“It Shall Not Be So With You” (James 2:1-17)

“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.”

         First I want to add my voice to Michael’s earlier announcement about how wonderful it is to be back in worship with you all this Sunday after our four month sabbatical.  Seeing your faces is good for my soul.  I know you were well cared for while we were away and your souls were fed during this time as well, YOUR sabbatical.

          Most of you know that our sabbatical grant gave Michael and me the opportunity at the beginning of the summer to tour western Turkey with two biblical scholars, learning about Paul and the dominant culture of the Roman Empire in which he lived.  We capped off that educational tour with a trip back to Jerusalem, where we saw some friends we’d made while we served as pastors there.  Among those friends was a couple we invited to dinner at the American Colony, a wonderful old hotel with a splendid courtyard restaurant.

         It was our last night in Jerusalem and our plan was to linger at this enchanted place as long was seemly, eventually making our way to the airport in Tel Aviv to catch our 5 a.m. flight back to the States.

         We waited for our friends in the lobby and when they arrived, the Maitre’ d began to fawn all over them.  “Oh, Mr. James, we’re so happy to see you.  Let me check to see where we can seat you.  Ah, here, it’s the best place.  It was reserved for some others, but I will put them elsewhere.”  Throughout the dinner he came by frequently to offer assistance, so often that I had the sense that if our friend had asked about moving that annoying olive tree growing over there he might have done so.  Our desserts were “on the house.”

         The friend with whom we were dining is the director of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.  He treated the situation graciously and lightly, explaining to us that he’d recently hosted a Museum event at the restaurant and this new Maitre’ d was eager for him to do so again. It was just business.  But it was awkward for all of us on at least a couple of levels. 

         First, the rest of us at the table were invisible and that, of course, is never comfortable. 

         Second, as the Israel Museum director, our friend has a significant role to play in the dominant Israeli political culture, and the Maitre’ d was Palestinian.  So the power and influence issue in that troubled place, with its unbalanced relations of the dominant and the dominated, was circling our table during what was intended to be a final pleasant evening out with friends.  No major harm was done, but somehow we all knew we were collaborators in the power and influence game that evening, with its attendant injustices.

         Now, each of us probably can tell a story or ten about favoritism, about partiality shown to one person or group while another is neglected or worse.  Our world is replete with this way of “doing business”.  Sometimes we’ve reaped the benefits; occasionally it’s left us out of the loop.  Sometimes we’ve curried favor; sometimes we’ve given it.  It’s the way of the world, isn’t it?

         Yet our scripture texts today tell us emphatically, “IT SHALL NOT BE SO WITH YOU!”

         Remember what we heard in our second lesson, the letter of James:  “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 come 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?…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.”

         And then we heard the remarkable story of Jesus himself, early on in his ministry being called to account for playing favorites by a quick-witted desperate Gentile mother, who presses for at least the crumbs from the table of the elect for her sick daughter!  Never again does even the hint of favoritism raise its head in Jesus’ ministry, as it broadens beyond his own people.  In the very next story told by Mark (which we also heard today), Jesus, whose ears have been opened to this woman’s plea, symbolically opens the ears of another, this time one who has been physically deaf all his life.  Listen!  Open your ears.  In linking these two stories together, Mark wants to underscore the “opening up to others” that God enables and expects.  God shows no partiality.

         Listen again to the probing question James places before us in v. 1 of today’s lesson:  “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?”  Do you hear how serious this is?  James is telling us that the act of showing favoritism in the Christian assembly is not just a matter of not following Christ or not obeying Christ but is a matter that throws into question whether or not we even believe in Christ!  “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?”

         We stand convicted.  Business as usual, the way of the world — at the very least all of those privileges and power plays and currying of favor must be left at the door when we enter this community of Christ.  If we can’t seem to manage the lure of these things out in the world, we at least must acknowledge the truth in our worship and our life together in the church.  Worldly distinctions do not matter before God and therefore have no place in the assembly of believers.  When we give in to them, we put the lie to our belief and gravely misrepresent the nature of God in Christ. 

         This is serious.  This is about the integrity of the gospel.  Loving your neighbor as yourself is the heart of it.  I heard this message in another way just this morning on NPR, during an interview by Krista Tippet on “Speaking of Faith”.  She was talking to a woman who had felt a calling to teach yoga to child prostitutes and she spoke of how disastrous her first session with them was.  Then she realized that her approach needed to change.  “Don’t serve them.  Meet them,”  was the message she heard.  Don’t serve them, meet them.   And that made all the difference.

         Barriers of class and wealth, of favoritism and status, of server and served, of poor and rich, of liberal and conservative, even of true believers and “everyone else” only shield us from our neighbor, rather than letting us meet so that we might love him or her.  God’s business as usual is to have us meet our valued neighbors in God’s kingdom.  No favorites, no partiality, no games.  Just the real thing, the beloved of God gathered together.

         This happens rarely in the world, but Christ expects it to be business as usual in the church that bears his name.

         Amen.  May it indeed be so for us as we regather in this community!

September 6, 2009, 14th Sunday after Pentecost

Susan Thomas

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