True Religion

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

True Religion
By Rev. William Dohle

A few weeks ago, in a conversation around "Give us this day our daily bread" I sat our Confirmation kids down to show them just how blessed they truly were.  In a video made by Bread for the World, they watched as pictures of children, all starving and suffering from malnutrition, were paraded on the screen.  Each of the pictures seemed worse than the previous one.  And I watched their faces drop and their shoulders slump.

In the end, I asked them all what they thought of what they saw.  They had a few questions, mostly about whether it was real or not.  I explained how children throughout the world suffered from starvation and gave them some of the startling statistics.

World Hunger Statistics
Total number of children that die every year from hunger	1.5 million
Percent of world population considered to be starving	33%
Time between deaths of people who die from hunger	3.6 seconds
Total number of people in the world who suffer from hunger and malnutrition	800 million
Total number of people who do not have enough to eat	936 million people
Total percentage who do not have enough to eat who live in developing countries	98%
Total percentage of world’s hungry that live in 7 countries	65%
Number of people who died of hunger today	20,864
Total number of people who will die of hunger this year	7,615,360
Total percentage of U.S. households that are at risk of hunger	11%

Sadly the video only highlighted the children and the impact hunger had on them.  Most videos go that direction, showing pictures of the children rather than the adults.  Unfortunately, hunger and poverty affect all ages.  No one goes unscathed.  Parents who are hungry raise children who are hungry.  And the cycle continues.

The Bible takes on this cycle head on.  Not only are widows and orphans, the two groups at the bottom of the biblical social scale, mentioned specifically by God to be cared for.  But their cries are the cries God hears most.

"Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan.  If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.  My anger will be aroused and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.

"If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest.  If you take your neighbors cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body.  What else will he sleep in?  When he cries out to me, I will hear for I am compassionate."  (Exodus 22:22-27)

 This is not the first time, and certainly not the last time, orphans and widows are specifically mentioned in the Bible.  Care for them is absolutely important.  Commanded by God in fact.  When the poor cry out, God hears them.  God shows compassion for them.  And God acts to turn the world around to care for them.

We too are to join God in his care for the poorest among us.  According to St. James, this is what true religion is.  Caring for the orphan and widow.  That's it.  That's what it means to be a Christian.  To be "Christ-like".  We are to care for the needy, as Christ did.  As Christ fed the multitudes, so we are to join him in feeding the multitudes.  As Christ reached out and touched the untouchable, so we too are to touch those our society deems untouchable.  As Christ healed those who could not repay him, so we too are to heal those who have no power to repay us or anyone.

Is that what True Christianity is?  Caring for the orphan and widow and not allowing ourselves to being polluted by the world?  What if that's it?  It seems so easy and yet so hard.  In church circles, we pride ourselves with things like converting or church planting.  We secretly look up to those with the biggest church, the best car, the largest home, and those who invoke God's name the most.  If we are to take God seriously in Exodus and St. James seriously in his epistle...we're going to need to change our ways some.

What if every "Christian" politician was to produce a record of deeds done to the least and the little and the lost before we believed they had faith?  What if every church was measured by their acts of mercy to those around them?  What if we looked up, not to the congregations and pastors with the largest attendance, but with those who had done the most good in their communities?

We may not be saved by our good works...but we are still called to produce them.  Faith without works is dead, another kernel of wisdom from St. James.  Caring for the least and little is what it means to be a Christian.  That's what it means to have faith.  And if every person of faith in every land reached out to just one widow or orphan, the world could turn around one widow and orphan at a time.

Your eye, O God, is on the widow and the orphan, the hungry and the alien, the wanderer and the outcast.  Open our eyes that we might see them through You.  Amen.