PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR (EXTRA) ORDINARY TIME
James 2:1-10
September 8, 2024
The Letter of James almost did not make it into “ta biblios”, “the books”, “the Bible”.
Had it not been for an extremely outspoken early church father named Origen,
the Letter of James may have been set aside along with a host of other first century writings,
like the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Peter.
The reason it was almost set aside is that the Letter of James focuses on works.
“Faith without works is dead”, James claims.
Early church leaders were concerned that the early church may come to believe that our works,
and not solely the grace of God, could save us.
Even so, Origen prevailed and the Letter of James made it into the canon,
forever encouraging the Church to examine not only our faith, but our works as well.
Hear the Word of God from James 2:1-10
My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly,
and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes
and say, ‘Have a seat here, please’, while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’, or, ‘Sit at my feet’,
have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith
and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?
Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture,
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality,
you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God
Jose Miguez-Bonino was a theologian of the 20th century from Chile.
Miguez-Bonino wrote that once during the violent reign of Pinochet,
when many persons were being regularly “disappeared” by the government,
the Letter of James was read from the pulpit of a wealthy congregation.
Miguez-Bonino reported half of the congregation, offended by the Letter, got up and walked out!
The Letter of James has been called “strong medicine”.
The Letter of James has rattled many a cage because it reveals the spiritual dangers of complacent Christianity.
We sometimes forget that Jesus was killed because his ministry overturned long held assumptions
about who was included and who was not, about who could hold power and who could not,
about who would be facing God’s judgment over their treatment of the least and the lost.
I heard an important story at our Wednesday Faithful Living Bible Study.
Long term member and elder Ron Johnson told the following story that he heard years ago at a session meeting.
The story was about Milton Scott, a prominent businessman and member of this congregation.
Milton is related to both Mickey Willoch and Betty Scott Noble.
My understanding is that Milton Scott became an elder for life in the 1930’s.
By the 1960’s, Milton was an older gentleman who always sat in the first pew in front of the pulpit.
During the Civil Rights Era, African Americans began seeking entrance not only to lunch counters,
but also to churches in Atlanta. And this became a topic of serious conversations at session meetings.
Ron reports that Milton Scott told the session and the ushers that if any person of color came to worship,
the ushers were to welcome them and escort them to come sit with him, in the front pew of the church.
I am not sure if his welcome was ever tested at that time, but Milton Scott stood up for what he believed.
He took what for many was an unpopular stand.
It has always been true that people will treat you differently based upon your appearance.
As long as anyone can remember in human history, this has been the case.
Real estate agents joke with one another about the cars that they drive,
because they want to appear successful when they take clients to show houses.
Lawyers, though they may dress casually all week long in the office,
will still dress up for the courtroom, maintaining a sense of decorum and professionalism.
Has anyone among us not dressed up for a job interview? How about that first date?
There is no question that the world quickly judges someone and determines how to treat them
based simply upon their appearance, upon the clothing that they wear or the automobile that they drive.
The question is: does treating others differently based on appearance belong in the Church of Jesus Christ?
Is this behavior fitting for those who call themselves Christian, who seek to follow the ways of Jesus?
In the second chapter of the Letter of James, the message is quite clear:
any favoritism based upon appearance, any partiality based upon a person’s social class or race or wealth,
has no place in the Church. Favoritism and a living faith in Jesus Christ are incompatible.
Many years ago, when I was working with United Way as a loaned executive from an accounting firm,
this wonderful woman, who happened to be blind, assisted every year with the United Way campaigns.
She would regularly give talks at various companies in order to raise funds for the non-profit agencies.
I remember her saying that there was a particular blessing and a particular curse in her blindness.
The curse was that she never knew what she looked like.
She was an attractive woman, but before she left the house, she could never just look in a mirror
to ensure that there wasn’t some food on her face, or that her hair was out of place.
She could never tell if the clothes she thought she had matched with the special tags she used really did match.
It could be a curse to not know what you looked like, to not know how you appeared to others.
The blessing, she said, was that she also did not know what others looked like.
When she first met someone, she did not, she could not, judge based upon appearance.
Her impressions of others were based entirely on their voices, and on how they treated her,
on how that other person made her feel.
This, she said, though certainly challenging in many respects, was ultimately a blessing,
an unexpected blessing of her blindness.
And, over time, her close friendships were blessed with an array of many different looking persons.
The problem with discrimination based on appearance is that it treats both the rich and the poor as objects.
Favoritism depersonalizes both rich and the poor.
Catering to the rich is just as problematic as denigrating the poor.
While the poor may be pushed aside or ignored,
the rich are considered worthy based only upon their wealth and not their person
and so they may seldom know genuine acceptance and love.
How tragic for a rich young heir to grow up with little security in what matters most in life.
How tragic when athletes or movie stars or musical performers make it big
and then discover how lonely it can be at the top. A rich person may never know
if a person is interested in them because of who they are or because of their money.
To show favoritism to the rich does them a disservice because it makes them wonder about one’s motivations.
Vernon Gramling and I have had good conversations about the danger of “dark assumptions”.
When we encounter other human beings, we tend to make assumptions about that person
based upon our prior experiences or our prejudices.
Some of those assumptions will be generous, and some will be negative or “dark” assumptions.
This is a very natural thing to do, these assumptions can be extremely difficult to avoid,
even impossible to avoid, especially if one has been harmed in any way,
but allowing these assumptions to rule our thoughts is not a fair or an equitable or even a Christian thing to do.
We often look first to what makes other people different from us, or frightening to us, or intimidating to us –
the clothes they wear, their gender, their age, their education level, their place on the social scale, and so on –
instead of looking first upon their heart,
instead of gazing first upon another human being as a beloved child of God.
The Letter of James is and always has been a strong corrective to a faith that is not evident by its works,
a strong corrective to a faith that does not reflect the self-giving love of Jesus Christ.
Friends, may we not merely be hearers but doers of the word
as we extend a warm welcome to all persons in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Todd Speed
Decatur Presbyterian Church
Decatur, Georg
