Here Comes James!

Text:  James 2:1-10, 11-13, 14-17

Theme:  "Here Comes James!"

15th Sunday after Pentecost

September 9, 2012

First Presbyterian Church

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

 

+In the Name of Jesus+

 

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. ² Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old 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 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,”^[a] 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,”^[b] also said, “You shall not murder.”^[c] If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

¹² Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, ¹³ because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

¹⁴ What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? ¹⁵ Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. ¹⁶ If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? ¹⁷ In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

This morning we welcome back the book of James to the lectionary.  Tucked in toward the back of the New Testament portion of the Bible, James has had something of a checkered history.  Martin Luther, the great reformer, called the book of James "the epistle of straw."  You can't do much with straw except, perhaps, to trample it down on mud so you don't get your shoes dirty.

The reformers -- Luther, in particular -- didn't like James because it left the impression that a person was saved from hell, fire, and damnation through a combination of faith and works.  In other words, you have to believe in Jesus and do the good works He commands.  It does seem to run against one of the great hallmarks of the reformed faith:  sola fidei (faith alone). The Reformation took its stand with the teaching of St. Paul:  "By grace are you saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves.  It is the gift of God.  It is not of works -- lest anyone should boast."  And it's there in the Old Testament  too:  "The just shall live by faith," says the prophet Habakkuk.  There's nothing in there about works.

But here comes James, and he bolixes the whole thing up. He throws the whole church into confusion.   He says:  "Faith, by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."

Thus, we have a dilemma.  How shall we see our way through it?   If someone thinks that it's all about works and that the faith bit is basically irrelevant, we deliver them into the safe hands of St. Paul.   If someone thinks that it's all about faith and, as a result, one must not bother with good works of any kind, we deliver them into the hands of James.   Bingo! The dilemma is solved.  Stick with the Bible long enough, and you may be pleasantly surprised and get some answers.

Back to James!  Let's hear him out.  He starts out all nicey-nice:  "My brothers and sisters," he says.  "Brothers and sisters" is the language of family.  There's a certain level of intimacy there -- which is nice.  But then  -- boom! -- he gets right to the point:  "Believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism."  If you roll out the red carpet for the rich, what does that say?  Well, we do budget on a shoestring and we have a mortgage to pay off, so it would be nice if they would hurry up and join our church.  We could certainly use their pledge -- both for general operating expenses and the building fund. 

And what of the poor?  Well, there are quite a few around and about University Drive here.  Occasionally, we hear how some of them sleep on our grounds or throw a mattress up our our roof. There is that grove of trees between our facilities and  Good Samaritan, and we've heard rumors that sometimes they sleep out there too.  But we do what we can -- a little bit here and a little bit there -- and we send them to the good people at the Salvation Army (they can stay five nights a month there) or the soup kitchen downtown.  Interfaith Ministries also does some nice things for the poor.  We do our part for the United Way, and we throw our change into the red kettle at Christmas and a few shekels into our own Inasmuch Fund.

But, as we discovered several Sundays ago, what do we do when we spot an African-American man, in disheveled clothing and probably in want of soap and water, sprawled out and sound asleep on one of our church pews before worship?  Folks, it's not so much what we do at that point.  It's how we feel.  We feel awkward.  No, it's not comfortable.  But I ask you -- I ask myself! -- to stay with that awkwardness for a moment.

When I finished my formal seminary education in 1987, there was as new movement afoot in Christianity.  Basically, it started with the writings of Dr. Donald McGavran, a professor of missiology at Fuller Theological Seminary in California.  He was the "father" of what was called the modern "Church Growth" movement.  At the heart of the Church Growth movement was a principle, a principle that is called the "Homogeneous Unit" principle.  It basically says that people like to become Christian without crossing racial, economic, or cultural barriers.  What it taught, on the most practical level, was this:  for the church to grow, you must attract people that are like you.  In other words, target the kind of people that dress like you do, make the same kind of money you do, hold the same political views that you do, practice their Christianity like you do, have the same 3.5 kids that you do, and have the same ethnic background as you do.  That's where the action is. 

Donald McGavran might call it action.  But here comes James.  He calls it favoritism.  He calls it discrimination. 

You know, folks.  I came to work today wearing a brand new shirt from Men's Wearhouse and a pretty cool new tie.  Last night, lay my head down -- after a very long day -- on a very nice, tempur-pedic pillow from Brookstone.  But then I woke up this morning and remember that cryptic statement of Jesus:  "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."  The glorious Lord Jesus Christ that James describes is a homeless person!  That African-American man -- all disheveled and in want of shower -- that made us feel awkward may have been an angel, an angel that we were unaware of.  See the New Testament book of Hebrews for more on that. 

Again, here comes James:  "If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right," he says.  The question, of course, is:  do we really keep the royal law?  And who exactly is our neighbor?

Jesus answered that very same question with a story.  A man goes down that nasty road to Jericho.  He is robbed and beaten and left half-dead. He's got only a fifty-fifty chance of physically surviving.  Along come a couple of religious people -- one is a priest and the other is a Levite.  They both rubberneck a little bit, and then they proceed on trying to forget the whole scene.  But then, along comes a Samaritan.  "A Samaritan?" you ask.  Yes, Samaritan. Samaritans, to the Jews of Jesus' day and age, were considered inferior half-breeds, a part of their family that they had disowned, the pond scum of society.  There was a saying afoot:  "The only good Samaritan is a dead Samaritan." 

But what does this Samaritan do?  He bandages up the wounds of this poor human being lying half dead on a road.  More than that, he arranges for his medical bills to be paid in full.  I don't know how much a day spent as a patient in an intensive care unit costs, but I do know that it's lot of money.  Who was the good neighbor here?  Was it the priest?  The Levite?  Or was it the inferior half-breed, disowned, pond scum, the-only-good-Samaritan-is-a-dead-Samaritan Samaritan?  It was the person you'd least expect to do it.  Dear friends at First Presbyterian Church, what if we become the church that's least likely to do it and do it anyway?  Think about it!

Years ago, when I worked in the Lutheran church, I was approached by a member who wanted me to go to a rally in Indianapolis.  I would be downtown with hundreds of others holding up signs and protesting against abortion.  This lady showed me her own "Abortion Kills" sign.  "I'm not going to go," I said.  She looked shocked.  "But I'll tell you when I am ready to go," I said.  "I'm ready to go when our church and denomination finds the willingness and the resources to foot the bill and to show the love to that nameless poor woman who chooses to bear her child against almost impossible odds.  When we're ready to make that kind of commitment, I'll gladly go downtown."  That pretty much ended the conversation right then and there.

Friends, so often our actions bears such little resemblance to what we claim to believe.  And here comes James today telling us that painful truth. 

But James is not here only to leave us wallowing in pain.  His task is too inspire.  His task is to point out the foolishness, the ridiculousness, of favoritism and discrimination and clique-ishness. 

In the mighty name of the crucified and risen Jesus, James calls us to back up our faith with action, to live out the content of our creed.  When that happens, it sets the stage so that something special might happen.  Someone, on some day, will see the faith put into practice here at First Presbyterian, and say, in the words of the old negro spiritual:  "Free at last!  Free at last!  Thank God almighty!  I'm free at last." 

 

Amen.