Reverend Marco Ste-Marie

Friends, today in our series, “BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD,” we come to a hard truth: the barriers that keep the world from changing are not only out there.

Many of them live within us—hidden in habits, fears, assumptions, and old stories we still obey.

Psalm 139 is a prayerful self-examination in God’s presence, and it ends with a prayer that is both brave and tender: “Search me, O God… test me… point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”

The lines are imperatives addressed to God: “Search… know… test… know… see… lead.” the psalmist is not self-diagnosing as the final authority.

The psalm models a yielded agency—“I choose to be examined, and I ask You to guide me into life.” That is different from shame-based introspection.

Notice what comes right before that. The psalmist has strong words about wickedness and injustice.

There is real anger there.

But then the psalm turns. The psalmist moves from naming evil “out there” to asking God to expose any complicity “in here.”

It is as if the writer says, “Before I point fingers, before I condemn others, God—shine your light on me.”

That move is a barrier-breaker. It dismantles the wall of self-righteousness. It refuses the easy comfort of blaming “them” while ignoring “me.”

“Search” (Hebrew ḥāqar) carries the idea of thorough investigating, not a quick glance. It is not “God, please scan me,” but “God, do an honest examination.”   

“Test” (Hebrew bāḥan in many contexts) can have the sense of examining/refining. The spalmist in his prayer is not asking for cruelty; it is asking for clarity.

It is God lovingly telling the truth. And the psalmist is consenting to it.

That matters.

This is not spiritual surveillance. This is healing honesty. God’s goal is not humiliation; it is guidance: “Lead me.”

The psalm ends not with shame, but with a path—an enduring way, a life-giving way.

The psalm assumes a world where prayer is candid, where people bring their full emotional range to God, and where God’s “knowing” is not mere data but relational awareness (covenant knowing).

God’s “searching” names whatever dehumanizes: prejudice, contempt, scapegoating, and also internalized shame.

“Point out anything in me that offends you” can be understood as, “Show me what diminishes love—especially toward the vulnerable—and lead me into a way that gives life.” That keeps the text aligned with justice and compassion rather than moral policing.

Then James picks up the same theme, but in a different register.

James 1:23–25 sits inside a larger unit (1:19–27) that begins with “be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,” calls the community to receive the “implanted word,” and then insists: do not merely hear—do.

Immediately after the mirror image, James defines “pure religion” as care for the vulnerable (orphans and widows) and moral integrity. So the “mirror” is a doorway into concrete faithfulness and social responsibility.

James addresses communities under pressure: economic inequality, internal conflicts, temptations to favoritism, and a gap between faith and conduct. That makes the “mirror” metaphor sharp: hearing the word without doing it produces self-deception.

James is naming a spiritual barrier we all know: we can have insight without change. We can be moved in worship and unchanged by Monday. We can admire truth and still refuse its cost.

James is not anti-hearing; he is anti-hearing-as-a-substitute-for-obedience.

“Look carefully / look intently” (parakyptō): the verb can imply stooping to peer in closely—focused attention that stays with the object. James contrasts it with the casual glance.

But James offers a different way: “Look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free… and do what it says.” Did you hear that phrase—“sets you free”? For “Perfect law, the law of freedom” (nomos teleios tēs eleutherias): this phrase is the theological center of the paragraph.

James is not pitching law as bondage; he is describing God’s instruction as liberation—an ordering of life that frees us from self-deception and from harm to neighbor.

God’s character revealed
God gives a “word” and a “law” that is freeing, not crushing—an instruction that opens life rather than shrinking it.

That is a vital corrective when “obedience” has been used to oppress: James connects obedience to freedom and to care for those at the margins.

James, God’s teaching is not a cage; it is liberation. It frees us from self-deception. It frees us from the false self that needs to perform, impress, or control. It frees us to love in public, not just in private feelings.

A justice-forward reading leans into the “law of freedom” as liberation from systems of harm: favoritism, exploitation, exclusion, and performative religion.

James is not impressed by “churchy” signals that do not translate into dignity for the poor and protection for the vulnerable.

And James is specific about where this freedom leads.

Right after the mirror image, he talks about care for the vulnerable and integrity of life.

In other words, inner transformation and justice belong together.

So what barrier is God asking to break in you today?

The barrier of resentment that keeps you chained to the past? The barrier of prejudice that you inherited and never questioned? The barrier of fear that makes you play small? The barrier of shame that tells you you’re not worthy of love?

God says: let me search you—so I can lead you.

This is the invitation: not to become “good enough” for God, but to let God reshape us into a blessing for others.

Be the change—not by willpower alone, but by consent to God’s truthful love, and by the daily practice of doing the word that sets us free.

Amen.