James
2:1-17
“What’s your favorite color, Dada?” Kohl
has asked me that question a few times here lately, and I usually respond by
asking him the question back: “Oh, I don’t know, buddy. What’s your favorite
color.” Of course, his answer depends on the immediate context of the inquiry.
If he happens to be playing with a blue truck, he’ll look down at the toy, then
back up at me and say, “My favorite color is blue.” “But I thought it was
green,” I’ll say, to which Kohl will then say, “It is. I like all the colors.
My favorite color is rainbow.” It’s a sweet sentiment to be sure, but he always
winds back up asking me, “What’s your favorite color, Dada?” I’m 34 years old;
I haven’t thought about a favorite color in years. These days, I choose the
color of things solely upon how easy they are to clean, how much they’ll hide
stains, if it’s cheaper or on sale, or if it might make me look a little less
fat. I can’t say I’ve thought about a favorite color in a while.
Of
course, I do have favorites when it comes to other things: Dr. Pepper is my
favorite soda; Cool Ranch Doritos are my favorite chips; I prefer bow ties over
neckties, Chevys over Fords; fall is my favorite season. We all have favorites.
Whether it is a favorite band, a favorite place to eat dinner, a favorite team,
a favorite flavor of ice cream, or a favorite brand of clothes, we all have
favorites, and for the most part, there’s no harm in having favorites. My
preference for sushi does not cause you any harm, even if you’re crazy and
think sushi is horrible. We have favorites because our life experiences have
shaped our tastes, because the chemical connections between our tongues and our
brains are wired a certain way, because a certain type of music recalls certain
times in our lives. There are all sorts of reasons we have favorites, and there
is nothing wrong with having a favorite color, soda, ice cream flavor, or style
of music. It is, however, nothing short of a sin to show such favoritism when
it comes to those who are made in the image of God, our neighbors, our sisters
and brothers. It is that precise sin of favoritism James is calling out in the
text before us this morning.
This
may be just an example, a “what if?” scenario for James, or this may in fact be
something that has happened in the life of this congregation to whom James is
writing. A rich man comes to church one Sunday morning, parks his Mercedes close
to the door, strolls through the foyer in his tailored suit, starched shirt,
and alligator shoes, takes a bulletin from an usher with a hand covered in
golden rings, before being shown to the best seat in the sanctuary (maybe the
ushers even have to ask a family to change pews for him). The pastor makes a
point to shake his hand before the service starts, asks him his name, where
he’s from, and is sure to tell him how glad everyone is that this man could
join them for worship this Sunday morning. The church has rolled out the red
carpet for this man, because, after all, he is the kind of potential church
member, the sort of “prospect,” you want—a man with means. He might be able to
recover the budget deficit with a single check, fund half the potential capital
campaign, and pay the whole year’s mission goal without missing a beat. He’d be
a huge asset to the church, so of course the pastor, deacons, and leaders of
the church are going out of their way to make sure this fellow feels at home:
they want him to come back and join!
But
just as the pastor lets go of this man’s gold-covered hand, in the through the
back door comes a smell. It’s not an overwhelming, obvious smell like a burning
tire. No, it’s a smell that makes most folks a little squeamish, the kind of
smell that hangs out in your nostrils all afternoon, something between cat
urine and sour milk. That odor drags through the door a man in unwashed
clothes, greasy hair combed straight back, patchy beard, and shoes that look
like he’s walked all the way from moon in them. His nails are long, and his
teeth are missing. There’s no outstretched hand with a bulletin for him, no one
to show him to his seat. Instead, an usher approaches and asks, “Can we help
you? Are you looking for something?” Questions pointed as accusations more than
genuine concern. The man is told to wait in the foyer, have a seat on a folding
chair someone retrieved from the closet (the service is about to start, after
all). When the service is over, he’s quickly ushered out, given the address of
the local soup kitchen and clothes closet (both ministry partners with the
church, of course) and is told that he’d be prayed for by the church.
The
carpet is rolled out and the door is held for a rich man, while the poor man is
shown the door and kept from tracking his filth on the carpet. Which one do you
think was the church’s favorite? “[I]f 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,’ [The poor man isn’t even
given the politeness of a “please”] have you not made distinctions among
yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?” That’s what
favoritism is, right? Judgment. Picking one over another because you have
decided that one is worthier than another, choosing one over another because
the other doesn’t live up to your measure, because the other is deemed lesser
due to some shortcoming you see in them. It’s judgment; favoritism is judgment.
But
here’s the thing—the thing that lets us get away with such favoritism: we have
developed our own list of excuses and justifications for our judgments of
others. “Well, someone like that rich man could do a lot of good with his
resources…you don’t really know where that poor man’s been or what he’s done,
and it’s better to be safe than sorry…” I know. I’ve heard them all, even used
more than a few myself. We’re quick to distance ourselves from such folks by
throwing some loose change in a cup for them or simply avoiding eye contact,
and there are those instances where we justify our distance by simply promising
to pray for them or pass them on down the chain of assistance. Oh yes, we even
see it in this example from James, don’t we? “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…’” “Go in peace…There, now I’ve done my part.”
I
suppose it’s easy to interpret the right act of faith as simply being nice to
people we don’t want to be around, around people we don’t like, people we’ve
judged to be less than our favorites.
