Even Churches Paint a Blurry
Picture
Dr. Larry Thorson
James 2:1-10[i]
1 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose someone comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor person in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the one wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the one who is poor, "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 dishonored 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.
We are in the second week of Lent, a time to think
about the reasons we need a Savior. The
resurrection story of Easter is only meaningful if know you need a savior. To help us in that, we’re doing a five week series
in the hard hitting book of James.
Now James can be a bit confrontational. Nothing was off limits for him. He believed that we had wrong pictures of
what God was like and in his letter he intended to set us straight.
James
recognized that even the church gives us a false picture of and who God is. Now even as early as the time of James, just a
few years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the church and its behavior
became part of the problem.
The first few verses describe the problem. The church is showing favoritism. Rich people
come in and people are moved out of their seats so they can have the best seats
in the house. But when someone poorer comes in, the church members don't even
get up out of their chairs. As they sit in their chairs, the new chair they
took, since they gave their best seat to the rich folk, they sit there and say,
"Okay you can stand in the back." And so they are making distinctions
among themselves on the basis of economics. And what James tells them is that
they have become judges between people who are making these distinctions out of
evil thoughts and motives.
In verse 5 we read…
"Listen, my dear brothers: 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? 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? Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him
to whom you belong?"
James is telling them that the very people they go
out of their way to give special honor to are the very people that are
exploiting them and the very people who stand and bring dishonor on the name of
Jesus. And he asks them why then are they not paying attention to the poorer people
whom God has shown their value.
Let me go on and read the rest of this chapter and
we will think about that particular thing some more.
"If you really keep the royal law found in
Scripture, "Love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing right. But
if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of
breaking all of it. For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also
said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do commit
murder, you have become a lawbreaker. Speak and act as those who are going to
be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be
shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!"
So let's go back to this situation where they are
showing favoritism on the basis of economic differences. The leaders could not
believe that this was right, because from the very foundation of the Old
Testament there is a strong call to treating people fairly and justly.
Leviticus
19:15 in the Old Testament says "Do not pervert justice. Do not
show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor
fairly." In some of the earliest
books of the Old Testament, it's right there. In the New Testament Colossians 3:11
says we’re to treat all people equally.
"Here
there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, Barbarian, Scythian,
slave or free, but Christ is all and in all."
They
are without excuse.
This is what I think is going on. They know that
favoritism isn't right in an absolute sense, but it makes such a good
impression on these people. These people are used to being treated right and so
it’s easier to go along with the flow of the expectations they have and of the
expectation the culture has around them.
Their error isn't in showing honor to the rich people; their error is
that they did not show honor to everyone.
Do you see what's going on? I think in their minds they have a category
that some sins are really bad, but other sins are sort of socially acceptable,
because everybody is doing it. Our
church sins are what I call socially acceptable, middle class sins.
For the American church one of the socially
acceptable sins is greed. We just don't like to talk about the responsibility
that comes with wealth. We don't confront American extravagance at all. The
fact that Americans use most of the earths' resources for a very small
percentage of the population and we do so wastefully is something that is very
hard to get the church to talk about on a deep level. And can you imagine no
matter how extravagant something is that someone buys, can you imagine walking
up to them and saying "Hey, that was wrong." Can you imagine walking
up to somebody at church and saying "That was wrong." It's almost
obscene to talk about money with people. It's very private. The socially
acceptable sin; number one is greed.
Another socially acceptable sin is apathy. Finally
churches all over the world are starting to respond to the issues of AIDS, but
it has taken us 25 years. For 25 years the church has been ignoring this
pressing world problem where millions of people are dying. It was too dirty. It
was too complicated. It was involved with ugly sins that we look down on and so
we ignore it. We still ignore the fact that over a third of the world lives on
only a few hundred dollars a year. We don't even think about it, much less do
anything differently because of it. Apathy.
A third socially acceptable sin is racism. There
is a tiny Presbyterian church in
How about classism? We are a certain socioeconomic
group of Christians and we don't want to deal with the problems of a different
group. We don't care what ethnicity. We don't want to deal with it. This
happens. Twenty-five years ago in a church in
A fifth socially acceptable sin is disdain. We
look down at people who struggle with different sins than we do. Their faults
are different. You see it all over the church. On one part of the church the
biggest sin possible according to some Christian churches is intolerance. Their
curse word is fundamentalism. It can't get worse than that. They are willing to
put that label on people in a second. On the other side of the church the curse
word is liberalism.
We look down our nose at people who are struggling
with different faults; things that we don't consider acceptable.
It's
not the whole list. There is pride, there is gossip, there is growing
dissension, laziness, prayerlessness, faithlessness and all of these things are
sins that are not scandalous so we handle them differently. It's easy to give
forgiveness for these things, because most people don't even notice. It is
shared by most of us, so no one is going to talk about it.
James hits this kind of thinking head on. Verses 9
to 11:
"But if you show favoritism, you sin and are
convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet
stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said,
"Do not commit adultery,". James also said, "Do
not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have
become a lawbreaker."
We like to think about sin in terms of different
categories. We've got this idea that sin and righteousness and holding on to
righteousness is sort of like a rope and so if we do something minor; like
gossip, its like fraying it a little bit and one or two of the fibers break
off, but you still have a good solid rope there. You know, "I am not
stealing. I am not murdering people." But that is not the picture that
James gives. James gives a picture more like we are relying on a chain and if
any link of that chain breaks we fall. Whoever breaks part of the law breaks
all of the law.
