned with issues that are closely related to the problem my Grandpa was trying to teach me about that day. So let’s pick up where we left off a couple of weeks ago and finish the first chapter of James.

 Know this, my beloved brothers:

James covers a surprising amount of ground in this short section. It begins with some amazingly good advice for life in general. We are to be:

* Quick to hear

* Slow to speak

* Put away filthiness and wickedness

* Receive the word you have been given with meekness

But the heart of what James is saying is in the next phrase:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 

Even though Christianity was still a relatively new movement, James was already seeing some alarming trends among believers. People were giving lip service to all the right things, but were not actually doing them.

Christianity is and has always been a transformitive experience. For example, the inclusiveness of Jesus is often commented on today, but this is a very incomplete observation of the facts. While it is true that Jesus spoke with the so called “untouchables” and “sinners” of his day. His message was, “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. Anyone could come to Jesus, but no one left in the same state that they arrived. They either repented and followed Jesus which changed everything about their lives(which is repentance). Or they walked away and became even more hard-hearted, but now without hope.

James is reminding them that if nothing changes nothing has happened. We not only lie to others with our empty words, but we deceive ourselves as well.

The Mirror of God

This segment concludes with an illustration of a man looking into a mirror. He sees the problem, but does nothing. Seeing is not changing. The deception that seeing evil is to rise above evil is everywhere in our culture right now. Everyone seems to be a “fact checker” or a “debunker” of “misinformation”. So what?

If nothing changes, nothing has happened. Seeing the evil in others does nothing for them, nor does it loosen the grip of evil on ourselves. Looking in the mirror is only helpful if you use that mirror to make changes. And until you get the “log out of your own eye” can you never hope to truly help anyone else.

The true measure of religion

James closes with a simple but brutal tool for assessing our faith. Does our tongue and our life match? If not, our religion is worthless. He goes on to describe what true religion looks like.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this:

to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,

and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

That is a lot to think about for this week. We all need help to keep our confession and our profession aligned. This week let’s look into the mirror of God’s word and ask God what we need to change before we fret about the rest of the world. Let’s help each other do the truth not just talk about it. And let’s not let the world teach us how to act. Thankfully, we are not alone in this, we have the Holy Spirit of God in us and the body of Christ around us to help. Let’s be the body of Christ this week, let’s be the physical manifestation of Christ on earth. Let’s work to make the church which is Christ’s body actually look like Christ.

Have a great week!