It doesn't necessarily mean that I am kind either – I’m not known for going out of my way, but I’m nice, I try not to be a bother.Ħ years ago the sociologist Christian Smith from UNC-Chapel Hill interviewed more than 3,000 teenagers in churches and conluded that the vast majority of them shared assumptions that aren’t particularly Christian, they’re just… nice. Which means it wasn’t savory or delicious or wretched or too salty. Now the word nice is one of those words that we use in all sorts of ways, but in my experience “nice” is a word we most often use to describe what didn’t happen. Which is to say, God doesn’t ask us to be nice. God seems to say much more about what we do than about what we don’t do. When I say that the scriptures insist that God cares about what we do, there’s a secondary implication. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.ĭepart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. I think of Jesus' parable in Matthew 25 describing the day of judgment when God has the crowd before the throne and says to one group:Ĭome, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. We still have to deal with James and his insistence that it matters what we do: "True religion that is undefiled is this, to look after widows and orphans in distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." Of course, it's not just James - all through the Scriptures we find evidence that what we do affects how we are with God. Luther would rather read a Bible that spoke truth than a bible that agreed with him. So much so that the founder of the Protestant movement, Martin Luther, semi-seriously considered dropping the book of James from the Bible.
James' unrelenting focus is not on what we feel, or even what we think. James doesn't have time for that kind of talk - James isn't much in to talk, at all really. If they say, "Oh, and I think I can worship God just fine by getting out into nature," well then highlight this passage before you go. The next time someone wants to tell you "Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship," drop some James in their lap and walk away. A Sermon Based on James 1:17-27, the last sermon of our "Bless You" series.
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