James is not giving us any wiggle room for
socially acceptable sin. All sin pollutes. All sin is an affront to God's
purity no matter how cool we might be with it. When it comes to giving false
pictures about God and about life, about human value, the church can be part of
the problem. The church can be embarrassing, but folks this two-face church,
this embarrassing church, this church that's part of the problem is not out there.
It's us, because you are the church. We are the church. It's not the building.
It's not somebody else. It's us.
So that means that there are times that we are the
scandal. We are the problem. There are times that other people are apologizing
for us. In James 1:12-13 James tells us to be careful.
"Speak and act as those who are going to be
judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be
shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!"
James is telling us that even with these middle
class acceptable sins, we need to be careful and not only do we need to be
careful as people who know that we are being measured against a perfect law, we
need to be people who are liberal with mercy, because we don't want to be in
the position where we are being judged by the law without mercy. The whole
reason for the existence of the church is that we are a people who know we need
mercy and we have found it in Jesus Christ and so then we are called to be
people who share that mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. That we believe as a
Christian church. So that affects they way we share about Jesus Christ. It
affects the way we present ourselves as a church to the world, because we are
never going to be a perfect witness. There is not going to be any perfect
Christians coming from this church. We all need grace, forgiveness and mercy.
So at very least as we share with other people, we have to be honest and we
have got to be humble about who we really are.
Donald Miller in his book, "Blue Like
Jazz" has an interesting story about a Christian group at a
college campus, who decide that they want to do a special outreach during a big
party that they have that envelopes the whole campus, the quad and all the
areas around it. This big party has all kinds
of drink and drug being shared at it and they decided that in the middle of
that they wanted to do a Christian witness. And so, as a joke one member
suggests, "Well why don't we have a confessional and dress up like
monks?" People had a lot to confess after this party. So the group decided
to have a confessional, but with one difference. They were going to confess to
anyone who comes about the shortcomings of the church and their own
shortcomings as people.
Don was one of the first to sit in that booth at
the party. He hears all the music going on outside and becomes more and more
convinced this is not God's idea. He
becomes convinced that this is a really bad idea and is getting ready to stand
up and walk out and tell the rest of the group to go on without him when the
first guy comes in and his name is Jake. Jake sits down and says, "Okay
then, what's the game?"
It's not really a game. It's more of a confession
thing.
"You
want me to confess my sins, right?"
"No, that's not what we are doing really." "What's the deal man? What's with the
monk outfit?" "Well we are a
group of Christians here on campus."
"I
see, a strange place for Christians, but I am listening."
"So
there is this group of us on campus who want to confess to you." "You are confessing to me" Jake
said with a laugh. "You are serious." His laugh turned in to
something more of a straight face. "What are you confessing" he
asked. I shook my head and looked at the
ground, "everything" I told him.
"Explain"
There
is a lot and I will keep it short. Jesus said to feed the poor and heal the
sick. I have never done very much about that. Jesus said to love those who
persecute me. I tend to lash out especially if I feel threatened. Jesus didn't
mix his spirituality with politics, but I grew up doing that. I got in the way
of the central message of Christ. I know a lot of people who won't listen to
the words of Christ, because people like me who know him carry our own agendas
into the conversation, rather than relaying just the message. There is a lot
more you know."
"It's
alright man" Jake said very tenderly. His eyes were starting to water.
"Well," I said, clearing my throat
"I am sorry for all of that." "I
forgive you" Jake said and he meant it. He sat there and looked at the
floor and then into the fire of a candle. "It's really cool what you guys
are doing. A lot of people need to hear this. You really believe in Jesus,
don't you? You said earlier that there was a central message of Christ. I don't
really want to become a Christian, but what is that message?'"
At this point Donald Miller got a chance to share
with him about sin, about the love of God and about the cross. After he had
gotten a chance to share that Don asked him a question. "What do you
believe about God?" "I don't
know. I guess I didn't believe for a long time. The science of it is so sketchy.
I guess I believe in God though. I believe somebody is responsible for all of
this, this world we live in. It's all very confusing."
"Jake, if you want to know God, you can. I am
just saying that if you ever want to call on Jesus, he will be there."
"Thanks
man. I believe that you mean that." His eyes were watering again.
"This is cool what you guys are doing. I am going to tell my friends about
it."
Whatever we do in our witness, it's got to be
authentic. There can't be any masks of superiority. The high standards that
James is calling us to is not to push us in to some kind hypocrisy where we act
like we are living like this in every way and somehow look down our noses at
other people who don't seem to make the grade. We don't have it all together. Our
humility, our brokenness is part of our witness. Broken people rejoicing at the
fact that mercy triumphs over justice. There is grace in the world in Jesus
Christ. That despite our weakness grace holds us close to God. That's the good
news and then we've got to extend that grace and mercy to other people, to
broken people just like us. We are forgiven people forgiving freely; people who
need mercy giving mercy.
No one here escapes the words of James. No one in
any church does. You are the church. We are the church and our lives are either
true or false pictures about God. To a world that needs a true picture, we are
either giving a true picture or a false picture. Who we are, how we act affects
how the whole world sees Jesus Christ. We can't escape that. So when they look
at us, what do they see? They don't need to see the perfection of Jesus,
because there is no hope of that. But they do need to see the truth. They need
to see a people who are broken and still have hope, because they know that in
their frailty they are still acceptable to God because of Jesus Christ. And to
see a people that have not only experienced that mercy, but freely extend that
mercy to others. Mercy triumphs over justice.
Let's pray. God you know who we are
and so we ask now just for mercy and then we ask for the grace we need to be
authentic people, as we share our faith with others, for we ask it in Jesus
name. Amen.
Adopted
from a sermon preached by the Rev. John Schmidt at the
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org. Used with permission.