Sermon of September 10, 2006

23^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
James 2:1-17
September 10, 2006

Acts of Favoritism

What we hear and do in worship shapes us into a certain kind of people. If, week after week, we are told how bad we are, and how we must repent of our sins, we're liable to become a people obsessed with guilt, constantly looking over our shoulders for the recompense of God. If we hear only words commending us for generosity and good-heartedness, we will be become smug and insufferable -- not only to God but to everyone around us. If we sing only praise songs, our characters will be warped and we will not know how to lament when trouble comes. If we sing only songs about future heavenly joy, we will become a people of no earthly use.

Scripture plays the central role in this molding process. Some passages of scripture show us with unflinching honesty just how far short of the glory of God we do indeed fall. Some passages offer comfort in adversity, and some give us practical advice for living under the gracious authority of God.

Left to our own devices, preachers (this one included) tend to ride our favorite hobby horses, rather than preach from the fullness of God's Word. I once knew a retired pastor who bragged that he preached financial stewardship each and every Sunday. He never preached a sermon without mentioning tithing. Budgets increased dramatically in the churches he pastored -- in the many, many, churches he pastored. For some reason, he seemed never to stay in any church very long.

It is to save you from malformation and me from homiletical sloth that we follow a lectionary -- a predetermined schedule of scripture readings. Over the course of time you will hear read from this pulpit texts which cover the great themes of the Bible's witness -- and, I hope, sermons to go with them.

Some of those texts are welcome and familiar:

Comfort, comfort my people, says the Lord . . .

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus . . .

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want . . .

Other texts are less welcome:

I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Strive to enter by the narrow door;

for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able . . .

How we hear today's lesson from the Epistle of James will depend very much on whether we really want to listen or not.

The message is self-evident. That's the problem with James. He doesn't beat around the bush. Other writers leave some room for maneuvering. James just lays it right out there for all to see: Distinctions are being made in James' church, distinctions between the rich and the poor.

If a person with gold rings and fine clothes comes into the assembly, he or she gets the best seat in the house. If a person with no rings and ragged clothes appears -- Guess what? There's a seat over there in back corner, or perhaps a spot on the floor.

I'm not sure what kind of "assembly" James has in mind here. His letter was written long before Christians had purpose-built buildings to meet in. There were no ushers in James' day. Perhaps he means a gathering in someone's house -- a rich person's house, presumably, because only rich people in those days had houses big enough for entertaining. Maybe the "assembly" is the common meal which eventually became the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Maybe it's just a get-together for prayer and fellowship.

Whatever the assembly is, a pecking order has clearly been established within it. The rich get the places of honor. The poor get short shrift. The trouble with this kind of favoritism, James says, is not just that it's tacky. It's a denial of the gospel.

Has God not chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him?

I've often noticed that people who come to me looking for help with food or a rent payment seldom thank me -- at least not first. What they tend to do is lift their eyes to heaven and say, "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Jesus!"

That used to bother me. After all, I'm the one signing the checks. Then I remembered who had put that money in the minister's discretionary fund, and to whom I am accountable for its stewardship. Has God not chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith . . . and to teach it to the rest of us?

This text prompts us to take a hard, uncomfortable look at who is welcome into our common life, and who is made to feel unwelcome. It's a hard text. I'm not sure than most of us know how hard it really is.

If you don't spend your working day in the office of this church, you may have no idea how many poor, desperate people come in looking for help. I don't see them all. Diana, our Administrative Assistant, is the one who has to deal with these sisters and brothers. Perhaps you'll keep that in mind the next time you phone to schedule a meeting or to check the status of your pledge. If Diana seems a bit distracted, it might be because a person who hasn't bathed in six weeks is sitting three feet away.

Some poor people are docile, polite, compliant. Some are manipulative, insistent, and furious that the church is not meeting their needs. I remember a man looking for $900.00 for a rent deposit -- a single man with no job who had enrolled as a student at TCC. Human service agencies in town already had turned him down. I told him the church didn't have that kind of money.

That wasn’t altogether true. We've got that kind of money. Our endowment is healthy and growing. What's more, I had just gotten paid. I had that kind of money. I offered him food, but the truth is, I wasn't going to give him $900.00. He stormed out of my study after telling me what a poor excuse for a Christian I am. He's probably right.

On the other hand, a man came in not long ago looking for two things: $3.00 for a picture I.D. from the Drivers' License Bureau so that he could get a job, and $2.00 for the bus fair to get there and back.

"What about food?" I asked him.

"O, that's alright, Rev. I ate yesterday. I don't need no food. I just need that job."

I have learned a great deal from the poor people who come to this church. Some have taught me what it means to live each day at a time, constantly relying upon God. Some have taught me the meaning of "eucharist," of offering thanksgiving for every blessing. Others have taught me the soundness of the doctrine of the total depravity.

I can say the same for the people whose names appear on the church's rolls. Some of them are poor, too. Most of them, however, are rich beyond the wildest imaginings of two-thirds of the people on this planet.

We must hear today's text without imposing some fuzzy, idealized fantasy about what being poor is really like. Most of us will never know what it's like to lie on cold concrete like the man I had to roust out of a deep sleep not long ago, in order to clear the way for a Saturday wedding.

Being poor is hard. Sometimes being poor is hell. And sometimes helping poor people is no picnic, either. James infuriates me with these words of his:

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?

"It's not that simple," I want to scream back. "There are budgets to balance, factors to weigh, papers to fill out. You have to avoid waste, fraud, and abuse. You have to do things decently and in order. If I fed every person who came to this church looking for food, and sat down with every person who wanted to tell me his or her hard luck story, I'd never get the sermon written, or the hospital visits made. I'm a pastor for goodness sakes! I don't have time to be a Christian, too."

James doesn't seem to hear me. He just wants to make sure I hear him. I think I have something he needs to hear. He thinks I ought to hear him first.

I can't resolve the tension I have with this text, or the tension we should all have with it. It helps to listen to the homeless people who are full, active members of this church. I know one who never tires of telling people how this church saved his life. It also helps to watch my other brothers and sisters in action.

I'm thinking of the reception that was held over in the Westminster Room following the memorial service for Fran Cummings years ago. The goodies were all laid out on the serving tables, and folks who loved Fran were mixing their tears with bits of shortbread and tiny sandwiches.

I looked up from my plate and saw a man precisely fitting the description in today's Epistle lesson: a poor person in ragged clothes. He was piling up canapés on a plastic plate, making a feast out of finger food.

A member of the congregation came over to me.

"What are you going to do about that man?" the member asked.

"What would Fran have done about that man?" I replied.

She didn't like that answer, and who could blame her? She'd probably spent hours making those pimento cheese sandwiches and cutting them into perfect little triangles. She turned on her heel and made a bee line for the man, who was defying the laws of gravity with the pimento cheese Everest he was building.

"Sir," she said. "Sir, would you . . . would you like a cup of punch to go with your sandwiches?"

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our gracious Lord Jesus Christ?

I wish James hadn't asked it, but it's a good question.

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