On doing the Word

Jamie Howison’s sermon from August 29, 2021 on James 1:17-27 and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Of all of the books in the New Testament, the Epistle of James is the most Jewish in character. In some sense it isn’t an epistle—a letter—in the manner of Paul’s epistles, which were written to particular communities facing specific questions and circumstances. No. In spite of its opening greeting—“James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings”—it has more the shape of the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament and related wisdom writings such as Sirach from the Apocrypha.

There is really nothing in today’s reading that couldn’t have been included in the Book of Proverbs, while James’ statement that “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” picks up a theme that courses right through the Hebrew scriptures, namely care for the orphan and widow. That phrase “orphan and widow” signifies the vulnerable, powerless, and status-less, and in the Hebrew scriptures such people must not be forgotten or forsaken.

“[B]e doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves,” James writes, which is echoed a bit further into the epistle in his bold statement that, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” This statement convinced Martin Luther that James was an “epistle of straw,” as Luther thought that the whole epistle was focussed on justification by works rather than by grace. With all due respect to that great Reformation theologian, I beg to differ. What James insists is that people who claim to be followers of Jesus must enact it in their lives; they must “do” the faith, not just believe it abstractly or theoretically. A major concern here is for the poor in the community, including those aforementioned widows and orphans, but it also applies to things like gossip—a significant concern for James—and conflict in the community.

So do the word, James challenges, so that together you reflect that word. But what word exactly is he referring to? The only established scriptures the early Christians had at hand were the Hebrew scriptures, which they would have read in light of the stories of Jesus that were circulating in the form of the earlier gospels, as well as through the lens provided by Paul in his epistles. They would not have been carrying around printed copies of what we call the Bible, for such a thing didn’t yet exist. The word, then, was more fluid, with the Hebrew scriptures engaged in a rabbinical fashion—often improvisational and dynamic—constantly drilling down to questions of how one is meant to live in the real world. The second century rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel II, for instance, wrote “Not the expounding of the law is the chief thing, but the doing of it.” And of course, Jesus himself says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” (Luke 11.28), while Paul—the great apostle of grace—spends most of his energy in his epistles to the Corinthians focussed on how people should live and behave in light of being a people justified by grace. The difference, though, between those ancient Christian communities and their Jewish forebears was that doing the word always involved an engagement with the life and person of Jesus as the main interpretive framework.

Now our gospel reading this evening actually takes on a conflict between Jesus and some scribes and Pharisees who represent a very particular school of thought regarding how day to day life is to be lived by Jewish believers. They have come from Jerusalem to see Jesus, presumably curious about what this Galilean peasant rabbi is teaching. Mark says that “they noticed that some of Jesus’ disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them,” to which he adds some details around the cleansing rituals observed in what he calls “the tradition of the elders.” “So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’”

Here Matt Skinner notes that, “no Old Testament texts call for anyone to wash hands before eating, [but] by Jesus’ day certain practices had arisen among some Jews.” Such practices would be scrupulously codified in the following two centuries, becoming required and normative for all Jews, but at this point there was quite wide variation, with the Pharisees standing as strong proponents of ritual cleansing practices. It would seem that “some of Jesus’ disciples”—and that’s how Mark describes it; some of them—were eating without first washing their hands, suggesting that others in his group had indeed opted to follow the practices advocated by the Pharisees. We’re not told what Jesus himself did, though the fact that the Pharisees don’t take direct shots at him suggests that he probably did practice the ritual handwashing.

Whatever the case, Jesus comes right back at them, citing the prophet Isaiah to denounce their ritual piety as being hollow and hypocritical.

“This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’ 

The “human precepts” in question are these ritual washing practices, which they are elevating to a place equivalent to Torah, all the while hairsplitting other commandments in a way the allows them to sidestep the Torah’s deeper call to justice and equity for all. This is a theme that will surface numerous times in the gospels, as Jesus critiques a religiosity he considers profoundly hypocritical. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” he rails in the Gospel according to Matthew, “For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others.” (Mt 23:23)

Did you catch that last sentence? “It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others.” It is these—justice, mercy, faith—you ought to have practiced, but without neglecting the tithe, because the tithe was one of the ways in which produce was shared. Jesus is not dismissing the Torah outright but is rather trying to drill down to the heart of its meaning; he is, in good rabbinical fashion, able to engage it improvisationally and dynamically.

But it does sound as if Jesus is setting aside the Pharisee’s purity rituals and even the dietary laws of the Hebrew scriptures in what he says next:

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’

Is Jesus just dumping the old laws and traditions to make a point here? Or is there more to it than meets the eye? Here N.T. Wright comments that,

What we find is Jesus’ strong sense of what time it is. It’s time for the kingdom of God to break in. And when that happens, laws which had a strong point as part of God’s preparation are no longer needed.

The “strong point” of the old dietary and purity laws was to represent what Bishop Wright calls “God’s longing that his people be holy through and through,” and in Jesus that was now coming to be. The kingdom of God was in their midst now, and it was given for all, not just to Israel. And the first step in being a part of that new reign of God was to sort out what was hidden deep in our human hearts that caused all manner of evil and brokenness; to tell the truth about the shape of our lives, in all of their wounds and fears and sins. And then, as James would have it, do the word. Enact the faith. Practice justice, mercy, and faith. Care for the widow and orphan. Support the Afghani refugee. Send a donation to our sister church in Haiti. Pay a visit to someone you know is lonely. Pray for a friend who is sick or struggling. Vote your conscience, not your bank account. Support an artist. Sing that hymn a little more robustly. Smile and say hello to the grumpy neighbour next door, and do it like you really mean it. Make a meal for someone who lives alone.

And do it all in the strong and merciful name of Jesus, who is our strength and our song. Amen.