Religion 101 with Professor James: It's in the Practice

James 1:17-27

All over the country, students have returned to school. From preschool to graduate school there are new teachers, new classes, new courses. So I thought it would be appropriate for us to start a new course too. It’s Religion 101 with Professor James. Professor James is well qualified to teach Religion 101. He is knowledgeable of Greek philosophy. He knows Roman religion. He is an expert in Judaism. And his specialty is a brand new religion called Christianity, brand new, that is, at the time he wrote his book on Religion 101.

Professor James is not only a professor of this religion, he’s a practitioner of it as well. For James, religion is not a conceptual and intellectual exercise learned from books and academic discussions and debates. Expertise in religion is about the practice of it, not the mere profession. That’s one of the things that sets him apart from so many religion professors in leading colleges and universities in the United States these days who are professors of religion without being practitioners of it. They are, somehow, experts in a field in which they are embarrassingly inexperienced. It’s a curious new status quo among religion professors that has developed in the last 50 years or so in the U.S. Can you imagine someone wanting to be a law professor but insisting that he had no need of actually engaging in the practice of law to understand it? “I don’t accept any of the premises that the law is based on, and I don’t approve of legal practices, but I am a scholar of the law qualified to teach others about it,” he would say. Most people would think he was a fool. Imagine the would-be professor of medicine who never practiced medicine and who routinely ridiculed and belittled those who do, but who says she wants to teach medicine. Not likely. An expert in something you refuse to actually do? Most people would call her naïve. But professors of religion who do not practice what they profess and who ridicule and belittle those who do are more and more common in leading American colleges and universities, just as more and more people in American churches are professors of their faith but not practitioners of it. Not so Professor James. Being a practitioner of what one professes is at the heart of his understanding of religion.

In his Religion 101, Professor James says, “Religion that religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this—to care for the orphans and the widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27). Religion is in the practice, not in the profession. Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase of the Bible called The Message, puts it this way: “Real religion is caring for the homeless and the loveless and guarding yourselves against the corruption of the world.” Real religion is in the practice, not just in the profession. James Moffett, a 20th century New Testament interpreter put it this way in his commentary on James: “When the sermon is done, it is not done; something remains to be done by the hearers in life” (General Epistles, p. 26). When the sermon is done, the sermon is not done until something is done by the hearers in life.

Religion is not in the hearing; it’s in the doing. It is in the practice, not just the profession. If all we do here is “hear” and “profess,” then what we are doing is an exercise in self deception. Our worship of God is an exercise in self deception unless we take the word that we have heard inside this room outside this room into life. That’s the point of the image of the mirror that James uses in verses 23-25. He says self deception is like when people look in the mirror, see themselves there, walk away, and can’t remember what they look like. Worship is a mirror. It’s a mirror in which we see who we are and whose we are and who we are called to become. And if we look in that mirror and see who we are and see whose we are and see who we are called to become and then put it down, walk out, and forget what that image looked like, we engage in self deception. Our religion is worthless, James says.

There is a word that has been planted in us, says James (v 21). That word is planted inside us, and that word must grow in us until that growth and development show on the outside, out there, not just on the inside in here. Some people say that religion is a private and personal matter between a believer and God. Religion is a private and personal matter between a believer and God, but that’s not all religion is. If all that religion is is a private and personal matter, then it is self-deception and worthless, according to James. James Moffett says that you and I come to church to enjoy an “emotional or mental treat.” It’s what we come for. What we want out of our experience in worship is a mental or emotional treat, a spiritual or musical treat. A little morsel that makes us feel good while we are here, while outside this room people hunger and thirst and need. Our religion is worthless, says Professor James, if all we come here for is a personal and private mental or emotional or spiritual or musical treat.

Professor James’s understanding of religion would turn the American church and this church upside down if every one of us adopted it. It would shake us out of our sleeping bags. It would shake us out of our sleeping bags in church if we adopted the definition Professor James puts forward in Religion 101. The point of being in this room is to leave this room. Notice something fascinating James says about the “blessing.” It’s in verse 25. “Being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.” “They will be blessed in their doing.” We (and not we alone—it’s typical of American Christians) come to church to receive “a blessing.” We come here to be blessed, and we love to leave this place feeling as though we’ve been blessed by our worship here. But look what Professor James says about religion that is pure and undefiled by God, what Eugene Peterson says is real religion. The blessing is not in here. It’s out there. In our doing we will be blessed. If you are satisfied with the blessing that you get in this room, then according to Professor James you are participating in self deception because the real blessing comes, says James, in your doing. That’s why religion can never be only a private and personal matter between a believer and God. Real religion, as Peterson puts it, is observable and public. It is an empirical phenomenon. It is observable and measurable. You can see it because the word that is implanted in us grows from the inside to the outside when we are not merely hearers of that word but doers. If we were to adopt Professor James’s definition of religion, it would turn the American church upside down. It would turn this church upside down. It would shake us all out of our spiritual sleeping bags to do at least as much as we hear, and in that doing we would hear, feel, receive, experience the blessing that James says is there.

Forty-five years ago my predecessor and our pastor, Hardy Clemons, wrote a hymn text that expresses Professor James’s definition of religion. We’ve been singing it for 15 or 20 years around here. Hardy’s hymn reminds us that we are not here for a treat. We are here to hear a word that we go from this place to do. “The Call to Minister Is Heard,” Hardy wrote, “to go wherever needs exist.” “We cannot serve God just in church! . . . He calls us here to send us there.” That’s real religion, and that’s what we are all invited to this morning as we stand and sing together “The Call to Minister Is Heard.”

This material is Copyrighted © 2009 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.