Religion, Orphans, and Widows

The New Revised Standard Version Trial and Temptation

17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

Hearing and Doing the Word

19 You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. 21 Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. 25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.

26 If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Opening prayer

Many of you know that I spent my first years of ministry caring for college students here at Western Washington University with a ministry called the INN. The INN was a gathering and service ministry for students to connect with one another during their college journey, form small groups, study the Scriptures, serve in the city and on service trips, and grow in God’s forming love through worship and fellowship.

Our staff would sit together leading up to each new quarter and consider what kind of teaching students might need. We would map out the quarter, put a theme together, and build our worship times around the focus.

One Fall, we chose to frame our teaching around this passage, specifically around vs. 27:

The New Revised Standard Version Hearing and Doing the Word

27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

This was a significant time of transition in campus ministry and this passage put it into focus. Many students and young adults were gravitating towards more fundamentalist/rigid expressions of religion. This was back in the late 2000s, when the neo-Calvinist movement was in full swing. Mars Hill Church in downtown Seattle, with its charismatic and power-hungry pastor, Mark Driscoll, was at its height of popularity. Students were drawn to this black and white version of religion. Driscoll’s version of Christianity was foul-mouthed and stark — there were clear winners and losers in his brand of faith. Power, position, traditional gender roles, and unwavering, clean cut answers to the questions of the scriptures were the theme. You could say it was its own brand of “old time religion.”

And we were struggle with students who embraced this brand of theology and religious reflection and became quite antagonistic of the churches that did not tow the same line. So, approaching students with this text of what “pure and undefiled” religion looked like was provocative, pushing us to wrestle with a purity that looked very different than having all of the right answers. This kind of “religion” was pure because it was focused on the poor, the disenfranchised, the hurting. Orphans and widows in their distress don’t have much time for power-hungry theologies or black and white answers that ignore their plight.

To approach students with this kind of teaching was to push them towards a faith lived out in practice. It is all well and good if we believe things, but when they do not take us into active engagement with the hurting and those in need, then do they really matter?

One of the most important gleanings I take from this text in James and much of the wisdom he offers is that healthy faith, pure and undefiled religion, must find integration. It must be able to take the head and the heart and put them together. To take contemplation and action and make them partners, not separate streams of living the faith.

What is also provocative about this text in the context of right and wrong religion and the complexities of engaging our world is that it pushes us to ask more questions: who are the orphaned, who are the widowed? Where do we see them pushed out by our world, left behind and lacking support?

Maybe you don’t know many people who are orphans, literally. But what about the man who’s just been laid off from his longtime job? Has he not been orphaned? Or the wife who’s husband didn’t die, but instead, he left her for someone new? Is the first wife not widowed, in a sense?

I want to invite us to take a moment to turn and talk with our neighbor about this. First, who are the orphans in our world?

For those of you at home and online, I invite you to jump into the chat and start sharing your ideas with each other. Take this time to open up in that way with your digital neighbors. I’ll give you a few minutes. So find a partner or two and discuss — who does our world orphan?

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Next, who are the widows of our world?

Turn and Talk — Who does our world orphan?

Turn and Talk — Who are the Widows of our World

I would love to hear some of the ideas you shared with one another. Speak up and I’ll repeat back what you have to share.

Sadly, the church can often be a place where orphans and widows are NOT received. It is easier to expect people’s struggles to be dealt with elsewhere. We grow uncomfortable with a grieving woman who has lost her partner too soon. Our public spaces, and often especially our churches, are to be places of uplift and joy — not spaces for sorrow and lament.

The orphan who walks in off the street, as well, is hard for us to receive. We are quick to wonder why they are without a home, where their family is, who is responsible for them. What brought them to this place of orphaning, abandonment, distress? We are quick to judge and wonder at the story behind their story, but seldom quick to listen and explore trauma and recovery.

Think of this in the context of the immense refugee resettlements that are going on around the world. We are quick to look for the causes of people’s displacement — which is certainly an important part in addressing systemic issues like genocide or unsafe nation states. But in looking at these causes and their geopolitical implications, do we ignore the simple pain of the person who has no where to go? Do we seek abstract answers and political solutions, yet neglect the hunger and insecurity that these individuals and families feel?

When James talks about being not only hearers, but doers of the word, he’s inviting us to that more complicated place — to be learned in the law, aware of the social and political contexts of our day, but also, to the place of deep compassion and connection with the individuals who face these struggles. James makes us uncomfortable because he is always pushing for an integration — head and heart — where thought must lead to action, where orthodoxy (right belief) must produce orthopraxis (right action). As theologian Leonardo Boff remarked — all theology, our thinking about God, is proceeded by doxology, the sending out of God’s people into life and engagement in the world.

I want to close with reflecting on two more quick pieces of this passage. First, vs. 26, which speaks of unbridled tongues and deceived hearts that come from worthless religion.

I want to go back to the New Reformed, Neo-Calvinist movement for a moment. I am cautious to be overly critical of another stream of the church and their way of living out the faith. However, that movement has become a good example of the unbridled, deceived religion that James is speaking of. One of the main characteristics of this movement was and is a sense of unquestioned certainty in convictions. Folks like Mark Driscoll believe they have it all right and have all the answers and they’re happy to tell you about the ways you are wrong. In my experience, when folks have gotten wrapped up in this kind of rigid religion, there is very little space for questioning, for discourse, and for the more nuanced understandings of faith that the complexities of our world require. Doctrine and orthodoxy trump discourse and learning.

Last week, I said that the opposite of doubt isn’t faith, but it’s certainty. Certainty presents a great deal of struggle, in the sense that it has no space for particularity, context, and varied expressions of understanding. This, in turn, is where faith comes in. Faith is able to stand in the gray areas, able to say both/and, able to stand in the tension between having no answers and all the answers. Faith is the middle way — the more excellent way. Faith requires us to hold our doubts with our certainties.

In the face of worthless religion, faith actually leads us to figure out what it means to believe things AND put them into practice. The AND is so important here! Like James remarks in vs. 23 and 24, if we merely look in the mirror and say we believe something and then turn away and live or act like we forget the belief when we put it into practice — is it worth anything more than narcissistic self-love? Does the mirror just show us what we want to see, not actually challenge us to see others who are in need? Then perhaps its worthless.

The way I’ve discovered, at least for me and for the people I serve, is that I need integration. I need belief and action to work together. I need contemplation and solitude to lead me into engagement and work with others. Perhaps this is what James is getting at when he closes this section by encouraging his hearers to keep themselves unstained by the world.

Perhaps there is a staining that takes place when we focus too strongly on belief or action, to the exclusion of one or the other. Perhaps we are sullied when we become so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. Rather, what we are being invited to here is to put both sides of the equation into action — doubt with certainty, belief with action, liberty with justice, hearing and doing in an integrated faithful way.

This might sound complicated, but gratefully, its not. James makes it quite clear, echoing Jesus’ teachings to simply be with the poor, to love our neighbors, to pray for our enemies. The work is right in front of us. We are formed in belief so that we may live belief out in action, an unstained, pure religious action that does not turn a blind eye to the needs of the widow or orphan, but integrates our lives with them, coming close, in love and compassionate care.

Let us pray.

Unstained — integrated