But “nice” isn’t what our faith is about. In the words of my good friend Josh
Hearne, “You can’t eat nice.” That’s why James scolds his readers with these
words: “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?” You can say all
the right things to someone, you can try to patch over your judgment of someone
by offering them churchy words, empty Platonisms, or Bible verses, but if
that’s all you have to offer, if all your faith is made of is a string of
bumper-sticker slogans, proof-texts, well-wishes, and vague, worn-out
one-liners, you don’t have much of a faith at all, do you? If you excuse
yourself from actually engaging others, from actually walking alongside someone
in this life, because you’ve decided they aren’t included in your list of
favorites—your list of “God’s favorites”—then what sort of faith is that
anyway?
When
I think about these sorts of things, when I believe I’ve got that list figured
out of who’ in and who’s out, who’s worthy and who’s not, who’s God’s favorites
and who’s still got to “get right with the Lord”—when I think about these sorts
of things I stop and think about whose lists I’m on and what side of that list
I might find my name. I mean, for every name I exclude form my own list of
‘favorites,’ I’m more than surely to be excluded from someone else’s. For every
person you deem unworthy to put on your list, there’s someone judging you as
unworthy for theirs. How does that make you feel? What’s your initial reaction
to being excluded, counted as “less than?” I think we need to be reminded of
that feeling from time to time, especially when we’re drawing the line between
our favorites and those who don’t make the cut, whenever we’re quoting
Scripture about who’s in and who’s out, whenever we look the other way or offer
up our baptized excuses for ignoring the needs of some in favor of our
preference for others. I think we need to be reminded, but then again, there
may be some of us who’ve never known what it’s like to be “outside,” to be told
to “stand there” or “sit at my feet.” There may be some of us who’ve never
known what it’s like to be on the receiving end of injustice, on the other side
of privilege, on the outside looking in. For a lot of church folks today, the
experience of being the “other” isn’t there, because they’ve been part of the
“in” crowd since birth! So I get it, it may be hard for some of us to imagine
what it’s like to be excluded from a list of “favorites.”
Isn’t
that all the more reason to listen to those who have been? If we can recall when
we were left out, if we can listen to those who are still being cut off, left
out, and turned away, then—then I think we begin to move away from the sin of
favoritism, the sin of judgment, and we begin to move closer to that which
Christ calls forth from us, that which Christ has shown to us: mercy. That’s
the opposite of judgment; that’s the antidote to judgment; that’s the greater
call over judgment—mercy. Mercy is what sets us free; it’s the grace to see
past whatever may keep us from God’s list of favorites so that we may be
included. Mercy is the only reason any of us—all of us—is able to be anything
other than damned. Yet we take God’s mercy for granted, and too often we live
our lives absent of that shared mercy with others, choosing, instead, to see
their faults, failures, choices, and identities as worse than anything we could
imagine, and therefore, outside the realm of mercy. How easily we forget that
we are included in the kingdom of God by the love of Christ and the grace of
God—and nothing else!
When
we remember this truth, that we ourselves are saved by God’s grace, that we are
included only on the merit of God’s unfailing love for the world, that it is by
Christ’s works and life that we are justified and not our works of
self-righteousness done in his name—when we remember that, our lives cannot hep
but be transformed into vessels of that same mercy towards others—regardless of
who they are and what we think they’re worth. When we take hold of what James
calls “the law of liberty” (that is, the law of love and grace in Christ Jesus),
we can no longer judge others, but instead, we show them the opposite of judgment.
We show them mercy. Mercy, however, is not some intangible idea whereby we feel
better about ourselves for not simply thinking less of people. Mercy is real. Mercy is what loves looks like
when we give it to those we think don’t deserve it. That’s why James says, “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?…So faith by itself,
if it has no works, is dead.”
You
see? Mercy is an action; it has legs. Mercy isn’t about telling someone you
love them; it isn’t about telling the poor, lonely, hungry, and cast-out that
you’ll pray for them. Is that all Christ did for you? NO! Mercy is about
proving the faith we have in Christ to those outside of our ideas of right by
loving them anyway. Mercy is about proving that just as Christ lived us without
condition, without prerequisite, without our possession of all the right
answers, we love others the same way. And don’t think for a second that some
properly placed words about the unfitness of another or some biblical
undressing of someone’s sins is a fitting definition of love. Is that all Jesus
did for you? NO! Christ’s mercy is not contained in pointed sermons or lectures
about our need to “get right before we get left;” Christ’s mercy is shown in
the reality of the cross! God’s love is shown in what Jesus did for us—for all of us, regardless of
whether or not we may otherwise be called “favorites.” And that’s the whole
point, isn’t it? God doesn’t play favorites, so why do we? God’s judgment is
not based upon where we fall on some scale of sinfulness or upon how many boxes
we tick on some list of sins. God’s judgment is in fact no judgment at all!
It’s love! It’s grace! It’s mercy manifested in the very presence of God, dying
upon a cross, with his last breath speaking words of forgiveness to the very
ones who nailed him there! Because in the end, mercy triumphs over judgment. In
the end, it is Christ’s mercy, Christ’s grace, Christ’s love that triumphs over
all. So what does that look like when we stop thinking we’re on some exclusive
list on God’s desk, judging those we’re certain aren’t on that list with us, and
start living as those freed by God’s mercy in Christ to share that same mercy
with the world? What does it look like when we live into the reality that mercy
has triumphed over judgment? Let’s find out, together. Amen.
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