“Religion” has a bad name these days. It’s more socially acceptable to claim to be “a spiritual person” than to be religious. Religion is associated with bureaucracies and institutions more than faith. Religion is equated with hypocrisy, gossip, greed, and abuse. None of us in the church preach that hypocrisy is good. There's no denomination that says that we ought to do more gossiping. All churches speak out against greed and injustice. We all say that we stand for God's will. But our actions reveal what really matters about our faith. The actions of Christians have led people outside of the church to reach the reasonable conclusion that we say one thing, but then we do another. Christians talk about love and charity and grace, but too often we act with judgment, greed and intolerance. And in the end, when the measure of the church is taken by society, and perhaps by God as well, what we say doesn't matter nearly as much as what we do.

When the letter of James was written, the church had already been caught saying one thing, but doing another. The church was probably less than a hundred years old, and already people were looking at the church from the outside and noticing that Christians were hypocrites. Even in the earliest church, Christians were caught in the embarrassing and shameful sins of hypocrisy, gossip, greed and injustice. So the letter of James taught that it's possible to distinguish between true church and the impure church, as James put it. The key to telling the difference is to remember that God is the source of all good things. All blessings flow from God. So James advised, you can tell when the church is really being the church by the blessings that flow through it. You can tell if the work of the church is God's work, by observing whether the church brings blessings to others. God is the source of all blessings, so God is at work in the church only when blessings flow through it. So sure, there are many examples of the church getting it wrong. But, as James put it, when religion is pure and undefiled, religion is the act of caring for orphans and widows in their distress. True religion is born out by the love in what Christians do, not just the loving way that Christians talk. True religion is distinguished from spoiled religion by the fruits of our labors, not the beauty of our words. As our baptismal vows put it, we are the church when we accept God's call to “live as Christ’s representatives in the world.” When the church is behaving as Christ behaved… loving the outcast, healing the sick, defending the weak, embracing children, caring for the elderly… when the church is doing these things, then and only then does it commence to be the church. Up until that point, it's only words. Up until the point when Christians act Christ-like, our words are just words.

The psalmist first coined the phrase, "I am a broken vessel." The psalmist wrote those words that describe all of us in our relationship with God. We carry God's love inside of us, but we're a broken vessel. When Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a well, he told her about the water of life. Jesus taught the woman that the water of life would leave the faithful never thirsty again. "Give me this water," the woman pleaded, but Jesus explained that he was this gift from God. She already had the water of life right in front of her. The water of life is right in front of us. But we squander it. We let God's blessings seep through the cracks of our indifference and pride. We let the love of Christ go to waste, rather than being so filled that our cup overflows. Our cup leaks, and we find ourselves feeling empty. Our cup leaks, and we feel separated from God. We leak when we fail to talk regularly with God in prayer. We leak when we know what's generous and kind, but we act selfishly and jealously anyway. We leak when we say that we trust in God to provide all that we require, but then we fail to give to those in need because we're afraid that someday we might not be able to take care of ourselves. We’re broken vessels trying to carry the love of God with cracks that let those blessings fall short of where we could carry them. The church contains all of those things that we’re ashamed of in our religious heritage: the abuse, the wars, the prejudice and discrimination. The church is broken by the broken covenant of church leaders and members who've rejected what is Christ-like for what is self-serving. The church is a broken vessel, filled up with God's love but allowing that love to drain through our shortcomings and lack of faith. - But though the church is broken, nevertheless it carries the good news of God’s love in Christ. The church is a broken vessel, with lots of the good stuff seeping through the cracks and being squandered. But with cracks and all, still the church carries a precious gift. While we work on the cracks, we can’t be distracted from sharing the water of life that Christ described to the Samaritan woman at the well. In our best moments, we who are the church share the water of life, the gift of Christ, the blessings of God that never fail and are always enough. Though we are deeply flawed, God works through us cracks and all.

There's an African folktale about a young girl who was charged with the chore of bringing water from the river to nourish the plants and crops of her family's home. But her water jug had a crack in it, so for every jug she filled by the river, less than half made it home. She toiled day after day, trying to carry the precious water to her family's crops. And with each trip, a trail of water seeped out the side and fell along the path. Her family's crops grew weak and produced little, and the girl felt ashamed that she let her family down. But her grandmother pointed out to her that all along the path that she took each day, there grew plants and berries and young trees nourished by her leaky water jug. There was enough to eat because the precious water nourished the soil everywhere it leaked out along the path. God's love for us is like that leaky water jug. We must not allow our faults and failures to paralyze us from trying. Just because we leak, doesn't mean that we must not continue to share what we have. We mustn't allow ourselves to despair at the knowledge that we are but a broken and inadequate vessel of the riches of God's love for the world. We have to keep doing the work of Christ anyway. We have to keep on the path, carrying what we can, and trusting that what leaks out will be used by God in ways that we can't yet know.

We cannot just say that we're the church. We can't just say that we're Christians. We can't just say that we believe in God. All those are just words. We must act as if we believe in God. We must behave as if we have truly been transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ. If we did all that we profess to believe in, we would change the world. If we behaved throughout the week the way that we talk on Sunday morning, our ministries would bear more and more fruit, and our pews would be overflowing with people wanting to share this precious water of life that we carry. We can't just say that we pray for others, we've got to actually pray. We can't just say that we care for the poor. We've got to actually care for them, with our time and presence and attention for what they truly need. We can't just say that we're strong or brave in the faith, we must exercise strength and take risks, and then, and only then, will we step forward in the path that God has set for us. May God who gives us the will to do these things also grant us the grace and the strength to do them. Amen.