Proper 19
James 2:1-18
James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17My 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. [For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.]What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
Porche 944
Todd Hunter, a Vineyard pastor who recently became Anglican wrote a book called Christianity Beyond Belief. In the book he reminds us that Jesus had really one message—the Kingdom of Heaven, which Hunter calls ‘God’s story.’ He then asks the question, ‘which story are you in,’ or which story do you believe?’ What is the overarching story that you live by?
Alexander Solzenitsyn gave an eerily prophetic speech to graduates from Harvard in 1978. I commend it to you. He basically says that the only story of the West left is the story of materialism. There is no longer anything for us to live for or rise above because comfort is our goal. Material comfort is our story.
I mentioned the last couple of weeks how important it is to try to listen to God. It is also instructive to learn and listen to ourselves—to find out what we truly live for.
What story does Jesus want us in? The epistles, like James are the Scriptures way of practical living in God’s story and his kingdom.
As a review, we are going through the book of James, a book that provides wisdom and encourages one to listen and to act on what we hear. I mentioned that James is playing on the ancient rabbinic teaching known as the yesarim. That is, that there are two impulses in every human being, a virtuous impulse, known as yeserhatov and an evil impulse known as yeserhara. In part, James’ letter is wisdom on how to live by the yeserhatov, by the impulse of virtue. Our passage this morning is all about the yeserhara, the evil impulse. The yeserhara has the potential of taking over when the desire for wealth and prestige becomes our story. Today’s passage is specifically targeting the last danger or awakening the evil desire within us, the desire for wealth and prestige.
James’ letter, in part is to refute the teaching going around his churches that wealth is an automatic sign of God’s blessing and being poor the sign of God’s curse. James turns that thinking on its head by saying the opposite, that the poor are the ones who are really rich. He says, ‘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.’ James is echoing the words of Christ almost verbatim, ‘Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.’
Both James and Jesus are not saying that it is evil to be rich or to be in a place of honor. I mentioned before that the wealthy were the ones who helped start churches and offered the main support for them. What James is saying is that when you are on the bottom, there is no place to look but up.
Now in the ancient world: only 8% had wealth, 2% were gaining wealth, and the other 90% were poor. 8% old money, 2% new money and everyone else. It was virtually impossible to ‘move up’ in Roman society, unlike ours. Conversely, in the Roman empire, if you were part of that small 10% there was no way you were moving down. As impossible as it was to move up, it was unthinkable to step down. That is why Jesus’ teaching was so radical—‘whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.’ Jesus also said to seek the riches of the Kingdom, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, ‘for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ And James, “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?”
In the community of Faith, in the church, James sees the poor on a higher rung on the ladder–because, he says, they are rich in faith. In fact, he goes so far as to say that if you show favoritism in the body of Christ, if you are unable to humble yourself, you are like an unbeliever.
In the ancient world, it was actually status that was more highly valued than cash. The senate class, those who ruled the empire, these were the highest of the highest. And they were there because of blood lines, not because of money.
Juvenal said that pecunia (love of money) was a goddess. But she was a vassal, a minion in the service of another goddess, philotomia, the love of status. The upper crust was the envy of society. James says there is to be no envy of society, except those who have nowhere else to look but up, because they are poor in spirit and theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
James says that the church is the place where there will be no favoritism or privilege. If there is, then the community does not get it, they don’t believe the gospel.
Now we may no longer be the wine and cheese denomination. But what we have to be careful about is never to think that it was good for us to have that reputation. We have a great heritage as Anglicans, but having General Convention in the Bahamas is not one of them.
This summer I read George MacDonald’s novels about George Wingfield, a faithful priest/curate. His characteristics of the church show us how the culture of England affected the church—lineage, status, was prized over anything else. Wingfield the curate entered the church at first to get ahead in society—clergy were reluctantly received into the upper crust. Wingfield, though didn’t believe a word of it. He had a boxful of his uncles sermons that he read to everyone each Sunday. There is a character named, Mrs. Ramshorn who is a wealthy widow whose late husband was the dean of a cathedral. She has strong views about what is said in church and how the clergy should behave. Eventually Wingfield’s conscience is pricked for reading other people’s sermons and for not really believing what he was called to do. Therefore, he confesses it to the congregation and begins his own discovery of Christ. Mrs. Ramshorn is appalled. A clergy should have no emotion and should know his place. She was also appalled that so many different kinds of people began to attend church to hear Thomas Wingfield’s passionate sermons—even the unseemly.
But this kind of problem does not just plague Episcopalians. Some of the newer church architecture of the last 25 years has deliberately tried to mimic ‘the suburban corporate headquarters of high tech companies.’ The mega church wants to look and feel as mega important and mega successful as possible. It really is a strategy that if the place looks mega successful, then successful people will come. This mindset is not the case in all big churches, but it is in some.
James says that favoritism and showing privilege have no place in the church. No matter what variety. He says that favoring the 10% and give them important seats at the expense of the 90% who are in need is a sign of unbelief and a symbol that the yeserhara, the evil thoughts and impulses have gotten control of members of the body of Christ—that another story has crept into God’s Kingdom story.
What troubled James, was that the desire for prestige created a climate in the church that was inclined to evil. Even Roman historian Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17) wrote, “Wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us, through every form of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death both individual and collective.”
If it was true in the culture that greed led to self-indulgence and eventually to death, how much more was it a concern was there for James’ churches. And for our own.
The most quoted piece of James letter is found here in James chapter 2. ‘Faith without works is dead.’ It is often quoted in tension with Paul’s proclamation that we are saved by faith without works. It is as if the two are at odds. This is why Luth3Cp align=”center” style=”margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center; tab-stops: .5in” class=”MsoNormal”>Proper 19
James 2:1-18
James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17My 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. [For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.]What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
Porche 944
Todd Hunter, a Vineyard pastor who recently became Anglican wrote a book called Christianity Beyond Belief. In the book he reminds us that Jesus had really one message—the Kingdom of Heaven, which Hunter calls ‘God’s story.’ He then asks the question, ‘which story are you in,’ or which story do you believe?’ What is the overarching story that you live by?
Alexander Solzenitsyn gave an eerily prophetic speech to graduates from Harvard in 1978. I commend it to you. He basically says that the only story of the West left is the story of materialism. There is no longer anything for us to live for or rise above because comfort is our goal. Material comfort is our story.
I mentioned the last couple of weeks how important it is to try to listen to God. It is also instructive to learn and listen to ourselves—to find out what we truly live for.
What story does Jesus want us in? The epistles, like James are the Scriptures way of practical living in God’s story and his kingdom.
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