The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17), September 1, 2024

 What is Religion?

Buffalo is home to six large refugee-serving agencies and an increasingly diverse ethnic community on the west side of the city. Back in 2016, our church partnered with one such agency offering a program called “Home Again.” The agency works to find and secure apartments on the west side for families on their way to the United States.  They then partner with church groups who in turn coordinate donations of furniture, decor, small appliances, and all the things a family would need to start a new life in America.

A group from our congregation signed up to participate in the Home Again program. Because the process for a family’s move to the United States can be unpredictable, we had to remain on the ready. We started collecting some items, but we had to wait to learn about more specific needs, for example, if the family had infants or school aged children or members with special needs.

The agency also provides other ways for groups to be involved, including ‘adopting’ a family once they arrive by helping them with translation, securing important documents, teaching people about public transportation and providing for their other needs. I was charged with stocking the kitchen. The experience gave me my first opportunity to go into a Halal grocery store in my neighborhood and have a great conversation with the owners.

Over the years, I have felt blessed to participate in similar projects through my church, including coordinating a cookie drive for people going to the Poor People’s Campaign event in Washington DC, delivering meals on Thanksgiving morning, and adopting a family to spoil with Christmas gifts. In addition to beautiful music, moving sermons, and a strong sense of community, church fulfills my spiritual needs by providing me with these opportunities to help others.

Care for the poor and especially widows and orphans is a common theme throughout the scriptures. In many societies, men alone control the wealth, own property, and participate in the public sphere. A child who has lost both parents would certainly be vulnerable; but if a woman’s husband died, she would also lose her place in the world. So ‘widows and orphans’ are mentioned often as populations who need our care and attention.

The message in James this week makes the statement plain. The passage reads, “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.” (James 1:17-27 NRSV) In the text, we are described as the ‘first fruits.’ We are those who have been set apart, because we have made a commitment to follow and be like Jesus.  Jesus’s words and deeds help us to understand more about the nature of God.  The passage goes on to say that we should emulate those who are living out these truths rather than those who simply talk about doing the right thing.

Our scripture in Mark also provides information about true religion. In Mark 7:1-8, Jesus is approached by Pharisees and scribes who observe that some members of his group are defying tradition. There are some people whose food is considered defiled because they did not wash their hands and their utensils properly. Jesus uses the criticism as an opportunity to teach a lesson about the true nature of religion.

Jesus does not devalue the customs, but rather explains that we need to be more concerned with what comes out of the body than with what goes into the body. He calls people who follow rituals but do not engage in the deeper aspects of the religion hypocrites. He says that evil intentions come from the heart (inside the body) and manifest in all forms of vices.

True religion focuses our hearts and minds on caring for people among us with the greatest need, including the ‘widows and orphans’ of our time. More important than rituals of church life or professing our Christianity in words is demonstrating that God’s message has penetrated our hearts. One way we demonstrate a pure and undefiled honoring of God is to care for the most vulnerable people in our community.

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Gabrie’l J. Atchison earned an M.A. in Religion from Yale Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Clark University. She is an adjunct professor of Gender Studies, a blogger, and an author. Dr. Atchison is the editor of Environment and Religion in Feminist-Womanist, Queer, and Indigenous Perspectives a series by Lexington Books. She is author of Are You The Unchurched?: How to Develop a Relationship with God Inside or Outside of Church and a co-author of More to this Confession: Relational Prison Theology with Chris Barbera. She is a contributor to Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God, Edited by Jeff Wells, Thomas Jay Oord, et. al. and The Creation Care Bible Challenge, Edited by Marek P. Zabriskie. She lives in Buffalo, New York with her dog, Jack