Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-september-2
James 2:1-11
Favoritism Forbidden
1My brothers [and sisters], as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
5 Listen, my dear brothers [and sisters]: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? 6 But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
Some of you have heard me tell the story of my life of faith. One of the turning points came in young adulthood, when Melissa and I rejoined the church after years away from the practice of the faith. The truth is that we just wanted to have our first son baptized, that we had little real interest in taking part in the life of the church. But a friend and mentor in ministry told us that baptizing a child was pointless unless the child’s parents were willing to commit to a life of Christian discipleship themselves. So we found a church that worked for us, joined the congregation and had our son baptized.
As it turned out, we had joined a church in crisis. Just a month or two after we joined the congregation, the session of the church called a meeting to vote on whether or not to fire the pastor. (“Dissolve the pastoral relationship” is the official Presbyterian expression.) Looking back, it might have been inevitable that things wouldn’t work out with the pastor who was there when we arrived. The church had over 500 members, and the previous pastor had been a charismatic guy. For instance, he didn’t read the Bible passages — he memorized and recited them, no matter how long they were. Being the next pastor after one of those ‘ministry legends’ is always hard, and the young guy they brought in had never led a church before. He probably never had a chance.
One moment from that congregational meeting stuck in my mind. One of the new pastor’s defenders rose to say that under his leadership, the congregation was attracting new people to the church. But then a longtime member stood up and shouted, “Yes, but they’re the wrong kind of people!”
That moment comes to mind every two years when this passage comes up in the lectionary. I say that because I think the apostle James was talking about this kind of thinking in the early church — the kind that thinks there are some people who are ‘the right kind,’ and others who are, ‘the wrong kind.’ It seems that some members were making judgments about the kind of people they wanted in the church, and they were treating the rich members with greater respect than the poor ones. But the apostle James points out that this kind of economic discrimination represents a failure of love for the poor. And that makes it a sin in God’s eyes.
Some people might say that this issue isn’t a problem for the church anymore. But anyone who has served in church leadership – and especially in a church that’s struggling financially – knows that it’s a real temptation for the leadership to knock itself out to stay on the right side of “the good givers.” For instance, have you ever noticed how much more attention the church gives to lust than greed? The well-to-do, the good givers, will listen to sermons on lust all day, but they start getting grouchy if you talk about greed. In some churches, the leadership has been known to go so far as letting the rich “call the shots” on all the major issues in the life of the church.
The apostle James is understood to have been the biological brother of Jesus and the leader of the church in Jerusalem after Jesus ascended to heaven. He seems to be on the same page as Jesus in making the case that the rich and the poor deserve equal honor in the church. Giving a good seat to the rich and telling the poor to sit in the back is not what God has in mind for the family of faith. And when it comes to speaking powerfully into the life of the church, God is at least as likely to speak through the poor as through the rich.
This leads James to a second, related idea, which is that breaking any part of God’s law amounts to breaking it all. We have a tendency to tell ourselves that our sins aren’t as serious as the sins of the ‘really bad people.’ But James says that even a tendency like showing favoritism among followers of Jesus is a sin in God’s eyes, just as murder and adultery are sins.
It would be missing the point to say, well, taking an apple from a neighbor’s tree isn’t as serious as mass murder. Of course that’s true. But the larger point is that we followers of Jesus are called to recognize that placing greater value on one person than another violates God’s law of love, and so it represents a sin against them and against the God in whose image they were made.
I’m pretty confident that there are lots of people of comfortable means who are deeply committed followers of Jesus. I certainly know some. But it has to be said that a consistent theme in New Testament theology is that wealth is not so much evil as it is dangerous. Some individuals come to love it too much, and some churches allow it to distort their theology and the relationships within the congregation. James wants us to see that sometimes the poor, who are unencumbered by the need to hold onto material wealth, can see God’s will with a purity of vision that we who are comfortable might miss.
That’s why it’s so important for all followers of Jesus to guard our hearts and minds against any trace of favoritism — racial, economic, gender-based or any other kind.
Let’s pray. Lord, guard us against the mistake of thinking that the wealthy and the well-to-do are especially favored in your eyes, and of shaping the ministries of the church in ways that are appealing to them. Remind us that you have always shown a great love for those who are in need, and that in Jesus, you have called on your people to give generously to help them. And let us never forget that many of the wisest voices in the church have come from among the poor. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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